"We will have to go on without her," said Abner Blythe dejectedly, as they sat about the camp fire.

Felix was feeding the flame with the sparse fuel, and Anna Blythe, Abner's wife, was sitting on a roll of blankets with her child on her lap. The little boy was ill and lay wailing against her shoulder.

"Don't leave the mare," Felix begged. "A day or two of rest will cure her entirely. There is water here, and grass beside the stream. We could camp two or three days until she can go on."

Abner shook his head wearily.

"We have no time to waste," he declared. "It is August now and we must cross the mountains before the middle of September. We haven't a day, not even an hour, to lose."

Anna Blythe sighed a deep, quivering sigh. Felix knew that she loved the little horse, too, and, so he sometimes thought, she was herself so weary that she often longed to lie down beside the trail and perish as the tired dumb animals did. She had never made complaint before, but to-night, perhaps appalled by the thought of the mountains still to be crossed, she burst out into fierce questioning:

"Abner, why don't we turn back? What is it all for? Can gold, all the gold we could ever gather, repay us for this terrible journey? We are little more than halfway and the worst is still before us. We could go back while there is still time. Why do we go on?"

Abner, spreading his big hands upon his knees, sat staring into the fire.

"I don't know," he said at last, "I vow I don't know. It is not the excitement, nor the gold that drives us, there is no telling what it may be. Our country must go on, she must press forward to new opportunities, she must dwell in new places. It is through people like us that such growth comes about, we don't ourselves know why. A little ambition, a little hope, a great blind impulse, and we go forward. That is all."

They sat very still while the fire died out into charring embers and darkness filled the wide sky above them, showing the whole circling march of the stars like a sky at sea.

"We must be moving," Abner said at last, "we can make a few miles more before it is time to sleep."

They all arose wearily and made ready to go on. Felix went to where the black mare lay and passed his hand down her smooth neck. She whinnied and thrust her soft nose against his cheek, but would make no effort to move. He stood for a moment thinking deeply. Very clearly did he understand Abner's unreasoning desire to go forward, but, perhaps because he was only a boy, he did not feel that same wish so completely and passionately. There were other ideas in his mind, and uppermost among them was the feeling that one can not desert a well-loved friend. Just as the foremost wagon creaked into motion and rumbled forward into the dark, his resolution found its way into words.

"I think I will stay with the mare," he said. "In three days at least she will be rested enough to go on, and then I can easily overtake you. We don't want to lose her." He tried to hide the depth of his feeling with commonplace words. "It wouldn't be sensible, when we have so few horses."

Abner did not consent willingly, but he agreed at last.

"She'll travel fast when she is on her feet again," he said, "and I don't like leaving her myself."

Felix took some provisions from the cook's wagon, gathered up his blankets, slung his gun over his shoulder, and, as a last thought, reached in for his violin. It would be good company in the dark, he thought.

"Keep your gun cocked for Indians," were Abner's last instructions, "look out for rattlesnakes at the water holes, and catch us up when you can. Good luck to you."

The boy stood beside the trail and listened to the slow complaining of the wheels and the shuffling of the feet of horses and oxen in the dust as the whole train moved onward. For a little while he could hear them and could see the bulk of the wagon tops outlined against the stars, then the long roll of the prairie hid them and he was left all alone in the wide, wild, empty plain.



CHAPTER IX

THE FIDDLER OF APPLE TREE LANE (Continued)

Felix tended the little horse as best he could, bringing her grass, which she would not eat and water, which she drank gratefully. At last, unbelievably tired, he built up the fire and lay down to sleep. His heavy eyes were just closing when he saw a black shadow move silently across the basin of the little watercourse and heard the crunch of a pebble dislodged by a softly padding foot. As he sat up, a big gray wolf, as unafraid as a dog, from long following at the heels of the emigrant trains, came out into the circle of light. With its head lowered and its eyes shining in the dark, it sat down—to wait.

The fire dwindled, for there was little to burn save the dried twigs from the bushes that lined the stream, nor did Felix dare to leave the horse long enough to gather a fresh supply. More gray figures came through the dark to gather in a wide, waiting circle all about the fire. Within the limits of their brutish minds lay the knowledge that fires would die down, that strength of man and beast would fail, and that, once a straggler could not go on, patient waiting always made him their prey at last. Felix cocked his gun, took long aim at a pair of green eyes glittering in the dark, but in the end lowered the muzzle without firing. The flash of a rifle and its report carried far over the level prairie, and there were other eyes that might be watching for human stragglers, fiercer and hungrier eyes even than were the wolves'. As the foremost animal drew a little closer, he took up his violin and began to play.

He had a strange audience, the greedy white-fanged beasts that slunk away at the first strains of the unwonted sound, stole back, yet moved uneasily away again, the little fat, inquisitive prairie dogs that popped out of their burrows and sat up to listen, the circling nighthawks that wheeled and called overhead. Hour after hour he played, but whenever he paused the hungry circle drew in about him and he was forced to raise his aching arm and ply his bow again. The first hint of dawn was brightening the sky when the creatures of the night began to slip away, and Felix, laying down his violin, suddenly laughed aloud.

"I wish that Granny Fullerton, who thought that it wasn't quite safe for us to live on the Windy Hill," he said, "I wish that she could see me now!"

Then he lay down, pillowed his head upon his arm, and fell so fast asleep that, as he said afterward, "a whole tribe of Indians could have ridden over him and he would never have moved."

It was, indeed, horse's feet that aroused him, but not, by good fortune, the unshod hoofs of Indian ponies. A band of men was riding toward him from the westward, hard, grizzled men, weather-beaten and toil-worn beyond anything Felix had ever seen.

"We met your party back yonder," said their leader. "They asked us to look out for you as we went by. Glad to see the Indians haven't got you yet."

"Oh!" exclaimed Felix, sitting up and rubbing his eyes, "Have you—have you been in California?"

The man nodded. He drew out of his pocket a greasy little buckskin bag, opened the strings, and poured a stream of something yellow into the boy's hand.

"Ever see gold dust before?" he asked.

It was Felix's first sight of the odd, flattened flakes of metal that shine dully in your hand, that are no two alike, so that you can turn them over and over, always seeing different shapes and sizes, different gleams and lights upon their changing surfaces.

"There's a lot of it back there where we've been," the man said, grinning slowly as he saw Felix's excited face. "We left it there for you and those like you."

"And did you find all you wanted? Are you going home now to be rich and comfortable all your days?" the boy inquired.

The man's grin grew broader still.

"You don't know gold miners, sonny," he said. "We've been at work on the American River diggings, where your folks ahead there are going, and we found it good enough, but we've heard of something better. Over to the southward of that valley there's another one deeper, wilder, hard to get into but with the richest pay dirt you ever dreamed of. We staked out our claims and left one man to hold it, while we go back to the States for supplies and better equipment. The gold's harder to get out, but it's there all right. It makes American River look like nothing at all."

He turned in the saddle and looked up the little stream bed where the water lay in shallow pools below the overhanging bushes. The black mare had at last struggled to her feet and was now grazing on the sparse grass that bordered the river.

"It is none too safe for you to be here alone, young fellow," the man observed. "There's a band of Indians have been doing considerable mischief around this neighborhood just lately. We've been hearing of them from every party as we came along."

"I'm not afraid," returned Felix stoutly. "One boy and one horse would be hard to find in this great wide prairie. Aren't you afraid you will meet the Indians yourselves?"

"Afraid!" The other laughed aloud. "Why, we're looking for them and it will be a sorry day for them when we find them." He sobered and went on earnestly: "The woman in that party you left called out a message for you as we came by. 'Tell him,' she said to us, 'that the horse is his and that he is to go back with you to the States. Tell him, God bless him,' she said. We'll be glad enough to have you if you care to come with us," he concluded.

Felix looked at the long, empty trail before him; he looked up at the prospector's hard brown face, and then at the little heap of gold dust in his hand.

"I'll not go back—just yet," he said. "There are things I must see first."

They rode jingling away, the sun glinting on their gun barrels and pistol butts until they disappeared in the shimmering hot distance of the dusty trail. Felix, as the heat of the day increased, led the mare up the watercourse to where the bushes were tall enough to afford a little shade. He, himself, crawled under a rock beside one of the pools and lay there very quietly, waiting for the long, sleepy day to pass. It was noontime, with the world so still that he could actually hear the water of the stream filtering through the sand as it ran sluggishly from pool to pool, when a new sound caught his attention. There was a shuffling of muffled feet, a stone dislodged from the bank above, the click of metal against metal, but every noise so stealthy and quiet that he could hardly believe he heard.

