"I come on a pleasant errand," said Penhallow. "We will talk it over and then leave you to the doctor. Mrs. Penhallow wants me to roof your church. I came to say to you that I shall do it with pleasure. You will lose the use of it for one Sunday at least."
"Thank you, Squire," said Grace simply. "That's real good medicine."
"I will see to it at once."
The doctor opened a window, and Penhallow drew a grateful breath of fresh air.
"Don't go, sir," said Grace. The Squire sat down again while McGregor went through his examination of the sick man. Then he too rose to leave.
"Must you go?" said Grace. "It is such a pleasure to see some one from the outside." The doctor smiled and lingered.
"I suppose, Squire, you'll get Joe Boynton, the carpenter, to put on the roof? He's one of my flock."
"Yes," said Penhallow, "but he will want to put his old workman, Peter Lamb, on the job, and I have no desire to help that man any further. He gives his mother nothing, and every cent he makes goes for drink."
McGregor nodded approval, but wondered why at last the Squire's unfailing good-nature had struck for higher wages of virtue in the man he had ruined by kindness.
"I try to keep work in Westways," said Penhallow. "Joe Shall roof the chapel, and like as not Peter will be too drunk to help. I can't quite make it a condition with Joe that he shall not employ Peter, but I should like to." McGregor's face grew smiling at Penhallow's conclusion when he added, "I hope he may get work elsewhere." Then the Squire went downstairs with the doctor, exchanging brevities of talk.
"Are you aware, Penhallow, that this wicked business about Josiah has beaten Buchanan in Westways? Come to apply the Fugitive-Slave Act and people won't stand it. As long as it was just a matter of newspaper discussion Westways didn't feel it, but when it drove away our barber, Westways's conscience woke up to feel how wicked it was."
The Squire had had an illustration nearer home and kept thinking of it as he murmured monosyllabic contributions while the doctor went on—"My own belief is that if the November election were delayed six months, Fremont would carry Pennsylvania."
Penhallow recovered fuller consciousness and returned, "I distrust Fremont. I knew him in the West. But he represents, or rather he stands for, a party, and it is mine."
"I am glad to know that," said McGregor. "I am really glad. It is a relief to be sure about a man like you, Penhallow. I suppose you know that you are loved in the county as no one else is."
"Nonsense," exclaimed the Squire, laughing, but not ill-pleased.
"No, I am serious; but it leads up to this: Am I free to say you will vote the Republican ticket?"
"Yes—yes—you may say so."
"It will be of use, but couldn't I persuade you to speak at the meeting next week at the mills?"
"No, McGregor. That is not in my line." He had other reasons for refusal.
"Let us drop politics. What is that boy of yours going to do?"
"Study medicine," he says. "He has brains enough, and Mr. Rivers tells me he is studious. Our two lads fell out, it seems, and my boy got the worst of it. What I don't like is that he has not made up with John."
"No, that is bad; but boys get over their quarrels in time. However, I must go. If I can be of any use to Tom, you know that I am at your service."
"When were you not at everybody's service?" said the doctor, and they went out through the hall.
"Good-bye," said Penhallow, but the doctor stopped him.
"Penhallow, may I take the liberty to bother you with a bit of unasked advice?"
"A liberty, nonsense! What is it?"
"Well, then—let that drunken brute Peter alone. You said that you would not let the carpenter use him, but why not? Then you hoped he would get work. Let him alone."
"McGregor, I have a great charity for a drunkard's son—and the rest you know."
"Yes, too well."
"I try to put myself in his place—with his inheritance—"
"You can't. Nothing is more kind than that in some cases, and nothing more foolish in others or in this—"
"Perhaps. I will think it over, Doctor. Good-bye."
Meanwhile Grace lay in bed thoughtfully considering the situation. While her husband seemed practically inactive in politics, Mrs. Penhallow had been busy, and she had clearly hinted that the roofing of the chapel might depend on how Grace used his large influence in the electoral contest, but had said nothing very definite. He was well aware, however, that in his need for help he had bowed a little in the House of Rimmon. Then he had talked with Rivers and straightened up, and now did the Squire's offer imply any pledge on his own part? While he tried to solve this problem, Penhallow reappeared.
"I forgot something, Grace," he said. "Mrs. Penhallow will send Mrs. Lamb here for a few days, and some—oh, some little luxuries—ice and fresh milk."
The Baptist did not like it. Was this to keep him in the way he had resolved not to go. "Thank you and her," he returned, and then added abruptly, "How are you meaning to vote, Squire?"
"Oh, for Fremont," replied Penhallow, rather puzzled.
"Well, that will be good news in Westways." It was to him, too, and he felt himself free. "Isn't Mrs. Penhallow rather on the other side?"
He had no least idea that the question might be regarded as impertinent. Penhallow said coldly, "My wife and I are rather averse to talking politics. I came back to say that I want you to feel free to make use of my library—just as Rivers does."
"Now that will be good. I am book-starved except for Rivers's help. Thank you." He put out a fat hand and said, "God has been good to me this day; may He be as kind to you and yours."
The Squire went his way wondering what the deuce the man had to do with
Ann Penhallow's politics.
Mrs. Lamb took charge of Grace, and Mrs. Penhallow saw that he was well supplied and gave no further thought to the incorrigible and changeful political views of Westways.
The excitement over the flight of Josiah lessened, and Westways settled down to the ordinary dull routine of a little community dependent on small farmers and the mill-men who boarded at the old tavern or with some of the townspeople.
* * * * *
The forests were rapidly changing colour except where pine and spruce stood darkly green amid the growing magnificence of maple and oak. It was the intermediate season in which were neither winter nor summer sports, and John Penhallow enjoying the pageant of autumn rode daily or took long walks, exploring the woods, missing Leila and giving free wing to a mind which felt the yearning, never to be satisfied, to translate into human speech its bird-song of enjoyment of nature.
On an afternoon in mid-October he saw Mr. Rivers, to his surprise, far away on the bank of the river. Well aware that the clergyman was rarely given to any form of exercise on foot, John was a little surprised when he came upon the tall, stooping, pallid man with what Ann Penhallow called the "eloquent" eyes. He was lying on the bank lazily throwing stones into the river. As John broke through the alders and red willows above him, he turned at the sound and cried, as John jumped down the bank, "Glad to see you, John! I have been trying to settle a question no one can settle to the satisfaction of others or even himself. You might give me your opinion as to who wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews. Origen gave it up, and Philo had a theory about Apollos, and there is Tertullian, that's all any fellow knows; and so now I await your opinion. What nobody knows about, anybody's opinion is good about."