He did not dare to move, but peered through the branches of the bush beside him and saw a strange cavalcade passing on the high bank above, little brown and buckskin and piebald Indian ponies, their unshod hoofs stepping lightly and quietly over the dry grass, each with a painted, red-skinned rider, armed and decorated with all of an Indian's trappings of war. The feathered war bonnets that crowned their heads and reached to their heels were of every gay color, their fierce faces were daubed with red and ocher, they carried, some of them, guns, more of them rude lances and bows and arrows. Felix was so near that he could make out the strings of beads and claws of wild animals about their necks, could see their red skins glisten, and could watch the muscles of their slim thighs move and ripple as they guided their wise little horses more by pressure of the knee than by use of the rude Indian bridles. Not one of them spoke, once a pony snorted in the dust, but that was the only sound as they moved past him and turned into the trail with their faces eastward. The whole procession might have been a vision—a mirage of the high, hot noontide and of the boy's tired brain. But after the men were gone and he had crawled out from his hiding place he could see the horses' footprints in the dust and could assure himself that they were real.

After a long time he heard shots, very faint and far away, lasting for an hour or more before the hush of the prairie fell again. The cool night came at last, and the little mare, visibly strengthened by the rest and grazing, came trotting to him, splashing happily through the water of the pool. Those gray enemies of the night before did not come near, nor, though he waited two days, watchful and alert, did any of the Indians return. He thought of that band of men he had talked with, hard, seasoned, and well armed for the struggle. From the very first he had felt little doubt as to what the issue of such a battle would be.

It seems too long to tell of how Felix mounted the mare at last and cantered away along the trail, rejoicing in swift motion again after the long wait and the crawling pace of the ox team. Nor can it be fully told how he and his friends toiled forward across the plain, over that dreaded stretch of desert that came at the far edge of it, up the tempest-swept, snow-covered mountains, until that wondrous minute when the endless bleak slopes suddenly fell away before them and they looked down into the wide green wonder of a new land. In less than a week from that day, Felix's long dream had come true; he was standing knee-deep in a rushing stream with a miner's pan in his excited hands, he saw the gravel wash away, the muddy earth dissolve, the black sand settle to the bottom to be dried and blown away, leaving—it did not even then seem believable—the sparkling grains of yellow gold.

They did well, he and Abner Blythe. Though their backs ached at the end of the day and they came home to sleep, worn out, wet, and dirty, their buckskin bags filled slowly with gold dust as the autumn passed. Yet Felix could not put from his mind the talk of the man he had met on the prairie, the tale of higher mountains, deeper valleys, and richer diggings over to the southward. When the rains came and there was little work to do, he thought of those words more and more, and when the open weather came once more he gathered supplies, said good-by one day to Abner and Anna, and set forth to seek a further, greater fortune for them all.

It was a toilsome journey over the mountains, for very few had as yet passed that way. The deep, shadowy canyons, the rushing streams, the smooth faces of granite walls seemed impassable barriers, but Felix at last passed them all and came into the wild, rugged valley of Bear Creek. He staked his claim, put up his little tent, and went down to the river to wash his first pan of gold. Yes, the prospector had been right; here in this bleak, far region the toil was much heavier, but the reward was unbelievably great.

There were not yet many miners who had come so far, but the one whose claim was next to Felix's and whose rough shanty stood almost side by side with his tent had been there among the first. He was a friend of those men from whom the boy had first heard of the place, and he willingly showed the newcomer the best slope for his claim and the easiest way to wash the gold.

"There's room for all, so far," he said. "The others below there on American River haven't had time to get discontented yet, but there will be a rush up here soon. When the place begins to be crowded there will be jumping of claims, and robbery and fights, with knives out and blood shed, just as you have seen it down there. But we will be peaceable and friendly here as long as we can."

The old miner seemed to take a great fancy to Felix and helped him with advice and kindness in unnumbered ways. He had built himself a little hut of pine logs roofed with bark as a better protection than a tent against the mountain storms. Felix sat there with him one night before the rude stone hearth, while the rain fell in deluges outside and the wind went calling and blustering down the valley. The miner piled the fuel high upon the fire and, as the hours passed, told story after story of wild adventure, of desperate escape, of bold crime, and of the quick, merciless justice of the frontier. At last his fund of narrative seemed to come to an end and he was silent for a little.

"Yes, these are rich diggings," he said finally, going back to the subject of which they had first been talking, "but—there is more gold even than this somewhere beyond. A man I knew once, a prospector, told me a strange story. He was captured by the Indians and carried off to the south, over beyond the mountains to the edge of the desert. He escaped from them, but he got lost, trying to go back, and wandered for days, nearly dying with thirst, torn and cut by the cactus thorns, blind and nearly crazed by the terrible heat. He came to the foot of a hill that he was too weak to climb and he lay down there to die. But a rain fell and he lay soaking in it all night, drinking what gathered in a rock pool beside him, with rattlesnakes and lizards, he said, crawling up to drink with him and he never cared. In the morning his head was clear and he looked up the hill to see the outcropping of such a gold mine as you never dreamed of. Lying there on the open slope was the gold-bearing quartz in plain sight, to be picked up with your bare hands. He took some with him, but not much, for gold is heavy when you are staggering weak, and he went on and on, lost again and nearly dead, but at last he came to a settlement. He lay in a Mexican's house, raving with fever for weeks, but in the end he got well. But when he tried to go back to his mine he could never find the way."

Felix was listening eagerly, but he did not interrupt or even ask a question when the man paused. The deep voice rasped huskily, for evidently the miner was telling his tale with an intent purpose.

"I have always meant, some day, to go and look for that mine myself, when I found a comrade I could trust, one who would not be afraid of the hardship and the danger. The way there is a terrible journey, but I believe I know almost to a certainty where the place must be. Will you come, boy—will you come?"

Felix got up and went to the tiny square window to look out. His voice was thick with excitement, but he did not answer directly.

"The storm has passed," he said, "and I must go back to my tent. I—I will think about what you say and tell you in the morning."

He went out into the dark, wet night, closing the door with a hand that shook and fumbled against the wooden latch.

The old miner must have slept little, for it was scarcely dawn before he had crossed the muddy slope to Felix's tent. Early as he was, the boy was before him, gathering up his possessions and thrusting them into his pack.

"You're going?" cried the man joyfully, but Felix shook his head.

"I'm going back," he said and beyond that he would tell him nothing.

He could not explain how, in the watches of the night, there had come to him the realization that the fever for finding gold is more consuming than the fever for getting it, that there is always the thirst to go on, to leave what one has and seek some new, dazzling discovery that seems just out of reach. To follow adventure is one thing; but, as the years pass, to surrender a whole life to a single and selfish desire is quite another. Some indwelling wisdom had told Felix that it was time to turn back, but he had no words by which to make the other understand. The old miner had given up to the dream long ago; he would always be seeking something richer and better, always leaving it for some golden vision that would lure him forward until at last he would disappear in the mountains or the desert and never return.

"I am going to turn over my claim here to Abner Blythe," declared Felix. "It will make him rich and his wife happy, and you had better stay to work it with him, for I am going home."

"I can't stay." The miner seemed to understand also, but he was as brief and inarticulate as was the boy. "I'm one of those that has to go on—and on."

He turned away and walked back to his cabin through the rain-drenched flowers and the dripping green bushes. Who may know what pictures either of dark regret or of golden hope were passing before his eyes as vividly as were Felix's memories of the low cottage on the hill, of the apple trees that would be in bloom now all up and down Medford Valley, of the wind talking in the oak tree outside his window. A quarrel with one's only brother looks suddenly very small when so many thousand miles are stretched out between.

* * * * *

Ralph had often said that the hollyhocks were growing too many and should be uprooted, but Barbara's begging for their lives somehow always saved them in the end. They had spread out from the door and advanced down the hill in marching regiments, a glowing mass of color. The singing, yellow-banded bees were busy all day in the cups of scarlet fading to pink and white, and white shading into yellow. The afternoon sun was behind them, lighting them to unwonted glory, when Felix came plodding along the lane on each side of which the apple trees were beginning to grow tall. Barbara was in the garden cutting sweet peas into her apron and Ralph, beside her, was standing in silence, watching the bees. A dozen times the girl had read that same thought in his mind, that he would give ten years of life to unsay the words that had driven his brother away and that had taught himself such a bitter lesson. Then suddenly Barbara uttered such a cry of joy that even the bees hummed and hovered lower, and slow old Chloe came hurrying to the door. The old woman smiled, with tears running down her wrinkled face, as she saw who it was that came trudging up the hill.

"There's good luck come back to this house at last," she said aloud an hour later when Felix, as the twilight was falling, sat down upon the doorstep and began to play his violin.

He never grew tired of telling the tale of his adventurous journey, nor did his sister and brother ever grow tired of listening. Ralph Brighton had lost, in that one dreadful hour, his love for dollar signs, and he nodded in wise agreement over Felix's decision to give up the quest for gold. Barbara would hearken in awed fascination to that story of the man lost in the desert, whose eyes looked once upon fabulous wealth but who could never find it again.

Wherever gold mines are, there is to be found such a legend, a tale of greater riches just beyond men's knowledge. No matter how dazzling is the wealth at hand there is always that tantalizing story of the lost mine, sometimes reputed to be far and inaccessible, sometimes only just over the next hill, yet always as difficult to discover as the end of the rainbow. But, as Abner Blythe said, it is so a country grows, and when men cease from following rainbows, then will the world stand still.



CHAPTER X

A MAN OF STRAW

The shower had lifted and was moving away down the valley, a gray mist of rain with a slowly following flood of sunshine. Oliver got up and said without enthusiasm:

"We must go now, we have an errand we must do. Come along, Janet."

She rose to go with him but looked back wistfully several times as she went, with lagging feet, down the hill. She had wished that the story might last forever, so that she need not face Anthony Crawford at the end of it.

They said nothing to each other as they climbed into the car and threaded the twisting lanes and byroads that would take them to the house they sought. Oliver was rehearsing within himself what he should say when they presented the picture. "My sister carried this away by mistake, we thought that we should return it to you as soon as possible.

"And then he will say something sharp and unkind, and I won't know what to answer," he reflected drearily. "I will want to say that I am sure it isn't his anyway and that Janet did well to take it, even by accident. But what is the use of stirring up more trouble? Well, I can only explain and then get away as quickly as we can."

It is probable that Janet, who sat by him in low-spirited silence, was really suffering less than he. Oliver had undertaken the responsibility of returning the picture, and Oliver was a dependable boy who could manage it far better than she could. She thought little of what was to be said or done and was only anxious to have the affair over.

They left the car in the lane and walked together toward the sagging gate. A man was just coming through it, who proved, as they came near, to be John Massey. His good-natured, friendly face was pale under its sunburn and drawn into unfamiliar lines of anger and despair.

"Mr. Peyton sent me the money to settle up my rent," he told them, "and I came up here to pay it and arrange about leaving. Crawford wants me to stay until the first of the month, but I am going to-day. He has never stocked the farm with the tools and machinery a landlord is supposed to furnish, so I've bought them myself, what I could, and now he says they are his. He wants to know how I can prove that I paid for them, when every one knows that it was his place to do it. He laughed at me when I said it would ruin me entirely. He said one man's gain was always from another man's loss. I vow there is the spirit of a devil in him."

He looked back at the house among the trees, clenching his big hands and muttering to himself in helpless fury.

"He just stood there grinning, even guessing my thoughts, for he said, 'You could knock me down, I know, but it would be no satisfaction to you, for I would get back at you through the law. It would cost you more than it is worth, John Massey.' It was what I knew was true myself, so I kept my hands off him and came away."

Janet and Oliver stood looking at him miserably, knowing that there was nothing to be done.

"Get into the car and wait for us," Oliver directed at last. "We will take you home when we have finished here. We won't stay long."

"You won't want to," observed John Massey bitterly. "He is in a famous bad temper."

They went through the gate with Janet's steps lagging more than ever. There was something almost uncanny about a man who could cause such misery to other people and yet go unscathed himself. They saw him almost immediately as they came up the path. He had been cutting down some weeds in the neglected field and was standing in the middle of it, close beside the scarecrow. He did not move, but waited for them to come close, evidently meditating what he could say that would hurt and anger them the most. He began to speak the moment they came near, giving Oliver no opening for what he had meant to say:

"So Jasper Peyton, having sent one of you to steal my picture, has lost courage and sent two of you to bring it back again. Very clever, very clever of him indeed!"

"He knew nothing about it," Janet was beginning passionately, when Oliver silenced her by a touch on her shoulder.

"He knows that," he reminded her calmly; "he is only trying to make you angry."

He caught a look of smoldering fury in Anthony Crawford's eye and a note of surprised irritation in his voice.

"Well," the man snapped, "am I to have my property or not?"

"You are to have it. We will not keep anything that you even claim as yours," returned Oliver.

He felt hot rage surging up within him, yet he strove to keep it down. He had realized, of a sudden, that this man who could hurt his Cousin Jasper so deeply, who could ruin John Massey, could harm neither him nor Janet in the least. Oliver had felt real dread as he came through the gate, he had been haunted by the vague terror of what Anthony Crawford might be able to do, but he looked upon him now with disillusioned eyes, knowing him for nothing but a small-minded, selfish, spiteful man whose power over them was nothing at all.

"If I can only keep as calm as he can, he will never get the better of me," the boy thought desperately as he struggled with his own rising tide of anger.

"Perhaps you would be glad to have me establish my real rights," said Crawford. "You would like to have it brought up in court, perhaps, how your sister was found going through my possessions, and how she happened, quite by chance, of course, to select the most portable and valuable article in my house and carry it away with her. She would like, I am sure, to have public opportunity to make all that quite plain."

Oliver heard Janet's gasp of panic-stricken horror, but he still, by a great effort, retained his own presence of mind.

"We are not afraid of you," he asserted, looking straight into the other's narrow, shifting eyes. "I am nearly as big as you and I could roll you over and over in the mud of this wet field, only that would give you the legal hold on me that is just what you wish. You can't do us any real harm, no matter what you pretend. I don't believe you have anything behind those threats you make to Cousin Jasper, I don't think you believe in your claims yourself. You're a bluff; like this scarecrow here, you're nothing but a bogy man, stuffed with straw!"

He caught the scarecrow by the shoulder, venting his rage upon the helpless bundle of rags, shaking it even out of its ridiculous resemblance to its master, until it fell to bits about his feet. He flung down the miniature upon the heap of rags and, followed by Janet, walked away across the field. Anthony Crawford stood looking after him, never offering a word. When Oliver reached the path he became aware that John Massey was leaning over the gate, grinning in half-terrified delight. The rain was beginning to fall steadily again as they came out into the lane and climbed into the car.

It rained all of the afternoon, but ceased at nightfall, just in time, so Janet said, "to keep Mrs. Brown from nervous prostration." Oliver could not quite understand how plump, comfortable Mrs. Brown could be threatened with such a malady, for he had forgotten that next day there was to be a much heralded outing for all the members of Cousin Jasper's household. The occasion was a celebration at the next village, a glorified edition of the ordinary country fair in which farmers, summer visitors, and the residents of the bigger estates were all accustomed to take part. A magnificent affair it was to be with exhibitions, merry-go-rounds, peanut and lemonade stands, motor races, a horse show—something to please the taste of every variety of person. It was Cousin Jasper's custom to give the whole staff of servants a holiday for the festival, although the cook usually waited to serve an early lunch and Mrs. Brown came home before the others, to set out a late supper. No influence on earth could ever persuade Cousin Jasper to attend one of these merrymakings, but every other person under his roof was absorbed in looking forward to the great day of the summer. Elaborate preparations had been made and all that was now in question was the weather, for to make such an event a success it seemed absolutely necessary to have one of those clear, blazing-hot days that seem specially to belong to circuses, fairs, and midsummer festivals.

Janet was to go under the safe, but excited, wing of Mrs. Brown, and Oliver, also, was looking forward to the day with some anticipation.

"I wonder if the Beeman and Polly will be there," he thought, and went off into further speculation as to what the Beeman would look like in the more civilized clothes that such an occasion would demand. "I might not even know him," he reflected.

When the day came, however, cloudless, hot, just what such a day should be, Oliver suddenly announced that he was not going.

"I don't like to leave Cousin Jasper all alone when he is so worried," he said to Janet, but could not explain why there should be any cause for misgiving. "I didn't care a great deal about going anyway." He refused to listen to her suggestion that she should stay also.

Lines of motors were rolling down the road from early morning onward, filled with flannel-coated or befrilled holiday makers or laden with farmers and farmers' wives and farmers' children. Janet and Mrs. Brown, the one an excited flutter of white organdie skirts, the other a ponderous rustle of tight brown taffeta, departed at ten o'clock and by one the great house was empty of all save Oliver and Cousin Jasper.

The afternoon seemed very still and very long, as one hour followed another. Oliver strolled out to the gate and stood looking down the road, but the procession of motors had long since come to an end, so that the highway stretched, white and empty, to the far end of the valley. Yet as he stood, idly staring out in the hot quiet, he thought that he saw a small, dilapidated vehicle come round a distant turn and advance slowly toward him. When it was near enough for him to recognize the old white horse, the driver pulled up suddenly, turned the cart sharply about in the road, and rattled away in the direction from which he had come. Could it be that he had seen the boy there in the open gate, and therefore had decided not to come in? Oliver could scarcely believe that this was the reason.

An hour later, when he had gone back to the house, he saw a ragged, barefoot youth in faded overalls come shuffling up the drive. He delivered to Oliver a letter addressed to Cousin Jasper and said it was "from Mr. Crawford and he was to be sure to get an answer."

Oliver carried it away to the study and stood waiting, looking out through the window, while Cousin Jasper should read it and write a reply. The brightness of the holiday weather seemed to be growing dim somehow; the sun was still shining but with a touch of greenish, unreal light.