John laughed as he said, "I don't think I'll try."
"Did you ever read Hebrews, John? The epistle I mean."
"No."
"Then don't or not yet. The Bible books ought to be read at different ages of a man's life. I could arrange them. Your aunt reads to you or with you, I believe?"
"Yes—Acts just now, sir. She makes it so clear and interesting that it seems as if all might have happened now to some missionaries somewhere."
"That is an art. Some of the Bible stories require such help to make them seem real to modern folk. How does, or how did, Leila take Mrs. Ann's teachings?"
"Oh, Leila," he replied, as he began to pitch pebbles in the little river, "Leila—wriggled. You know, she really can't keep quiet, Mr. Rivers."
"Yes, I know well enough. But did what interested you interest Leila?"
"No—no, indeed, sir. It troubled Aunt Ann because she could not make her see things. Usually at night before bedtime we read some of the Gospels, and then once a week Acts. Every now and then Leila would sit still and ask such queer questions—about people."
"What kind of questions, John?" He was interested and curious.
"Oh, about Peter's mother and—I forget—oh, yes, once—I remember that because aunt did not like it and I really couldn't see why."
"Well, what was it?"
"She wanted to know if Christ's brothers ever were married and if they had children."
"Did she, indeed! Well—well!"
"Aunt Ann asked her why she wanted to know that, and Leila said it was because she was thinking how Christ must have loved them, and maybe that was why He was so fond of little children. Now, I couldn't have thought that."
"Nor I," said Rivers. "She will care more for people—oh, many people—and by and by for things, events and the large aspects of life, but she is as yet undeveloped."
John was clear that he did not want her to like many people, but he was inclined to keep this to himself and merely said, "I don't quite understand."
"No, perhaps I was a little vague. Leila is at the puzzling age. You will find her much altered in a year."
"I won't like that."
"Well, perhaps not. But you too have changed a good deal since you came.
You were a queer young prig."
"I was—I was indeed."
Then they were silent a while. John thought of his mother who had left him to the care of tutors and schools while she led a wandering, unhappy, invalid life. He remembered the Alps and the spas and her fretful care of his very good health, and then the delight of being free and surrounded with all a boy desires, and at last Leila and the wonderful hair on the snow-drift.
"Look at the leaves, John," said Rivers. "What fleets of red and gold!"
"I wonder," said John, "how far they will drift, and if any of them will ever float to the sea. It is a long way."
"Yes," returned Rivers, "and so we too are drifting."
"Oh, no, sir," said John, with the confidence of youth, "we are not drifting, we are sailing—not just like the leaves anywhere the waves take them."
"More or less," added Rivers moodily, "more or less."
He looked at the boy as he spoke, conscious of a nature unlike his own. Then he laughed outright. "You may be sure we are a good deal hustled by circumstances—like the leaves."
"I should prefer to hustle circumstances," replied John gaily, and again the rector studied the young face and wondered what life had in store for this resolute nature.
"Come, let us go. I have walked too far for me, I am overtired, John."
What it felt to be overtired, John hardly knew. He said, "I know a short cut, cater-cornered across the new clearing."
As they walked homeward, Rivers said, "What do you want to do, John? You are more than fit for the university—you should be thinking about it."
"I do not know."
"Would you like to be a clergyman?"
"No," said John decisively.
"Or a lawyer, or a doctor like Tom McGregor?"
"I do not know—I have not thought about it much, but I might like to go to West Point."
"Indeed!"
"Yes, but I am not sure."
CHAPTER XII
When John was eager to hear what Leila wrote, his aunt laughed and said, "As you know, there is always a word of remembrance for you, but her letters would hardly interest you. They are about the girls and the teachers and new gowns. Write to her—I will enclose it, but you need expect no answer."
That Leila should have acquired interest in gowns seemed to him unlike that fearless playmate. He learned that the rules of the school forbade the writing of letters except to parents and near relatives. He was now to write to Leila the first letter he had written since his laborious epistles to his mother when at school. His compositions seemed to Rivers childlike long after he showed notable competence in speech.
"DEAR LEILA: It is very hard that you cannot write to me. We are all well here except Lucy, who is lame. It isn't very much.
"Of course you have heard about our good old Josiah. Isn't that slave law wicked? Westways is angry and all turned round for Fremont. Mr. Grace has been ill, and Uncle Jim is putting a roof on his chapel. Josiah left me his traps when he ran away. He meant to make you a muskrat skin bag. I found four in his traps, and I have caught four more, and when Mrs. Lamb makes a bag of them, I am to have for it a silver clasp which belonged to Great-grandmother Penhallow. No girl will have one like that. It was on account of Josiah the town will not vote for Buchanan.
"I wish I had asked you for a lock of your hair. I remember how it looked on the snow when Billy upset us."—
He had found his letter-writing hard work, and let it alone for a time.
Before he finished it, he had more serious news to add.
The autumnal sunset of the year, the red and gold of maple, oak and sassafras, was new to the boy who had spent so many years in Europe, and more wonderful was it when in this late October on the uplands there fell softly upon the glowing colours of the woods a light covering of early snow. Once seen it is a spectacle never to be forgotten, and he had the gift of being charmed by the scenic ingenuities of nature.
The scripture reading was over and he was thinking late in the evening of what he had seen, when his aunt said, "Goodnight, John—bed-time," and went up the stairway. John lay quiet, with closed eyes, seeing the sunlit snow lightly dusted on the red and yellows of the forest.
About eleven his uncle came from the library. "What, you scamp!—up so late! I meant to mail this letter to-day; run down and mail it. It ought to go when Billy takes the letters to Westways Crossing early to-morrow. I will wait up for you. Now use those long legs and hurry."
John took his cap and set off, liking the run over the snow, which was light and no longer falling. He raced down the avenue and climbed the gate, thinking of Leila. He dropped the letter into the post-office box, and decided to return by a short way through the Penhallow woods which faced the town. He moved eastward, climbed the fence, and stood still. He was some two hundred yards from the parsonage. His attention was arrested by a dull glow behind the house. He ran towards it as it flared upward a broad rush of flame, brilliantly lighting the expanse of snow and sending long prancing shafts of shadow through the woods as it struck on the tall spruces. Shouting, "Fire! Fire!" John came nearer.
The large store of dry pine and birch for winter-use piled in a shed against the back of Rivers's house was burning fiercely, with that look of ungoverned fury which gives such an expression of merciless, personal rage to a great fire. The terror of it at first possessed the lad, who was shouting himself hoarse. The flame was already running up and over the outer planking and curling down upon the thin snow of the shingled roof as he ran around the small garden and saw the front door open and Rivers come out. The rector said, "It is gone, John; I will go for your uncle. Run over to the Wayne and call up the men. Tell them to get out my books and what they can, but to run no risks. Quick, now! Wake up the town."