"I hope there isn't going to be a storm," he thought. His reflections were interrupted by a sound in the room behind him; Cousin Jasper was tearing the letter sharply to pieces.

"Anthony has sent what he calls an ultimatum," he said, trying to smile and not succeeding. "Tell the boy there is no answer."

The messenger, on being so informed, seemed reluctant to believe it.

"He said I must have one, not to come back without it," he kept insisting.

How Anthony Crawford had found any one to carry his letter on this day when Medford Valley seemed quite emptied of inhabitants seemed rather a mystery, yet he had not only found one but had impressed him forcibly with the necessity of fulfilling his errand. It was only after he had received a coin from Oliver's pocket and a large apple from the fruit dish in the dining room, that the shabby youth finally decided to go away.

"He said I wasn't to come back without an answer, so if I haven't one I needn't go back at all." He seemed to find this solution of the difficulty an excellent one and went striding away, whistling cheerfully.

Whatever final threat Anthony Crawford's letter had contained, it seemed to be unusually disturbing to Cousin Jasper. Having evidently made up his mind to ignore it, he seemed, just as plainly, to be able to think of nothing else. He seemed unwilling to be alone, and yet to be very bad company, for he was restless, silent, and, when Oliver, with an effort, tried to talk of cheerful things, was completely inattentive. They went into the garden at last to see how the flowers were faring. The sunshine was more unreal than ever, and sudden, fitful gusts of wind were beginning to stir the trees. They had inspected the flowers and were halfway across the lawn on their way to the house when the sun vanished, the wind rose to a roar, and, before they could reach the steps, the blinding rain was upon them.

It was not an ordinary thunderstorm, but one of those sinister tempests that occasionally break the tension of a hot summer day. Oliver, inside the hastily closed windows, could see the trees lashing helplessly, and could hear them groaning and snapping as one great branch after another came crashing to the ground. It was only a few minutes that the furious wind lasted, as it swept across the garden, but it left destruction in its wake. The beds of lilies were drenched and flattened, the smooth lawn was strewn with twigs and broken boughs, half a dozen trees were split, and one huge Lombardy poplar, with a mass of earth and roots turned upward, lay prone across the driveway.

It was half past six by Oliver's watch, then seven, then eight. No one had come home. Cousin Jasper was growing more and more restless and overwrought, Oliver was anxious—and hungry. He saw his cousin gather up the fragments of the letter, piece them together for rereading, then fling them from him once more. The boy wandered about aimlessly in the solitude of the big house, wishing that this long miserable day would reach an end and that Janet and Mrs. Brown would come home. It grew dark and no one returned, although, after a long time, the telephone began to ring.

It was Mrs. Brown's voice, nervous and only half audible, that sounded at the far end. Yes, she and Miss Janet were quite safe, they had been under shelter during the storm, but there had been such damage by the wind that both the railway and the road were blocked. They would not be able to get home for some hours, she feared.

"Could you, Mr. Oliver, just slip down to the kitchen and make poor Mr. Peyton a cup of tea and some toast? It is so bad for him to wait so late for his dinner. You will find the tea in the right-hand cupboard and the butter——"

The unsatisfactory connection cut her off, leaving Oliver standing aghast at her suggestion. "Just slip down to the kitchen," indeed, when he did not even know the way to that region of the house. And make tea! It seemed an utterly impossible task.

Through the long vista of rooms he could see Cousin Jasper in his study, sitting before his desk, and, fancying himself unseen, suddenly bowing his head in his hands.

"It won't do," thought Oliver determinedly, "he must have some one to help him, some one that knows more about this wretched business. There is that Cousin Tom he talks about, Eleanor's father. I can't think of any one else. I will send for him."

If he could only have found the Beeman! He even searched the telephone book for the name of Marshall, but found none. And he had never discovered where the Beeman and Polly lived. Yes, the only choice was Cousin Tom.

He got the connection with some difficulty and asked for Mr. Brighton.

"Mr. Brighton is at dinner," returned the smooth voice of a well-trained servant; "he cannot be interrupted."

"But this is very important," insisted Oliver. "I am quite sure that if he knew——"

"My orders are that he is not to be disturbed," was the politely firm answer while the boy raged and fumed impotently.

"Then tell him," Oliver directed, "that his cousin, Mr. Jasper Peyton, is in very great trouble and needs to see him as—as soon as he finds it quite convenient."

His voice was trembling with anger and he slammed down the receiver without waiting for a reply.

"There was no use sending for him, after all," he reflected in black discouragement. He was not used to such treatment nor did he think that a man should surround himself with so much ceremony that he could not hear a plea for help. "He is just what Cousin Eleanor's father would be," was his disgusted verdict. "I was a fool to hope for any help there. If it had been the Beeman——"

Never had the house seemed so enormous or so silent as it was to-night. He went out through a swinging door, attempting to find the kitchen, fumbling down a passage, feeling in likely places for electric buttons, and not discovering them. He bumped his head against unexpected doors and cupboards, he upset something with a horrifying crash in the butler's pantry. At last he found the right door and the proper light switch, and stood in the big, shining white kitchen, looking about him helplessly at all the complicated apparatus of cookery, clean, polished, and complete, and utterly useless to him.

"This is no place for a boy," he exclaimed stormily after he had pinched his fingers in a drawer, spilled the water, and produced a roaring, spitting flame in the gas burner that blew up in his face and then went out. After fifteen minutes of miserable effort he at last heard the water boil noisily in the kettle where he had placed water and tea together. He poured out a cupful of the poisonous brew and stood regarding it in despair.

"I wish Mrs. Brown would come home," he groaned. "I'd be glad of any woman, any girl, even Cousin Eleanor."

He had opened a window, for the place was hot and close and through this he could hear, of a sudden, the sound of an automobile coming up the drive. He dashed through the dark passage, hurried to the great front door, and flung it open. There was a crunching of big wheels on the gravel and the snorting of an engine checked suddenly to a stop. It was not Mrs. Brown and Janet, for, though he heard voices, they were not theirs. The car had stopped beyond the fallen tree and some one was coming across the grass—two people, for the voices were a man's and a girl's. Apparently Cousin Tom had not stopped to finish his dinner, after all, and he had brought Cousin Eleanor.

"Yes, I'll be glad to see even her," he thought desperately.

The two came nearer, a man in white flannels, but bareheaded in the hurry of his coming, and a girl in white also. There was something familiar in the swing of those broad shoulders, in the tone of that voice. Yet Oliver stood, blinking stupidly, holding to the side of the door, too dazed to speak when the two stepped out of the dark and came up the steps—the Beeman and Polly.



CHAPTER XI

THREE COUSINS

"Good gracious, Oliver, do you mean to say you really did not know? We used to talk it over, Polly and I, and wonder whether you were not beginning to see through us. Janet had some suspicions, and when she met us at the fair this afternoon, she understood who we were at last. Now I will present you to Miss Eleanor Marshall Brighton, known to her own family as Polly. I would not have broken this thing to you so suddenly, if I had taken time to think."

Oliver listened to Cousin Tom's half-apologetic explanations, yet he scarcely heard them, but still stood leaning against the doorpost, gaping with astonishment. Of course he had always known that there was something unusual about the Beeman, but as to who he really was he had never had an inkling. And this was Cousin Eleanor, the girl he had pictured so definitely that it seemed she could not be other than the prim, detested person he had so dreaded meeting. It was the very vividness of his idea of her that had stood in the way of his guessing the truth. But if the Beeman were really Cousin Tom, then he could, of course, put everything right and—more immediate cause for rejoicing—Polly could cook!

"Oh, come down to the kitchen and get Cousin Jasper something to eat," he begged. "He is almost starved. It is half past eight and he had lunch at twelve."

He gave Tom Brighton a rapid account of what had happened that day—of the letter, of Cousin Jasper's increasing agitation, of his final desperate call for help on his own responsibility.

"Poor Oliver, what a day you have had, while the rest of us were enjoying ourselves at the fair!" said Cousin Tom. "Polly and I happened to come home early before the storm, so that your message found us and we came at once."

"And he is starved himself," put in Polly. "He has not had anything to eat any more than Cousin Jasper."

It was wonderful to watch Polly making short shrift of the remains of his own awkward preparations, to see her skillful manipulation of the gas burners and her marvelous dexterity with the egg beater. And this slim, eager, shy Polly, with her crinkled brown hair and her freckled nose, this was really Eleanor Brighton. Oliver sat down limply upon one of the kitchen chairs to contemplate the wonder of it anew.

"I did not know who you were, myself, that first day," she said, "though Daddy guessed at once and even suspected that you were planning to go away. Janet told us all about it this afternoon, how Cousin Jasper made such a mistake and thought that he could force you to meet a girl that you were sure you wouldn't like. I would have done just the same myself if my father had tried to make me meet you, only he is too wise for such a thing."

But Oliver could only shake his head and marvel that he had not guessed.