There was little need, for some one at the inn had heard John's cries. In a few minutes the village was awake and out of doors before Penhallow arriving took charge and scattered men through the easily lighted pines, in some dread of a forest fire. The snow on the floor of pine-needles and on the laden trees was, however, as he soon saw, an insurance against the peril from far-scattered sparks, and happily there was no wind. Little of what was of any value was saved, and in the absence of water there was nothing to do but to watch the fire complete its destructive work.
"There is nothing more we can do, Rivers," said Penhallow. "John was the first to see it. We will talk about it to-morrow—not now—not here."
The three Grey Pine people stood apart while books and clothes and little else were carried across the road and stored in the village houses. At last the flames rose high in the air and for a few minutes as the roof fell in, the beauty of the illumination was what impressed John and Rivers. The Squire now and then gave quick orders or stood still in thought. At last he said to the rector, "I want you to go to Grey Pine, call up Mrs. Penhallow and tell her, and then go to bed. You will like to stay here with me, John?"
"Yes, sir." The Squire walked away as Rivers left them.
"Fine sight, ain't it, Mr. John," said Billy, the one person who enjoyed the fire.
"Yes," said John, absently intent on the red-lighted snow spaces and the gigantic shadows of the thinly timbered verge of the forest as they were and were not. Then there was a moment of alarm. An old birch, loosely clad with dry, ragged bark stood near to the house. A flake of falling fire fell on it. Instantly the whole trunk-cover blazed up with a roar like that of a great beast in pain. It was sudden and for the instant terrible, but the snow-laden leaves still left on it failed to take fire, and what in summer would have been a calamity was at an end.
"Gosh!" exclaimed Billy, "didn't he howl?" John made no reply.
"Couldn't wake Peter. I was out first." He had liked the fun of banging at the doors. "Old Woman Lamb said she couldn't wake him."
"Drunk, I suppose," said John absently, stamping out a spark among the pine-needles at his feet, now freed from snow by the heat.
The night passed, and when the dawning came, the Squire leaving some orders went homeward with John, saying only, "Go to bed at once, we will talk about it later. I don't like it, John. You saw it first—where did it begin?"
"Outside, sir, in the wood-shed."
"Indeed! There has been some foul play. Who could it have been?" He said no more.
It was far into the morning when John awaking found that he had been allowed to make up for the lost sleep of the past night. His aunt smiling greeted him with a kiss, concerning which there is something to be said in regard to what commentary the assistant features make upon the kiss. "I would not have you called earlier," she said; "but now, here is your breakfast, you have earned it." She sat down and watched the disappearance of a meal which would have filled his mother with anxiety. Ann was really enjoying the young fellow's wholesome appetite and contrasting it with the apprehensive care concerning food he had shown when long before he had seemed to her husband and herself a human problem hard to solve. James Penhallow had been wise, and Leila a rough and efficient schoolmistress. "Do not hurry, John; have another cup?"
"Yes, please."
"Have you written that letter? I mean to be naughty enough to enclose it to Leila. I told you so."
"Yes, but it is not quite done, and now I must tell her about the fire. I wrote her that Josiah had gone away."
"The less of it the better. I mean about—well, about your warning him—and the rest—your share and mine."
"Of course not, Aunt Ann. I would not talk about myself. I mean, I could not write about it."
"You would talk of it if she were here—you would, I am sure."
"Yes, that's different—I suppose, I would," he returned. She was struck with this as being like what James Penhallow would have said and have, or not have, done.
"If you have finished, John, I think your uncle wants you."
"Why didn't you tell me, aunt?" he said, as he got up in haste.
"Oh, boys must be fed," she cried. She too rose from her seat, and went around the table and kissed him again, saying, "You are more and more like my captain, John."
Being a woman, as John was well aware, not given to express approval of what were merely acts of duty, he was surprised at what was, for her, excess of praise; nor was she as much given to kissing, as are many women. The lad felt, therefore, that what she thus said and did was unusual, and was what his Uncle Jim called one of Ann's rarely conferred brevets of affection.
"Yes," she repeated, "you are like him."
"What! I like Uncle Jim! I wish I were."
"Now go," she said, giving him a gentle push. She was shyly aware of a lapse into unhabitual emotion and of some closer approach to the maternal relation fostered by his growing resemblance to James Penhallow.
"So," laughed his uncle as John entered the library, "you have burned down the school and are on a holiday—you and Rivers."
John grinned. "Yes, sir."
"Sit down. We are discussing that fire. You were the first to see it,
John. It was about eleven—"
"Yes, uncle, it struck as I left the hall."
"No one else was in sight, and in fact, Rivers, no one in Westways is out of bed at ten. Both you and John are sure the fire began outside where the wood was piled under a shed."
"Yes," said Rivers. "It was a well dried winter supply, birch and pine. The shed, as you know, was alongside of the kitchen door. I went over the house as usual about nine, after old Susan, the maid, had gone home. I covered the kitchen fire with ashes—a thing she is apt to neglect. I went to bed at ten and wakened to hear the glass crack and to smell smoke. The kitchen lay under my bedroom. I fear it was a deliberate act of wickedness."
"That is certain," said Penhallow, "but who could have wanted to do it. You and I, Rivers, know every one in Westways. Can you think of any one with malice enough to make him want to bum a house and risk the possibility of murder?"
Rivers turned his lean pale face toward the Squire, unwilling to speak out what was in the minds of both men. John listened, looking from one serious face to the other.
"It seems to me quite incredible," said Penhallow, and then Rivers knew surely that the older man had a pretty definite belief in regard to the person who had been concerned. He knew too why the Squire was unwilling to accuse him, and waited to hear what next Penhallow would say.
"It makes one feel uncomfortable," said Penhallow, and turning to John,
"Who was first there after you came?"
"Billy, sir, I think, even before the men from the Wayne, but I am not sure. I told him to pound on the doors and wake up the town."
"Did he say anything?"
"Oh, just his usual silliness."
"Was Peter Lamb at the fire?"
"I think not. His mother opened a window and said that she could not waken Peter. It was Billy told me that. I told Billy, I supposed Peter was drunk. But he wasn't yesterday afternoon—I saw him."
"Oh, there was time enough for that," remarked Rivers.
Then the two men smoked and were silent, until at last the Squire said, "Of course, you must stay here, Rivers, and you know how glad we shall be—oh, don't protest. It is the only pleasant thing which comes out of this abominable matter. Ann will like it."
"Thank you," returned Rivers, "I too like it."
John went away to look at the ruin left by the fire, and the Squire said to his friend, "As I am absent in the mornings at the mills, you may keep school here, Rivers," and it was so settled.
Before going out Penhallow went to his wife's little room on the farther side of the hall. He had no desire to hide his conclusions from her. She saw how grave he looked. "What is it, James?" she asked, looking up from her desk.
"I am as sure as a man can be that Peter Lamb set fire to the parsonage. He has always been revengeful and he owed our friend, the Rector, a grudge. I have no direct evidence of his guilt, and what am I to do? You know why I have always stood by him. I suppose that I was wrong."
She knew only too well, but now his evident trouble troubled her and she loved him too well to accept the temptation to use the exasperating phrase, "I always told you so." "You can do nothing, James, without more certainty. You will not question his mother?"
"No, I can't do that, Ann; and yet I cannot quite let this go by and simply sit still."
"What do you propose to do?"
"I do not know," and with this he left her and rode to the mills. In the afternoon he called at Mrs. Lamb's and asked where he could find Peter.
She was evidently uneasy, as she said, "You gave him work on the new roof of the Baptist chapel with Boynton; he might be there."
He made no comment, and went on his way until reaching the chapel he called Peter down from the roof and said, "Come with me, I want to talk to you."
Peter was now sober and was sharply on guard. "Come away from the town," added the Squire. He crossed the street, entered his own woods and walked through them until he came in sight of the smoking relics of the parsonage, where at a distance some few persons were idly discussing what was also on Penhallow's mind. Here he turned on his foster-brother, and said, "You set that house on fire. I could get out of your mother enough to make it right to arrest you, but I will not bring her into the matter. Others suspect you. Now, what have you to say?"
"Say! I didn't do it—that's all. I was in bed."
"Why did you not get up and help?"
"Wasn't any of my business," he replied sulkily. "Everybody in this town's against me, and now when I've given up drinking, to say I set a house afire—"
"Well!" said Penhallow, "this is my last word, you may go. I shall not have you arrested, but I cannot answer for what others may do."
Peter walked away. He had been for several days enough under the influence of whisky to intensify what were for him normal or at least habitually indulged characteristics. For them he was only in part responsible. His mother had spoiled him. He had been as a child the playmate of his breast-brother until time and change had left him only in such a relation to Penhallow as would have meant little or nothing to most men. As a result, out of the Squire's long and indulgent care of a lad who grew up a very competent carpenter, and gradually more and more an idle drunkard, Peter had come to overestimate the power of his claim on Penhallow. What share in his evil qualities his father's drunkenness had, is in no man's power to say. His desire to revenge the slightest ill-treatment or the abuse his evil ways earned had the impelling force of a brute instinct. What he called "getting even" kept him in difficulties, and when he made things unpleasant or worse for the offenders, his constant state of induced indifference to consequences left him careless and satisfied. When there was not enough whisky to be had, his wild acts of revengeful malice were succeeded by such childlike terror as Penhallow's words produced. 'The preacher would have him arrested; the Squire would not interfere. Some day he would get even with him too!' There was now, however, no recourse but flight. He hastened home and finding his mother absent searched roughly until by accident as he let fall her Bible, a bank note dropped out. There were others, some sixty dollars or more, her meagre savings. He took it all without the least indecision. At dark after her return he ate the supper she provided. When she had gone to bed, he packed some clothes in a canvas bag and went quietly out upon the highway. Opposite to the smoking ruin of the rectory he halted. He muttered, "I've got even with him anyhow!"
As he murmured his satisfaction, a man left on guard crossed the road.
"Halloa! Where are you bound, Peter?"
"Goin' after a job. Bad fire, wasn't it—hard on the preacher!"
"Hard. He's well lodged at the Squire's, and I do hear it was insured. Nobody's much the worse, and it will make a fine bit of work for some of us. Who done it, I wonder?"
"How should I know! Good-night."
When out of sight, he turned and said, "I ain't got even yet. Them rich people's hard to beat. Damn the Squire! I'll get even with him some day." He was bitterly disappointed. "Gosh! I ran that nigger out, and now I'm a runaway too. It's queer."
At Westways Crossing he waited until an empty freight train was switched off to let the night express go by. Then he stowed himself away in an open box-car and had a comfortable sense of relief as it rolled eastward. He felt sure that the Squire's last words meant that he might be arrested and that immediate flight was his only chance of escape.
He thus passes, like Josiah, for some years out of my story. He had money, was when sober a clever carpenter, and felt, therefore, no fear of his future. He had the shrewd conviction that the Squire at least would not be displeased to get rid of him, and would not be very eager to have him pursued.
James Penhallow was disagreeably aware that it was his duty to bring about the punishment of his drunken foster-brother, but he did not like it. When the next morning he was about to mount his horse, he saw Mrs. Lamb, now an aged woman, coming slowly up the avenue. As she came to the steps of the porch, Penhallow went to meet her, giving the help of his hand.
"Good-morning, Ellen," he said, "what brings you here over the snow this frosty day? Do you want to see Mrs. Penhallow?"
For a moment she was too breathless to answer. The withered leanness of the weary old face moved in an effort to speak, but was defeated by emotion. She gasped, "Let me set down."
He led her into the hall and gave her a chair. Then he called his wife from her library-room. Ann at once knew that something more than the effect of exertion was to be read in the moving face. The dull grey eyes of age stared at James Penhallow and then at her, and again at him, as in the vigour of perfect health they looked down at his old nurse and with kindly patience waited. "Don't hurry, Ellen," said Mrs. Ann. "You are out of breath."
She seemed to Ann like some dumb animal that had no language but a look to tell the story of despair or pain. At last she found her voice and gasped out, "I came to tell you he has run away. He went last night. I'd like to be able to say, James Penhallow, that I don't know why he went away—"
"We will not talk of it, Ellen," said the Squire, with some sense of relief at the loss of need to do what he had felt to be a duty. "Come near to the fire," he added.
"No, I want to go home. I had to tell you. I just want to be alone. I'd have given it to him if he had asked me. I don't mind his taking the money, but he took it out of my Bible. I kept it there. It was like stealing from the Lord. It'll bring him bad luck. Mostly it was in the Gospels—just a bank-note here and there—sixty-one dollars and seventy-three cents it was." She seemed to be talking to herself rather than to the man and woman at her side. She went on—sometimes a babble they could not comprehend, as in pity and wonder they stood over her. Then again her voice rose, "He took it from the book of God. Oh, my son, my son! I must go."