Later, after Cousin Jasper and Oliver had feasted on the supper of Polly's providing, they all gathered about the table in the library and Cousin Tom unlocked the battered old strong box that he had brought in from the car.

"As I am the family lawyer," he explained to Oliver—"yes, bees are only a hobby, and my real business is the law—I have in my possession most of the records belonging to this affair. I have gone into the whole matter of Anthony's claims from the very beginning and I am prepared to fight him for every inch that he demands."

He began taking papers from the box, fat rolls of legal documents, letters with their edges worn into tatters and addressed in the crabbed writing of a century ago, title deeds discolored and yellow with age, most of them fastened with great red seals, a mass of musty records that looked dry and dull indeed.

While he was spreading them out upon the table, the door opened quietly and Janet slipped in. She assured them that she had dined and had not got wet, that, except for Mrs. Brown's terrible fever of anxiety lest Cousin Jasper should not be properly cared for, all had gone well. Might she listen, please, and was there going to be another story?

"Not of just the same kind that I have been telling you up yonder on the Windy Hill," replied Tom Brighton, "although here you see the source of all those tales and of a hundred others like them. They are all buried here in these dusty papers, the history of your forbears and of the lands in Medford Valley. It goes all the way back, does the record, to the time when our several times great-grandfather bought the first tract from the Indian, Nashola. I am always glad to think that the red man had enough intelligence and the white man enough honor to make something like a real bargain, that this valley was purchased for what the wild lands were worth instead of being paid for with a gun, a drink of bad spirits, and a handful of beads. See, here is Nashola's name; he learned to write after a fashion, although the Indian witnesses signed only with a mark. And here is the signature of that first one of our kin to settle in the New World, Matthew Hallowell."

"Hallowell?" echoed Oliver. "Did he belong to those same Hallowells in the story, who quarreled over the Huntress?"

"Yes," was the answer, "he was the beginning of a vigorous line, living in and near Medford Valley until there came at last the Hallowell who moved to the seaport town, who built his first ship there and launched into foreign trade. They became great merchants, the Hallowells, in that time between the Revolution and the War of 1812 when Yankee ships and Yankee owners were lords of the high seas. But fortune failed after the death of Reuben Hallowell; his son Alan loved sailing rather than trading and his daughter Cicely married a junior partner in a lesser firm, Howard Brighton, who thought it better for his sons and daughter to go to live on the lands in Medford Valley that had belonged to their mother and had been given by her to him. Cicely's children were Ralph and Felix and Barbara Brighton, of all of whom you have heard."

"How have they heard, Tom?" asked Cousin Jasper, and the Beeman smiled.

"I have been filling up their minds with family history, for I knew that they must understand about this whole affair some day and it would take too long to tell them all the facts at once. So we have come now to the latest portion of the story," he went on, turning again to the younger members of his audience, "to a period when three cousins, Jasper Peyton, Anthony Crawford, and Tom Brighton used to spend much time together when they were growing up.

"Jasper and I are first cousins, since my father was Ralph Brighton and his mother was that younger sister, Barbara. I have had no reluctance in telling you of that bitter mistake my father made and the quarrel with his brother, for he spoke of it often himself and said that, in all his life, he never learned a more valuable lesson. Felix did not marry, since his zeal for the orchard and the bees and later for farming on a larger and larger scale seemed to occupy his every thought. It was he who reclaimed the marshy, waste ground in the valley, 'for,' he said, 'it is wrong that we on the seaboard leave our home acres and move farther and farther westward, looking for new land that is easy to till. It is a wasteful policy, even for a new country.' That was one of the things he had learned on his long journey across the West and back again."

"But I do not understand about Anthony Crawford," put in Oliver. "I haven't seen yet where he comes in at all."

"He calls us cousin, but it is a distant kinship, since he is grandson of that Martin Hallowell who broke with his partner Reuben over the matter of the Huntress. He used to come often to stay in Medford Valley, for he had been left without parents and Felix Brighton was his guardian. My Aunt Barbara, Jasper's mother, had lost her husband early, and she went to live with her brother Felix in the yellow stone farmhouse that had come to him from some earlier Hallowell who had built it a hundred years ago. How we loved the place and how happy we all were there, for I spent almost as much time under that wide, friendly roof as did Anthony. How patient and good Jasper's mother was to three mischievous, active boys, and how unceasingly, wisely kind was Felix Brighton! He has done much for us, Jasper and me, and he would, if he could, have made a man of Anthony.

"He was not like the other two of us, we could see that even when we were children. He was quicker and more clever than we, and he was better, or at least wiser, at holding his tongue and keeping his temper when the occasion served. But the key to his whole character was that he could never see any possession in the hands of another without instinctively wishing to have it for himself. I have seen him move heaven and earth to get something that he did not really want, merely because it seemed of value when it belonged to some one else. There was no one more clever than he at acquiring what he desired.

"Felix Brighton prospered greatly, but he never moved out of the comfortable farmhouse of which we were all so fond. It became very beautiful under his hands, extended and improved and filled with the rarest treasures of his gathering. He was especially fond of pictures, so that there was a wealth of portraits and landscapes that he had collected or inherited, that glowed like jewels on the mellow old walls. He did us unnumbered kindnesses when we were boys, and when, on growing up, we decided that we would all three be lawyers, he set us up as partners, Peyton, Crawford & Brighton. We felt very important with our law books, our profound knowledge, our newly painted sign and very little else. Even while we were studying, it was plain that Anthony, in his erratic, changeable way, was the cleverest of us all.

"And then history repeated itself, as it so often does. The grandson of Martin Hallowell and the two great-grandsons of Reuben fell out with each other over just such a questionable enterprise as had wrecked a partnership a hundred years ago. I can see him now as he came hurrying into our office that day full of the plan for his great scheme—just a quibble of the law and the thing was done. We were all to be made rich and successful by it, he explained. There is no use in describing to you the intricacies of his idea; it was one of those shoal waters in which the honesty of young lawyers can sometimes come to grief. The pursuit of law will winnow out the true from the false; it makes an upright man a hundred times more certain and more proud of his honor: it searches out the small, weak places of a meaner man's soul.

"Anthony tried to make this project sound quite simple and straightforward, but I can remember how narrowly he watched us and how, when he attempted to laugh at our objections, his voice cracked into shrill falsetto, under pressure of his excitement. I would have argued with him, explained, tried to dissuade him, but Jasper scorned my temporizing and would have had none of it. His sense of justice blazed high within him and his words leaped forth, a very avalanche of scorn and wrath. Anthony heard him through without replying, then turned on his heel and went out. Our partnership was at an end. Later we heard that he had become involved with his scheme even before he spoke to us, that he had made himself liable for a sum of money, and that, to pay it—don't wince, Jasper, these children must know the truth—to pay it he forged Felix Brighton's name.

"There is something very terrible in the sudden destruction of your confidence in some one you have loved and trusted. Anthony is greatly changed now, although there is still a little of his old charm left. Yet you would not think of him as some one who had been an intimate part of our lives, a comrade whose cleverness we admired and whose honesty we had never doubted. And then he was suddenly blotted out of our existence. The wrong he had done was hushed up, he disappeared somewhere in the West, and it seemed that we were never to hear of him again. The years went by, Jasper's mother and then our Uncle Felix went from us. He had given me the lands on the west side of the river, since I was already owner of the cottage, the Windy Hill, and the bees that he had taught me to tend and love. To Jasper he had given the yellow stone house that had been like home for us all and his intimate possessions, the treasures it contained. He had given him also the drained farm lands by the river, a legacy that was an occupation in itself. He had seen that Jasper's bent was not really for the law, but that his best calling was the care of such an estate as this. More years passed, I became more and more absorbed in my own work down in the seaport town that has become a city, spending my holidays and my vacations in caring for the bees, not seeing Jasper so often, for he was over-busy also. And then Anthony came home.

"Whatever he had been doing in all this time we have no way of knowing. He had altered greatly, so that there seemed nothing left of his old self except his cleverness, some lingering affection for the place where he had been happy as a boy, and that old habit of coveting what other people had. He came back with a claim to make, one that went back as far as the day when Reuben and Martin Hallowell quarreled and made a hasty division of what had belonged to them in common. There had always been a slight doubt as to the title of the land upon which the yellow stone farmhouse stood, and to the upper end of the farms by the river. Anthony knew of it from the days when we studied law together and he came back determined to make that property his. I will not deny that he had some slight basis for his claim. He would accept no compromise or offer of purchase, so in the end Jasper gave in to him."

Cousin Jasper had not spoken throughout Tom Brighton's recounting of the whole affair. But now he took up the tale himself, going over the ground that, very evidently, he had pondered and argued and weighed within himself a hundred times.