She rose feebly tottering, and added, "It will follow him like a curse out of the Bible. He took it out of the Bible. I must go."
"No," said Penhallow, "wait and I will send you home."
She sat down again. "Thank you." Then with renewed strength, she said,
"You won't have them go after him?"
"No, I will not."
He went away to order the carriage, and returning said, "You know, Ellen, that you will always be taken care of."
"Yes, I know, sir—I know. But he took it out of my Bible—out of the book of God." She was presently helped into the wagon and sent away murmuring incoherently.
"And so, James," said Ann, "she knew too much about the fire. What a tragedy!"
"Yes, she knew. I am glad that he has gone. If he had faced it out and stayed, I must have done something. I suppose it is better for her on the whole. When he was drunk, he was brutal; when he was sober, he kept her worried. I am glad he has gone."
"But," said Ann, "he was her son—"
"Yes, more's the pity."
In a day or two it was known that Peter had disappeared. The town knew very well why and discussed it at evening, when as usual the men gathered for a talk. Pole expressed the general opinion when he said, "It's hard on the old woman, but I guess it's a riddance of bad rubbish." Then they fell to talking politics, the roofing of the chapel and the price of wheat and so Westways settled down again to its every-day quiet round of duties.
The excitement of the fire and Lamb's flight had been unfavourable to literary composition, but now John returned to his letter. He continued:
"The reticule will have to be finished in town. Uncle will take it after the election or send it to you. If you remember your Latin, you will know that reticule comes from reticulus, a net. But this isn't really a net.
"We have had a big excitement. Some one set fire to the parsonage and it burnt down." [He did not tell her who set it on fire, although he knew very well that it was Peter Lamb.] "Lamb has run away, and I think we are well rid of him.
"I do miss you very much. Mr. Rivers says you will be a fashionable young lady when you come back and will never snowball any more. I don't believe it.
"Yours truly,
"JOHN PENHALLOW."
Mrs. Penhallow enclosed the letter in one of her own, and no answer came until she gave him a note at the end of October. Leila wrote:
"DEAR JOHN: It is against the rules to write to any one but parents, and I am breaking the rules when I enclose this to you. I do not think I ought to do it, and I will not again.
"You would not know me in my long skirts, and I wear my hair in two plaits. The girls are all from the South and are very angry when they talk about the North. I cannot answer them and am sorry I do not know more about politics, but I do know that Uncle Jim would not agree with them.
"I go on Saturdays and over Sundays to my cousins in Baltimore. They say that the South will secede if Fremont should be elected. I just hold my tongue and listen.
"Yours sincerely,
"LEILA GREY.
"P.S. I shall be very proud of the bag. I hope you are studying hard."
"Indeed!" muttered John. "Thanks, Miss Grey." There was no more of it.
John Penhallow had come by degrees to value the rare privilege of a walk with the too easily wearied clergyman, who had avenues of ready intellectual approach which invited the adventurous mind of the lad and were not in the mental topography of James Penhallow. The cool, hazy days of late October had come with their splendour of colour-contrasts such as only the artist nature could make acceptable, and this year the autumn was unusually brilliant.
"Do you enjoy it?" asked Rivers.
"Oh, yes, sir. I suppose every one does."
"In a measure, as some people do the great music, and as the poets usually do not. People presume that the ear for rhythm is the same as that for music. They are things apart. A few poets have had both."
"That seems strange," said John. "I have neither," and he was lost in thought until Rivers, as usual easily tired, said, "Let us sit down. How hazy the air is, John! It tenderly flatters these wild colour-contrasts. It is like a November day of the Indian summer."
"Why do they call it Indian summer?" asked John.
"I do not know. I tried in vain to run it down in the dictionaries. In
Canada it is known as 'L'été de St. Martin.'"
"It seems," said John, "as if the decay of the year had ceased, in pity. It is so beautiful and so new to me. I feel sometimes when I am alone in these woods as if something was going to happen. Did you ever feel that, sir?"
Rivers was silent for a moment. The lad's power to state things in speech and his incapacity to put his thoughts in writing had often puzzled the tutor. "Why don't you put such reflections into verse, John? It's good practice in English."
"I can't—I've tried."
"Try again."
"No," said John decidedly. "Do look at those maples, Mr. Rivers—and the oaks—and the variety of colour in the sassafras. Did you ever notice how its leaves differ in shape?"
"I never did, but nothing is exactly the same as anything else. We talked of that once."
"Then since the world began there never was another me or Leila?"
"Never. There is only one of anything."
John was silent—in thought of his unresemblance to any other John. "But
I am like Uncle Jim! Aunt says so."
"Yes, outwardly you are; but you have what he has not—imagination. It is both friend and foe as may be. It may not be a good gift for a soldier—at least one form of it. It may be the parent of fear—of indecisions."
"But, Mr. Rivers, may it not work also for good and suggest possibilities—let you into seeing what other men may do?"
The reflection seemed to Rivers not like the thought of so young a man. He returned, "But I said it might be a friend and have practical uses in life. I have not found it that myself. But some men have morbid imagination. Let us walk." They went on again through the quiet splendour of the woodlands.
"Uncle Jim is going away after the election."
"Yes."
"He will see Leila. Don't you miss her?"
"Yes, but not as you do. However, she will grow up and go by you and be a woman while you are more slowly maturing. That is their way. And then she will marry."
"Good gracious! Leila marry!"
"Yes—it is a way they have. Let us go home."
John was disinclined to talk. Marry—yes—when I am older, I shall ask her until she does!
November came in churlish humour and raged in storms of wind and rain, until before their time to let fall their leaves the woods were stripped of their gay colours. On the fourth day of November the Squire voted the Fremont electoral ticket, and understood that with the exception of Swallow and Pole, Westways had followed the master of Grey Pine. The other candidates did not trouble them. The sad case of Josiah and the threat to capture their barber had lost Buchanan the twenty-seven votes of the little town. Mr. Boynton, the carpenter, fastening the last shingles on the chapel roof remarked to a workman that it was an awful pity Josiah couldn't know about it and that the new barber wasn't up to shaving a real stiff beard.
The Squire wrote to his wife from Philadelphia on the ninth:
"DEAR ANN: We never talk politics because you were born a Democrat and consider Andrew Jackson a political saint. I begin to wish he might be reincarnated in the body of Buchanan. He will need backbone, I fear. He has carried our State by only three thousand majority in a vote of 433,000. I am told that the excitement here was so great that the peacemaking effect of a day of cold drizzle alone prevented riot and bloodshed. Mr. Buchanan said in October, 'We shall hear no more of "Bleeding Kansas."' Well, I hope so. Here we are at one. I should feel more regret at the defeat of my party if I had more belief in Fremont, but your man is, I am sure, elected, and we must hope for the best and try to think that hope reasonable.
"I have been fortunate in my contracts for rails with the two railroads.
I shall finish this letter in Baltimore.—
"Baltimore.—I saw Leila, who has quite the air of a young lady and is well, handsome and reasonably contented. Dined with your brother Henry; and really, Ann, the cold-blooded way the men talked of secession was a little beyond endurance. I spoke my mind at last, and was heard with courteous disapproval. My friend, Lt.-Colonel Robert Lee of the Army, was the only man who was silent about our troubles. Two men earnestly advocated the re-opening of the slave-trade, and if as they say slavery is a blessing, the slave-trade is morally justified and logically desirable. I do want you to feel, my dear Ann, how extreme are the views of these pleasant gentlemen.
"The Madeira was good, and despite the half-hidden bitterness of opinion,
I enjoyed my visit. Let John read this letter if you like to do so.
"Yours always and in all ways,
"JAMES PENHALLOW."
She did not like, but John heard all about this visit when the Squire came home.
The winter of 1856-7 went by without other incident at Westways, with Mrs. Ann's usual bountiful Christmas gifts to the children at the mills and Westways. Mr. Buchanan was inaugurated in March. The captain smiled grimly as he read in the same paper the message of the Governor of South Carolina recommending the re-opening of the trade in slaves, and the new President's hopes "that the long agitation over slavery is approaching its end." Nor did Penhallow fancy the Cabinet appointments, but he said nothing more of his opinions to Ann Penhallow.
CHAPTER XIII
In the early days of May the Squire began to rebuild the parsonage, and near by it a large room for Sunday school and town-meetings. Ann desired to add a library-room for the town and would have set about this at once had not her husband resolutely set himself against any addition to the work with which she filled her usefully busy life. She yielded with reluctance, and the library plan was set aside to the regret of Rivers, who living in a spiritual atmosphere was slow to perceive what with the anxiety of a great love James Penhallow saw so clearly—the failure of Ann Penhallow's health.
When at last Penhallow sat down with McGregor in his office, the doctor knew at once that something serious was troubling his friend.
"Well, Penhallow," he said, "what can I do for you?"
"I want you to see my wife. She sleeps badly, tires easily, and worst of all is unwilling to consult you."
"Yes, that's serious. Of course, she does the work of two people, but has it ever occurred to you, Penhallow, that in the isolated life you lead she may be at times bored and want or need society, change?"
"My dear Doctor, if I propose to her to ask our friends from the cities to visit us, she says that entertaining women would only add to her burdens. How could she amuse them?" The Squire had the helplessness of a strong man who has to deal with the case of a woman who, when a doctor is thought to be necessary, feels that she has a right to an opinion as to whether or not it is worth while. She did not believe it to be necessary and felt that there was something unpleasant in this medical intrusion upon a life which had been one of unbroken health. To her husband's annoyance she begged him to wait, and on one pretext or another put off the consultation—it would do in a week, or 'she was better.' Her postponement and lack of decision added to the Squire's distress, but it was mid-June before she finally yielded and without a word to Penhallow wrote to ask McGregor to call.
In a week Leila would be at Grey Pine. The glad prospect of a summer's leisure filled John with happy anticipations. He had his boat put in order, looked after Lucy's condition, and had in mind a dozen plans for distant long-desired rides into the mountains, rides which now his uncle had promised to take with them. He soon learned that the medical providence which so often interferes with our plans in life had to be considered.
Mrs. Penhallow to John's surprise had of late gone to bed long before her accustomed hour, and one evening in this June of 1857 Penhallow seeing her go upstairs at nine o'clock called John into the library.
"Mr. Rivers," he said, "has gone to see some one in Westways, and I have a chance to talk to you. Sit down."
John obeyed, missing half consciously the ever-ready smile of the Squire.
"I am troubled about your aunt. Dr. McGregor assures me that she has no distinct ailment, but is simply so tired that she is sure to become ill if she stays at home. No one can make her lessen her work if she stays here. You are young, but you must have been aware of what she does for this town and at the mills—oh, for every one who is in need or in trouble. There is the every-day routine of the house, the sick in the village, the sewing class, the Sunday afternoon reading in the small hospital at our mills, letters—no end of them. How she has stood it so long, I cannot see."
"But she seems to like it, sir," said John. He couldn't understand that what was so plainly enjoyed could be hurtful.
"Yes, she likes it, but—well, she has a heavenly soul in an earthly body, and now at last the body is in revolt against overuse, or that at least is the way McGregor puts it. I ought to have stopped it long ago." John was faintly amused at the idea of any one controlling Ann Penhallow where her despotic beliefs concerning duties were concerned.
The Squire was silent for a little while, and then said, "It has got to stop, John. I have talked to McGregor and to her. Leila is to meet us in Philadelphia. I shall take them to Cape May and leave them there for at least the two months of summer. You may know what that means for me and for her, and, I suppose, for you."
"Could I not go there for a while?"
"I think not. I really have not the courage to be left alone, John. I think of asking you to spend a part of the day at the mills this summer. You will have to learn the business, for as you know your own property, your aunt's and mine are largely invested in our works. I thought too of an engineering school for you in the fall, and then of the School of Mines in Paris. It is a long look ahead, but it would fit you to relieve me of my work. Think it over, my son. How does it look to you, or have you thought of what you mean or want to do? Don't answer me now—think it over. And now I have some letters to write. Good-night."
John went upstairs to bed with much to think about, and above all else of the disappointing summer before him and the wish he had long cherished, but which his uncle's last words had made it necessary for him to reconsider.
Ann Penhallow had made a characteristic fight against the combined forces of the doctor and her husband. She had declared she would give up this and that, if only she could be left at home. She showed to the doctor an irritability quite new to his experience of her and which he accepted as added evidence of need of change. Her bodily condition and her want of common sense in a matter so clear to him troubled the Squire and drove him to his usual resort when worried—long rides or hard tramps with his gun. After luncheon and a decisive talk with Mrs. Ann, she had pleaded that he ought to remain with them at the shore. She was sure he needed it and it would set her mind at ease. He told her what she knew well enough, how impossible it would be for him to leave the mills and be absent long. She who rarely manufactured difficulties now began to ask how this was to be done and that, until Rivers said at last, "I can promise to read at the hospital until I go away for my August holiday."
"You would not know the kind of things to read."
"No one could do it as well as you," said Rivers, "but I can try."