"I had much and he had nothing, he was in real want and had a wife and two children besides. There was, as Tom says, some real basis for his claim since the title had never been made quite clear. And there is, further, no more bitter thing than a family quarrel, a division over the settlement of property, this one asking for what is more than his, that one fighting to hold what is not his own—no, it was unthinkable. So we settled the matter peaceably enough. I built a new house above him on the hill and he settled down in the place that had been home to all of us. He seemed to have repented of the wrong he had done and we were ready to forget it. I do not think that I ever doubted the honesty of his purpose, at first. Then it came to my wishing for some of the old possessions for my new house and he vowed that every one of them was his."

"I know," said Janet, nodding quickly. "He wouldn't give up the pictures, though he did not care for them himself. They were stored in the dust and dirt under the eaves and he asked me if you had sent me to see where he kept them. He only wanted them because they were yours."

"I suppose he meant to sell them some day," Cousin Jasper answered, "for there were several that were of almost as much value as the house itself. But less than ever was I willing to bicker and haggle over what I had really loved, and since he would not sell them to me I gave the matter up. Even then, there was a little justice on his side, for the pictures had been purchased with money from the lands that he called his. But it was my great mistake, since he did not understand at all why I yielded to him, and from that time he made certain that he had but to force me and I would relinquish everything."

Oliver muttered something angrily and went to stand by the window. He wanted a minute to think it out, to understand clearly before the tale went on. He could see just how Anthony had read Cousin Jasper's character, sensitive, high-strung, with strong affections that not even great wrongs could quite break down. But how mistaken the man had been who thought Jasper Peyton was a weak-willed person to be led anywhere!

"His success in getting made him greedy for more," went on Cousin Jasper, "and he began to push his claims further and further until I verily believe he began to think that everything I had should be his own. When I refused to yield one more inch, then the difficulties began indeed. He let the old house fall into unbelievable disrepair and he took the stand that since I was defrauding him, he was too poor to do otherwise. I built the high wall across the garden so that I need not see the home I had loved dropping to pieces before my eyes. At that his anger seemed to pass beyond control. He claims this, and he claims that, but I know that his final aim is the whole of what I have. He sent me a letter to-day, I do not understand why he did not come himself. He says that he is about to take public action, that he will bring into court the story of how Felix Brighton became his guardian and used that position as a blind to live in possession of Anthony's inheritance. Oh, I cannot repeat it all, his threats against our good name and against the memory of those who are gone."

Cousin Jasper's voice dropped wearily into silence. Oliver dug his hands deep into his pockets and stood staring and scowling out through the window although all that he saw was the blackness outside and the dim reflection of his own face upon the pane.

"Our Uncle Felix never had the least notion that Anthony had a claim upon the place," Tom Brighton was saying behind him. "It was a legal technicality that Anthony was clever enough to find and make the most of. I do not at all believe in his right to it, even yet."

"He doesn't believe in it himself," Oliver made his declaration, whirling suddenly about upon them. "I told him that he was only bluffing and he could not even deny it. How I hate him," he cried huskily. "It is lucky that there are none of your bees near by, just now!"

Jasper Peyton looked at him in blank inquiry, but the Beeman smiled, yet shook his head at the same time.

"It is not only bees that are destroyed by hating," he said, "it is every good thing in life that dries up and blows away under the force of dislike and bitterness. Look at Anthony, who vows he has no affection for any one, who does not believe in friends or kindliness. He has hurt others, he has brought no happiness to himself, and, unless I am mistaken, he is going to wreck his whole scheme in one tremendous crash that we cannot now foresee. A lawyer, like myself, sees many hard, miserable, sordid things, but a Beeman has leisure to speculate as to whither they tend. And they all tend to the same thing."

They sat for some time about the table, explaining, discussing, and questioning, until finally the muffled booming of the clock in the hall proclaimed the hour of ten. Polly's eyes were beginning to look heavy, a fact that did not escape her father's watchful observation.

"These girls have had a long day and it is time for them to be in bed," he announced. "We have been over this whole matter and made things clear, and we have only to decide, since we are to fight Anthony in court, just what stand we will make. We will talk that over, Jasper, while Oliver takes your car and drives Polly home."

"I'll go with them," said Janet, jumping up also. She had been listening, bright-eyed and alert, through all of the story and showed no signs of sleepiness. Oliver tore himself away with some regret, for he did not wish to miss a word of the plans the two men were making. But Polly was evidently weary and ready to go home.

"Come along, Cousin Eleanor," he said briskly, and the three went, laughing, out through the door and down the steps.

It was very dark when Oliver brought out the big car and, skirting the fallen tree, made his way carefully down the drive. A bank of clouds to the eastward was all that was left of the storm, however, and through this the moon was breaking, with promise to rise clear, and come out into an empty sky. Oliver slowed down the car as they came to the gate and stopped for a moment to consider. The wind had dropped so completely that they could hear every sound of the summer night, even the dull, far-off roar of the flooded river.

"Do you know," he began slowly, "we never remembered to tell them that John Massey has left his place. I don't think any one but ourselves knows that he went away immediately; they will be thinking that he is still there, watching the dike. And to-night—listen how loud the river sounds!"

"Suppose we go down and look," said Polly. "It will not take us long and the road runs close to the bank."

He turned the car accordingly and they sped down the steep road, the sky growing brighter above them and the darkness fading as the moon came out. When they reached the last incline the whole of the valley lands, spread below them, were so flooded with light that the broad picture looked like an etching—white fields, black trees with blacker splashes of shade, sharp-cut, pointed shadows of houses and farm buildings, the silver expanse of the river, and the straight, white ribbon of the road. It was all very still and peaceful, with scarcely a light in any house and no single moving figure upon the highway. Medford Valley, worn out with its day of merrymaking, was wrapped in heavy sleep. Very strangely, the sight of this unsuspecting, slumbering community seemed to fill them all with sudden misgiving.

"I hope there's nothing wrong," muttered Oliver, swinging the car into its highest speed as they dashed down the road.

John Massey's house lay still and dark in the moonlight, its windows staring with the blank eyes that an uninhabited dwelling always shows the moment home life has gone out of it. They stopped the car near his gate and climbed out, all three of them, to walk at the foot of the high, grass-covered bank and search for signs of danger. It looked firm and solid enough, with its thick, green sod, its fringe of willows along the top, but with the whispering haste of the river sounding plainly against its outer wall. Standing on tiptoe, they could catch sight of the swift, sliding water, risen so high that it touched the very top of the bank. The roar of the swollen current could be heard all across the valley, but it was not so ominous, somehow, as the smaller voices of the ripples sucking and gurgling so close to their ears.

They walked along, three ghostly figures in the moonlight, until Janet, who happened to be ahead, stopped suddenly.

"I hear something strange; I don't understand what it is," she said.

Oliver stepped forward, bending his head to listen. Yes, he could hear it, too.

The sound was a soft hissing, as though a tiny snake might be hidden in the grass at their feet. But there was no grass thick enough for such shelter, only a few sparse stalks, rising in a drift of sand at the foot of the dike. The noise was made by the moving of the sand particles, as they stirred and seethed, with drops of water bubbling between them like the trickle of a spring. As they watched, the round wet space widened; it had been as big as a cup, now it was like a dinner plate.

"It's a leak in the bank." Oliver regarded it intently, thinking it quite too small to be dangerous. "I ought to be able to put my thumb in it," he added cheerfully, "but either there is something wrong with that Dutch story or there is something wrong with this hole."

"It isn't a joke," said Polly quickly. "They always begin that way. It—oh, run, run!"

For the boiling circle of sand had changed suddenly to a spout of muddy water that shot upward, spreading into a wide, brown pool that came washing over the grass to hide the spot where they had stood a moment before. From the higher ground of the road they watched it follow them, rising, pausing a little, then rising again.

"Back up the car or you will have to drive through the water," directed Polly. "Henry Brook's is the nearest house where we can find help. If that leak is to be blocked, the men will have to be quick."

They were in the car, Oliver had backed it round almost within its own length, and they were flying up the road before Polly had finished speaking. "Once, years ago, this long stretch of dike caved in and the whole current of the river came roaring down through the bottom lands. But there were no houses here then."

They came to a crossroad, turned into it, and stopped short before a gate. Oliver did not take time to open it, but tumbled over the top, raced across the grass, and thundered at the door of a dark, silent house. Oh, why did country people sleep so soundly? He knocked and knocked again and, after what seemed an interminable time, saw a light above and heard a window open.

"What do you want?" The farmer's big voice sounded none too pleased, but it changed quickly when Oliver told his news. "A break in the dike? Where? On Anthony Crawford's land, is it? Well, that's just where it would be. We don't any of us, around here, have much friendship for Crawford. Of course if the leak is very bad it will threaten us all. I'll spread the alarm while you go to get Mr. Peyton."

They were away up the road again; but, fast as they flew, the news seemed to travel faster. The rural telephone and the comfortable country habit of "listening in" on every message can spread tidings broadcast at a moment's notice. The largest farm, at the foot of the valley, had a great bell swung above its central barn, a bell whose excited voice could carry but one of two messages—flood or fire. Before they were halfway up the hill its wild clanging was calling all across the valley.