"Everything will be cared for, Ann," said Penhallow, "only don't worry."
"I never worry," she returned, rising. "You men think everything will run along easily without a woman's attention."
"Oh, but Ann, my dear Ann!" exclaimed Penhallow, not knowing what more to say, annoyed at the discussion and at her display of unnecessary temper and the entire loss of her usual common sense.
She said, with a laugh in which there was no mirth, "I presume one of you will, of course, run my sewing-class?"
"Ann—Ann!" said the Squire.
Rivers understood her now in the comprehending sympathy of his own too frequent moods of melancholy. "Ah!" he murmured, "if I could but teach her how to knit the ravelled sleeve of care."
"I presume," she added, "that I am to accept it as settled," and so went out.
"Come, John," said Penhallow an hour later, "call the dogs—I must have a good hard tramp, and a talk with you!"
John kept pace with, the rapid stride of the Squire, taking note of the reddening buds of the maples, for this year in the hills the spring came late.
"You must have seen your aunt's condition," said Penhallow. "I have seen it coming on ever since that miserable affair of Josiah. It troubled her greatly."
John had the puzzled feeling of the inexperienced young in regard to the matter of illness and its influential effect on temper, and was well pleased to converse on anything else, when his uncle asked, "Have you thought over what I said to you about your future?"
"Well?"
"I should like to go to West Point, Uncle Jim."
To his surprise Penhallow returned, pausing as he spoke, "I had thought of that, but as I did not know you had ever considered it, I did not mention it. It would in some ways please me. As a life-long career it would not. We are in no danger of war, and an idle existence at army-posts is not a very desirable thing for an able man."
"I had the idea, uncle, that I would not remain in the service."
"But you would have to serve two years after you were graduated—and still that was what I did, oh! and longer—much longer. As an education in discipline and much else, it is good—very good. But tell me are you really in earnest about it?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, it is better than college. I will think about it. If you go to the
Point, it should be this coming fall. I wonder what Ann will say."
Then John knew that the Squire favoured what had been for a long time on his own mind. What had made him eager to go into the army was in part that tendency towards adventure which had been a family trait and his admiration for the soldier-uncle; nor did the mere student life and the quiet years of managing the iron-mills as yet appeal to him as desirable.
"I wish, Uncle Jim, that you could settle the matter."
This was so like his own dislike of unsettled affairs that the Squire laughed in his hearty way. "So far as I am concerned, you may regard it as decided; but securing a nomination to the Point is quite another matter. It may be difficult. I will see about it. Now we will let it drop. That dog is pointing. Ah! the rascal. It is a hare."
They saw no more birds, nor did the Squire expect to find anything in the woods except the peace of mind to be secured by violent exercise. He went on talking about the horses and the mills.
When near to the house, Penhallow said, "Your aunt is to go away to-morrow. Every day here seems to add to her difficulty in leaving home. I shall say nothing to her of West Point until it is settled one way or another. I shall, of course, go to the Cape for a day, unless your aunt's brother Charles will take my place when he brings Leila to Philadelphia to meet us. I may be gone a week, and you and Rivers are to keep bachelor's hall and watch the work on the parsonage. I shall ask Leila to write to you and to me about your aunt. Did I say that we go by the 9:30 A.M. express?"
"No, sir."
"Well, we do."
James Penhallow was pleased and amazed when he discovered that Mrs. Ann was quietly submissive to the arrangements made for her comfort on the journey. She appeared to have abruptly regained her good temper and, Penhallow thought, was unnaturally and excessively grateful for every small service. Being unused to the ways of sick women, he wondered as the train ran down the descent from the Allegheny Mountains how long a time was required to know any human being entirely. He had been introduced within two weeks to two Ann Penhallows besides the Ann he had lived with these many years. He concluded, as others have done, that people are hard to understand, and thus thinking he ran over in mind the group they left on the platform at Westways Crossing.
There was Billy—apparently a simple character, abruptly capable of doing unexpected things; useful to-day, useless tomorrow. He called up to mind the very competent doctor; John, and his friend—the moody clergyman—beloved of all men. The doctor had said of him, "a man living in the monastery of himself—in our world, but not of it."
"What amuses you, James?" asked his wife.
This good sign of return to her normal curiosity was familiarly pleasant. "I was recalling, Ann, what McGregor said of Rivers after that horrid time of sickness at Westways. You may remember it."
"No, I do not."
"No! He said that Rivers was a round-shouldered angel."
"That does not seem to me amusing, James."
"Round-shouldered he is, Ann, and for the rest you at least ought to recognize your heavenly fellow-citizens when you meet them."
"Is that your poetry or your folly, James Penhallow?"
"Mine, my dear? No language is expansive enough for McGregor when he talks about you."
"Nonsense, James. He knows how to please somebody. We were discussing
Mark Rivers."
"Were we? Then here is a nice little dose from the doctor for you. Last Christmas, after you had personally sat up with old Mrs. Lamb when she was so ill, and until I made a row about it—"
"Yes—yes—I know." Her curiosity got the better of her dislike of being praised for what to her was a simple duty, and she added, "Well, what did he say?"
"Oh, that you and Rivers were like angels gone astray in the strange country called earth; and then that imp of a boy, John, who says queer things, said that it was like a bit of verse Rivers had read to him. He knew it too. I liked it and got him to write it out. I have it in my pocket-book. Like to see it?"
"No," she returned—and then—"yes," as she reflected that it must have originally applied to another than herself.
He was in the habit of storing in his pocket-book slips from the papers—news, receipts for stable-medicine, and rarely verse. Now and then he emptied them into the waste basket. He brought it out of his pocket-book and she read it:
As when two angel citizens of Heaven
Swift winged on errands of the Master's love
Meet in some earthly guise.
"Is that all of it?"
"No, John could not remember the rest, and I did not ask Mark."
"I should suppose not. Thank you for believing it had any application to me. And, James, I have been a very cross angel of late."
"Oh, my dear Ann, Dr. McGregor said—"
"Never mind Dr. McGregor, James. Go and smoke your cigar. I am tired and
I must not talk any more—talking on a train always tires me."
Two days after the departure of his aunt and uncle, John persuaded Rivers to walk with him on the holiday morning of Saturday. The clergyman caring little for the spring charm of the maiden summer, but much for John Penhallow's youth of promise, wandered on slowly through the woods, with head bent forward, stumbling now and then, lost to a world where his companion was joyfully conscious of the prettiness of new-born and translucent foliage.
Always pleased to sit down, Rivers dropped his thin length of body upon the brown pine-needles near the cabin and settling his back against a fallen tree-trunk made himself comfortable. As usual, when at rest, he began to talk.