Up Cousin Jasper's avenue they came with a rush, flung themselves out of the car, and ran to the house. The two men were still bending over the papers, Cousin Jasper, with his thin, intent face, listening, Tom Brighton talking steadily, his eyes alight with that cheerful, eager kindliness that had so drawn Oliver to him from the first moment. They both turned in astonishment as the three came bursting in.

"A break in the dike at John Massey's place? And where was John Massey?" Cousin Tom questioned sharply. "Gone? If we had known that he had left, neither Jasper nor I would have been sitting here so quietly all evening, with the river in flood. And you have given the alarm? That is good."

There was a bustle of hasty preparations, but they were still standing in the hall when there came the sound of flying wheels on the drive and the uneven hoofbeats of an uncertain old horse urged to utmost speed.

"It's Anthony Crawford," said Oliver suddenly.

The man came in, the outcast cousin who had turned his hand against them all. His face was white, his gray eyes were burning with excitement, his voice was harsh and choked when he tried to speak.

"The dike—I see you know already. I went down over the hill to look and saw the moonlight on that pool of water. It was at John Massey's place. I came to get help."

Cousin Tom alone answered.

"Why was John Massey gone?" he said.

Oliver stepped forward to Tom Brighton's side and looked curiously at the man who been their enemy. He could see his hands shake as they crushed his battered old hat between them.

"We had quarreled," Anthony Crawford explained, his voice suddenly gone little and husky. "I turned him away three days ago and—and we had some words, so that he wouldn't stay even overnight after that. He watched the dike—and now the water is coming in."

One more question Cousin Tom asked.

"Why did you come to us?" he inquired steadily. "It would have been quicker to go down through the fields to the farms in the valley, to call out Henry Brook and send him with men and shovels and sandbags to stop the flood. To get here is a mile by the road and there was no time to lose." He pressed his question mercilessly. "Why did you come to us?"

Anthony Crawford moistened his dry lips, but he did not speak. There was a pause, though all of them knew that every second the waters of Medford River were sweeping higher and higher. It was finally Tom Brighton who answered his own question.

"You were afraid to go elsewhere. It was your doing, this flood; you took the land, you neglected the dikes, you sent John Massey away who would have watched against such a disaster as this. You were afraid to face those men, below, and tell them what you had done."

The other nodded.

"I haven't a friend in Medford Valley to help me—except you. Yes, I was afraid to face them; the break is in just the place where it may flood the whole bottom land. I thought they wouldn't move to help me until it was too late. And, on my life, Tom Brighton, if we can stop the flood I do not care what becomes of me."

It was quite true, as they could all see, that the man's desperate terror was not all for himself, that the situation was far too bad for that. He was picturing how the whole torrent of Medford River might soon be sweeping across those fields of ripening grain, those comfortable barns with their cows and sheep and horses, those pleasant white farmhouses where a hundred people lay asleep. He was seeing how, little by little, he had built up the wrong that was to be his ruin, he had driven away his friends, he had seized the land, he had turned off its guardian, and now, in a wild whirlwind, the results of his misdoing were upon him. He did not look at Tom Brighton's set face but at Jasper Peyton, the one he had wronged most.

"A man can't live without friends," he said. "Will you stand by me, Jasper, not for what I deserve, but for what I need?"

"Yes," answered Jasper Peyton. He smiled suddenly, with all the old, tense misery quite gone from his face. "We're going to stand by you, Anthony, all of us. We are with you still."



CHAPTER XII

MEDFORD RIVER

Cousin Tom was giving rapid directions as they went out to the waiting automobiles. "I will go on with Jasper and we will pick up some men from the farms as we pass. Anthony, you had better come with Oliver, we shall want to crowd in all the farmers we can. What is it, Polly? You want to come with me? I suspect you think you are going to keep your father out of danger and I think the same of you. There is room in front here, between us; jump in!"

The engine grumbled and roared and the first car slid away into the shadows.

"Get in," said Oliver curtly to Anthony Crawford, while Janet opened the door of the second motor and slipped to the far side to give him room. None of the three spoke as they went down the drive behind Cousin Tom. As they came through the gate they could hear, faintly, the wild clanging of the bell in the valley below.

Oliver was too much occupied with his driving to have any other thought, Janet was awed into silence by the alien presence at her side, but Anthony Crawford, in that same husky, broken voice, suddenly began to speak as though he were following his thoughts out loud.

"I don't know why I came back to Medford Valley," he said. "I had lived through every sort of thing since I went away, but I was making good at last. Martha—that's the girl I married, she was a miner's daughter—had helped me to go straight. I was working in a mine, harder work than I had ever dreamed of in my life. It was good for me, yet I kept telling myself that it was being in prison. Perhaps it was, but I had forgotten that prison was the place where I ought to be."

Oliver tilted back his head that he might hear better, but his only answer was an inarticulate sound like a mutter of agreement. To reach the valley as soon as possible and without mishap, was more important to him, at that moment, than explanations. But Janet looked up with round, wondering eyes, eager to hear the rest.

"I kept thinking how it was here at home, so green and clean and peaceful, not like that stark, bare mountain country where I seemed to be working my whole life away. I told myself that a certain portion of Medford Valley belonged to me, that I could come back and live a life of dignified idleness, if only I had my rights, if only Jasper would give me what was my own."

"But it wasn't true. You knew that he wouldn't keep what belonged to you," burst out Janet.

"I knew it wasn't true, but people love to deceive themselves, and I had to explain to Martha. She would never have come if she had known how things really stood; she was unwilling, even as it was. But I was so sure, I thought I knew Jasper so well, exactly how I could threaten him, just where I could hurt him most. Had I not learned, when I was a boy, how proud and sensitive and generous he could be? I was as successful as I had hoped to be, but I wanted more and more, and see where it has brought me in the end!"

It seemed a relief to him to confess the very whole of his wrong-doing, to leave hidden no single meanness or small-souled thought. It was as though, in the clean night air, in the face of two just and clear-seeing companions, he wished to cast aside all the wrong of the past before making a new beginning.

"I am going away," he said. "It isn't because I found that my plan didn't pay as I had hoped it would. It is because I was happier back there in the West, serving out a sentence at hard labor, learning to live by the work of my hands rather than by my dishonorable wits. I can look back over my life and see just where my honesty began to waver, just when I first compromised with my own conscience and persuaded myself that something was fair and honest when I knew it was not. We had all the same chance, Jasper and Tom and I; look at them and look at me. You may wonder why I say all this to you. Perhaps it is because you alone saw through me, dared to tell me that I had no confidence even in my own claims, called me a man of straw and a bogy. Well, after to-night I am going back, to be a real man again."

For the first time Oliver slackened the speed of the car and nearly stopped in the road.

"Do you want to go now?" he inquired shortly. "We can take you to the station if you do. They don't need us down there, as they do the others."

"No, not now. I must know what my criminal bungling has amounted to, first. When I have seen the flood go down, then it will be time to go. I want to see this thing through."

They had straightened out into the level road and were forced to drive more slowly, for the highway was no longer empty. A big tractor was lumbering ahead, farm wagons turned out for them to pass, and hastily dressed men were thronging alongside. Two of them jumped upon the running board, but, seeing who sat in the car, muttered some imprecation and dropped off again. Anthony Crawford stood up and opened the door.

"I'll walk," he announced briefly. "Load in all the men you can carry. You will need every one."

Janet climbed over to the place beside her brother, and the tonneau filled up with men, who crowded the seats, clung to the step and the fenders, and sat in a row across the back of the car. They came to the end of the road at last where, in that place that had been so empty and quiet half an hour ago, there was now gathered a surging crowd of men, of horses, tractors, automobiles, and wagons. Oliver could see, on a knoll above the others, Polly standing with two farmers' wives, the only women there.

At first he could not see the water, but, as they pressed into the crowd, he caught sight of the broad pool, dark even in the moonlight. It was over the road, now, through the fence, and had crept halfway across the stretch of grass before John Massey's door. Tom Brighton's white-clad figure was going back and forth among the men, but it was Cousin Jasper, standing high above the others on the seat of a wagon, who was directing operations and getting this confused army of workers into rapid organization.

"Tom, take half the men to shovel dirt and pile up the sand sacks, and send the other half back to the sand pits to fill them. Clear the road so that the wagons can go back and forth. Henry Brook, take out your horses and join your team with Johnson's, the tractor can pull two wagons and we need four horses to each of the others. Now, go to it and bring the sandbags as fast as they can be filled. We can't save John Massey's house, but we will build a dam to hold the water a hundred yards back, where the ground begins to rise. And remember, you can't be too quick if you want to save the valley."

Oliver took off his coat and jumped out of the car.

"Go over where Polly is," he told Janet "I am going into this game with the others."