"John," he said, "you and Tom McGregor had a quarrel long ago—and a fight."
"Yes, sir," returned John wondering.
"I saw it—I did not interfere at once—I was wrong."
This greatly amused John. "You stopped it just in time for me—I was about done for."
"Yes, but now, John, I have talked to Tom, and—I am afraid you have never made it up."
"No, he was insolent to Leila and rude. But we had a talk about it—oh, a good while ago—before she went away."
"Oh, had you! Well, what then?"
"Oh, he told me you had talked to him and he had seen Leila and told her he was sorry. She never said a word to me. I told him that he ought to have apologized to me—too."
Rivers was amused. "Apologies are not much in fashion among Westways boys. What did he say?"
"Oh, just that he didn't see that at all—and then he said that he was going away this fall to study medicine, and some day when he was a doctor he would have a chance to get even with me, and wouldn't he dose me well. Then we both laughed, and—I shook hands with him. That's all, sir."
"Well, I am pleased. He is by no means a bad fellow, and as you know he is clever—and can beat you in mathematics."
"Yes, but I licked him well, and he knows it."
"For shame, John. I wish my Baptist friend's boy would do better—he is dull."
"But I like him," said John. "He is so plucky."
"There is another matter I want to talk about. I had a long conversation about you with your uncle the night before he left. I heard with regret that you want to go into the army."
"May I ask why?" said John, as he lay on the ground lazily fingering the pine-needles.
"Is it because the hideous business called war attracts you?"
"No, but I like what I hear of the Point from Uncle Jim. I prefer it to any college life. Besides this, I do not expect to spend my life in the service, and after all it is simply a first rate training for anything I may want to do later—care of the mills, I mean. Uncle Jim is pleased, and as for war, Mr. Rivers, if that is what you dislike, what chance of war is there?"
"You have very likely forgotten my talk with Mr. George Grey. The North and the South will never put an end to their differences without bloodshed."
It seemed a strange opinion to John. He had thought so when he heard their talk, but now the clergyman's earnestness and some better understanding of the half-century's bitter feeling made him thoughtful. Rising to his feet, he said, "Uncle Jim does not agree with you, and Aunt Ann and her brother, Henry Grey, think that Mr. Buchanan will bring all our troubles to an end. Of course, sir, I don't know, but"—and his voice rose—"if there ever should be such a war, I am on Uncle Jim's side, and being out of West Point would not keep me out of the fight."
Rivers shook his head. "It will come, John. Few men think as I do, and your uncle considers me, I suspect, to be governed by my unhappy way of seeing the dark side of things. He says that I am a bewildered pessimist about politics. A pessimist I may be, but it is the habitually hopeful meliorist who is just now perplexed past power to think straight."
John's interest was caught for the moment by the word, "meliorist." "What is a meliorist, sir?" he asked. "Oh, a wild insanity of hopefulness. You all have it. I dislike to talk about the sad future, and I wonder men at the North are so blind."
He fell again to mere musings, a self-absorbed man, while John, attracted by a squirrel's gambols and used to the rector's long silences, wandered near by among the pines, with a vagabond mind on this or that, and watching the alert little acrobat of the forest. As he moved about, he recalled his first walks to the cabin with Leila and the wild thing he had said one day—and her reply. One ages fast, at seventeen, and now he wondered if he had been quite wise, and with the wisdom and authority of a year and a half of mental growth punished his foolish boy-past with severity of reproach. He had failed for a time to hear, or at least to hear with attention, the low-voiced soliloquies in which Mr. Rivers sometimes indulged. McGregor, an observant man, said that Rivers's mind jumped from thought to thought, and that his talk had at times no connective tissue and was hard to follow.
Now he spoke louder. "No one, John, no one sees that every new compromise compromises principles and honour. Have you read any of the speeches of a man named Lincoln in Illinois? He got a considerable vote in that nominating convention."
"No, sir."
"Then read it—read him. A prophet of disaster! He says, 'A house divided against itself cannot stand. This government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free.' The man did not know that he was ignorantly quoting George Washington's opinion. It is so, and so it will be. I would let them go their way in peace, for the sin of man-owning is ours—was ours—and we are to suffer for it soon or late—a nation's debts have to be paid, and some are paid in blood."
The young fellow listened but had no comment ready, and indeed knew too little of the terrible questions for which time alone would have an answer to feel the full force of these awful texts. He did say, "I will read Mr. Lincoln's speeches. Uncle talks to me about Kansas and slavery and compromises, but it is sometimes too much for me."
"Yes, he will not talk of these things to your aunt, and is not willing to talk to me. He thinks both of us are extremists. No, I won't walk any further. Let us go home."
The natural light-mindedness of a healthy lad easily disposes of the problems which disturb the older mind. John forgot it all for a time in the pleasant interest of a letter from Leila, received a day before his uncle's return.
"CAPE MAY, June 21st.
"MY DEAR JOHN: Here at last I am free to write to you when I please, and I have some rather strange news; but first of Aunt Ann. She is very well pleased and is already much better. Uncle Jim left us to-day, and I am to have Lucy here and one of the grooms. If only I could have you to ride with me on this splendid beach and see the great blue waves roll up like a vast army charging with white plumes and then rolling back in defeat."—
John paused. This was not like Leila. He felt in a vague way that she must be changing, and remembered the rector's predictions. Then he read on—
"Now for my adventure: Aunt Ann wanted some hair-wash, and I went to the barber's shop in the town to buy it. There was no one in but a black boy, because it was the bathing-time. He, I mean the boy, said he would call Mr. Johnson. In a moment there came out of a back room who do you think but our Josiah! He just stood still a moment—and then said, 'Good God! Miss Leila! Come into the back room—you did give me a turn.' I thought he seemed to be alarmed. Well, I went with him, and he asked me at once who was with me. I said, Aunt Ann, and that she was not well. Then I got out of him that he had wandered a while, and at last chosen this as a safe place. No one had told me fully about Cousin George Grey and why Josiah was scared and ran away, but now I got it all out of him—and how you warned him—and I do think it was splendid of a boy like you. He was dreadfully afraid of being taken back to be a slave. It seems he saved his money, and after working here bought out the shop when his master fell ill. I did not like it, but to quiet him I really had to say that I would not tell Aunt Ann, or he would have to run away again. I am sure aunt would not do anything to trouble him, but it was quite impossible to make him believe me, and he got me at last to promise him. I suppose there is really no harm in it, but I never did keep anything from Aunt Ann. I got the hair-wash and went away with his secret. Now, isn't that a story!