He was in every portion of it, as the night wore by, never quite knowing how he passed from one task to another, but following orders blindly, hour after hour. He helped to dig, but was not quite so quick as the others; he carried the sacks of sand that were brought up, loaded high upon the wagons, but he had not the quick swing of the more sturdy farmers. He found himself at last on the high, vibrating seat of the heavy tractor, rumbling down the road with a line of wagons behind him, stopping at the sand pits to have them filled, then turning laboriously to haul them back again. The owner sat beside him on the first trip, directing him how to manage the unfamiliar machine, but as they made ready for a second he ejaculated, "You'll do," and jumped down to labor with the diggers. Oliver was left to drive his clumsy, powerful steed alone.

He saw the broad, semicircular wall of piled sandbags, banked with earth, rise slowly as the men worked with feverish haste, he saw the water come up to the foot of it, seem to hesitate, and then creep up the side. He saw, suddenly, just as they had all stopped to breathe, a long portion of the dike begin to tremble, then cave in with a hideous, sucking crash that shook the ground under them, he saw the flood of muddy water come roaring in and sweep against the painfully built rampart which swayed and crumbled to its fall.

In a wild turmoil of running, shouting men, backing wagons and rearing horses, he managed to extricate the clumsy monster that had been put under his care, brought it laboring and snorting out on higher ground and fell to work again. The barrier they had set up with so much toil was tumbling and collapsing in great gaps where the hungry current flung against it, but it held just long enough for them to raise another wall, longer, higher, firmer than the other and built with the frantic haste of desperate men.

The hours went by, it was long after midnight, with the sky growing pale for the morning. Once or twice Oliver had seen Anthony Crawford working among the rest, carrying sacks of sand, jostled and cursed by the men about him, but in spite of their abuse, toiling steadily onward. When the dike collapsed and the men ran for their lives, one wagon lurched off the road; its driver was flung from the seat and caught under the wheel, while the horses, having jammed the tongue against the bank, reared and plunged helplessly. Oliver saw Anthony Crawford run out, with the swift, muddy water flowing knee-deep around him, watched him extricate the man, drag him to the seat, and back the frantic horses away from the bank to bring them struggling through the water to safety. There was no time for words of commendation. Both men at once went back to their task of carrying sacks as the slow building of another wall began.

Some one had built a fire on the knoll, and here the farmers' wives, with Janet and Polly among them, were boiling coffee, frying bacon, and serving out food to the hungry, worn-out men. Oliver had munched a generous sandwich as he drove down the road. As he came back again he noticed a strange lull and observed that the men were leaning on their shovels and that the work had ceased. Tom Brighton, wet and muddy from head to foot, motioned him to come near.

"We've done all we can," the big farmer beside them was saying, "the sacks are nearly gone and the men are dead beat. If she breaks through now, the whole valley will have to go under."

The water was halfway up the side of the earth-banked wall and was still rising. Here and there a muddy trickle came oozing through, to be stopped by a clod of earth, but otherwise there was nothing to do. To Oliver it seemed that they stood for hours, staring, waiting as the water lifted slowly, rose half an inch, paused and rose again. It was three-fourths of the way up; it was a foot below the lip of the wall. The space of a foot dwindled to six inches.

"If there should be a wind, now," said the man beside him hoarsely.

Oliver looked back along the valley at the arch of sky showing blue instead of gray, at the trees moving gently in a morning breeze that touched the hilltop, but that did not stir the still air below. He heard Tom Brighton suddenly draw a sharp breath and he looked back quickly. Was that space above the water a little wider, was there a wet black line that stretched all along the rough wall where the flood had touched and fallen again? He was not dreaming; it was true. The level of the muddy tide was dropping, the crest of the flood had passed.

It was broad daylight now, with the morning sunlight moving slowly down the slope into the valley. For the first time Oliver could see clearly the sullen, yellow pool of water, the crevasse in the dike, and John Massey's little house, submerged to its very eaves. He watched the shining streak of wet earth that marked the drop in the water, he saw it broaden into a ribbon and from a ribbon turn into a wide, glistening zone of safety that proved to all the danger had gone by.

"We can go now," said Cousin Tom at last. "There is work enough still to do, but it is time for us all to rest a little. We are certainly a wet and weary-looking crew."

They had breakfast, all of the cousins together, at Cousin Jasper's house, where Mrs. Brown, having spent half the night wringing her hands in helpless anxiety, had seemed to spend the other half superintending the preparation of a feast that should be truly worthy of the occasion. The guests were all cheerful and were still so keyed up by the struggle of the night that they did not yet feel weariness. Anthony Crawford sat on one side of Cousin Jasper, Tom Brighton on the other, while the three younger members of the party watched them wonderingly from the other end of the table. Everything, for the moment, seemed forgotten except the old comradeship of their boyhood. The only reminder of the unhappy days just passed lay in the atmosphere of relief and peacefulness that seemed to pervade the whole house.

The windows stood wide open and the morning wind came in to lift the long curtains and to stir the great bowl of flowers on the table. Oliver, hungrily devouring chicken and rolls and bacon and sausages and hot waffles with maple sirup, was saying little but was listening earnestly to the jokes and laughter of Cousin Jasper. After a day and night of anxiety, depression, struggle, and victory, he seemed suddenly to have become a new man. They were talking, the three elders, of their early adventures together, but Oliver noticed that the reminiscences never traveled beyond a certain year, that their stories would go forward to the time when they were nearly grown, and then would slip back to their younger days again. Some black memory was laid across the happy recollection of their friendship, cutting off all that came after; yet they talked and laughed easily of the bright, remote happiness that was common to them all. The boy noticed, also, as they sat together, that Anthony was like the others in certain ways, that his eyes could light with the same merriment as Cousin Jasper's, and that his chin was cut in the same determined line as Tom Brighton's. Yet—no—there was something about his face that never could be quite like theirs.

They had finished at last, and Anthony Crawford, pushing back his chair, came abruptly out of the past into the present. He thrust his hand into the inner pocket of his coat and brought out some legal-looking papers like those that Cousin Tom had locked away in the tin box.

"Here is the deed that you made out, Jasper, for the house and the land that you gave up to me. I put it in my pocket yesterday morning; it seems a year ago. The purpose I had then is something that I would rather forget, if I ever can. But this is what I do with it now."

He tore the heavy paper into pieces, smaller and smaller, as though he could not demolish completely enough the record of what he had demanded. The breeze from the garden sent the scraps fluttering over the table and across the rug, it carried the round, red seal along the tablecloth and dropped it into Janet's lap.

"Tom will have to make out some official papers," he said, "but I want you to understand this fully, that there among those fragments lies the end of this whole affair."

Cousin Jasper was about to speak, but Tom Brighton broke in ahead of him.

"It has turned out better than we could have hoped, Anthony," he began, "so that we can all agree to let bygones be bygones."

Anthony Crawford turned very slowly and looked, with those penetrating gray eyes, at Oliver.

"We owe a great deal to these children here," he said, "and as for one of them——"

Convinced that something was about to be said of him, Oliver got up quickly, pretending that it was merely because he had finished his breakfast and wished to be excused, hurried across the room, and slipped out through one of the long windows that opened on the terrace. He could still hear Anthony Crawford's voice, however, in the room behind him saying:

"It was these children who found the leak in the dike; it was Oliver who thought of going to look for it. It was Oliver who saw through me, saw that I had not a shred of honor or honesty behind my claim and told me what I was."

The boy moved farther away from the window so that he could not hear and stood, his hands clenched on the terrace rail, looking out over the garden, across the pools of color and stretches of green lawn, over the wall and down the white road that led away the length of the valley. No matter what words they might speak of him they could never make him forget how he had walked away down that road, meaning to leave all this vaguely understood trouble behind him. Only a chance meeting, the Beeman's friendly smile, the interest of a story that had caught him for a moment, and all would have been changed. No, there should be no words of praise for him.

The voices were louder behind him, for the three men were passing through the library, and Cousin Jasper was speaking just within.

"We still have to talk over this matter of rebuilding the dike," he said. "We must have your advice in that, Anthony."

"Go into the study," Anthony Crawford replied. "I must speak to Oliver for a moment."

He came out through the window while the others walked on together. Oliver turned to face him.

"I am going now," Anthony said quietly. "I thought you would be ready to help me when it was time."

Oliver reddened when he remembered the promptness of his offer the evening before.

"Do you need to go," he said awkwardly, "when you are friends again with every one here? Even the men in the valley don't hate you," he added bluntly, "after what you did last night. I believe Cousin Jasper will want you to stay."

"If I let him tell me so, I will not go," the other replied quickly. "It must be this minute, while my mind is still made up, or never. I will write to Martha to follow, I cannot even trust myself to wait for her. It is better that I should go, better for them, in the study there, better for the community, for myself, even better for you, Oliver, I know. Come," he insisted, as the boy still hesitated, "my confidence in you will be less great if you do not tell me that you know it also."

THE END