The Rival Campers Ashore: or, The Mystery of the Mill

What on earth could that be, and how had it come there? Colonel Witham, at first, had thought it might be some sort of an infernal machine, put there to destroy the mill. But he had investigated, cautiously, and demonstrated its harmlessness. And about the floor were a few half burned matches. Somebody had been in the mill. A faint perception began to dawn upon him, as the day passed, that it might have been the boys; but he couldn't wholly figure it out, and it bothered him not a little.

He thought of notifying the police – but he didn't want them hunting about the mill – or anybody else. The best thing, he decided, was to keep quiet, and watch out sharper than ever.

He was not in a friendly mood, therefore, when, gazing down the road, he espied Henry Burns approaching on a bicycle, followed closely by Jack Harvey and Tim Reardon. Moreover, his suspicions were aroused. He was somewhat surprised, however, when the boys dismounted at a little distance, leaned their wheels against some bushes and approached the porch.

Greater still was the colonel's surprise – indeed, he was fairly taken aback – when Henry Burns, having bade him good-evening, broached his subject abruptly, without any preliminaries.

"Colonel Witham," said Henry Burns, coolly, "we were up in the mill last night."

The colonel's eyes stuck out, and he glared at Henry Burns with mingled astonishment and wrath.

"Eh, what's that?" he exclaimed, "you were in my mill! Why, you young rascals, don't you know I could have you all arrested as burglars?"

"No," replied Henry Burns, "we didn't go to take anything of yours. We were after some papers that belonged to John Ellison's father. We weren't going to keep them either, if we found them; just turn them over to Lawyer Estes."

"Well, then, it was trespass," cried Colonel Witham, wrathfully. "Who told you there were papers in the mill. Lawyer Estes didn't – he knows better."

"No," replied Henry Burns, "but you told the fortune-teller so."

"I didn't say that," bellowed Colonel Witham, rising from his chair. But it was plain the suggestion of the fortune-teller worried him. "What did you do in there?" he added. "If you did any harm, you'll suffer for it."

"We didn't," said Henry Burns. "We only played on a horse-fiddle once or twice. You know there are rats in the mill, colonel. I guess they scampered when they heard that."

Colonel Witham had been about to burst forth with an angry exclamation; but the thought of his own ignominious flight made him pause. Rats, indeed! He knew there wasn't a rat in the whole mill that had been half so terrified as he.

"Now see here," he said, shaking his fist for emphasis, "I know you didn't do any harm in the mill. It was one of your crazy pranks. But don't you ever go in there again, or I'll make trouble for you."

"We're not going to," said Henry Burns.

"There isn't anything in there, anyway," urged Colonel Witham. "I've heard that talk, around Benton, and it's all nonsense. You couldn't find anything in there, if you hunted a hundred years."

"But we did find something," said Henry Burns, in a matter-of-fact way.

Colonel Witham's jaw dropped, and he looked at Henry Burns almost helplessly. He couldn't speak for a moment. Then he asked, huskily, "What was it you found? None of your pranks now; what did you find?"

"A small box, with some coins in it," replied Henry Burns; and he described the hiding place. "There was a dollar and eighty-six cents."

Colonel Witham looked relieved. "Give them to me," he cried. "You've got no right to the stuff."

"Wasn't it Ellison's?" inquired Henry Burns.

"Never you mind whose it was," cried Colonel Witham. "It was in my mill. Give it to me, or I'll have the law on you."

"There were some papers, too," continued Henry Burns.

Colonel Witham staggered again. The hand that held his pipe shook. Then his eyes twinkled craftily.

"Well, you're right smart boys," he said. "Keep the money, if you want it, or give it to John Ellison. Yes, it was Jim Ellison's – the money was. But the papers are mine. Have you got them? Give me the papers, and keep the money. I don't claim the money."

"Yes, I've got the papers," replied Henry Burns. "Here they are. There's all there were."

He handed the package to Colonel Witham, who took it with trembling hand. Then Henry Burns and his friends made a hurried departure. By the time the colonel had made an examination of the papers, and had turned, white with anger, to vent his rage upon them, they were spinning down the road.

"Tim," said Henry Burns, as they rode along, "you get the money."

It was a day or two later, on a sultry afternoon, and Bess Thornton stood in the doorway of the old house where she and Granny Thornton lived, looking forth at the sky. A passing shower was sprinkling the doorsteps with a few big drops, and the girl drew back with a look of disappointment on her face.

"It always rains when you don't want it to," she said. "Wish there was somebody to play with. It's pokey here, with gran' gone to Witham's. I don't know what to do."

Something suggested itself to her mind, however, for presently she opened the door leading to the attic and went up the stairs. It was dark and silent in the attic, but she threw open a window at either end, unfastened the blinds, and the daylight entered. It disclosed a clutter of old household stuff: some strings of pop-corn and dried apples and herbs hanging from the rafters, and a lot of faded garments, suspended from nails.

She tried on an old-fashioned poke-bonnet, looked at herself in a bit of cracked mirror that leaned against a wash-stand, and laughed at the odd picture she made. Then, by turns, she arrayed herself in some of the antiquated garments. She rummaged here and there, until she came to the old bureau.

"Gran' always keeps that locked," she said. "I guess nobody'd want to steal anything from this old place, though. She needn't be so particular. I wonder where she keeps the key."

There was no great difficulty in finding that, either, once she had set about it; for soon her hand rested on the key, as she felt along the tops of the beams, and came to the one where Granny Thornton had laid it.

"I'm going to have a look," said the girl softly to herself. "Gran's always telling me to keep out of here." Then, as the thought struck her, she exclaimed, "I'll bet here's where she put the coin."

The lock of the upper drawer of the bureau yielded readily to the pressure of the key; she drew the drawer out, and looked within. There was a mixture of curious odds and ends, from which she picked up a tiny white dress.

"That's funny," she exclaimed. "It's a baby's dress. I wonder what gran' keeps it for; perhaps 'twas mine. It's small, though. Wonder if I was ever as little as that."

She took the tiny garment by the sleeves, and held it up against herself. Then she laughed merrily. "I wish I could ask gran' about it," she said.

A small box attracted her eye and she seized that. She got a surprise then. She had thought that perhaps it might contain the coin. But it contained that and more. There, indeed, was the golden coin; but, strangely enough, it was not as she and Tim Reardon had found it, but affixed to a small golden chain.

"Oh!" she exclaimed; "Gran' was right, then. It did belong to us, after all. My, it's pretty, too. Gran' ought to let me wear it."

She tried to hang it about her neck, but the chain was too short. She remedied that, however, by piecing it out with two bits of ribbon which she found in the drawer. These she knotted in a bow at the back of her neck, and danced over to the mirror, to note the effect of the chain with its ornament. It was a rare piece of finery in her eyes, and she gazed upon it long and wistfully.

"I'm going to wear it awhile," she exclaimed. "It won't hurt it any. Gran' said I wore it once, when I was little. It's mine, I guess, anyway."

She continued her rummaging through the drawer, but it yielded nothing more to her fancy. She shut the drawer and locked it, and went to look at herself once more in the piece of mirror. The sun came out from behind the passing clouds, and, as it streamed in at one of the windows, it shone on the chain and the coin and on the girl's face.

"I just can't take it off yet," she said; and, closing the blinds, tripped down the stairs. But, as she looked out the door, she espied Granny Thornton coming in at the gate. She thought of the chain and its coin; and, realizing it was too late to regain the attic and replace it, slipped quietly out at the shed door and ran down through the fields to the brook, before Granny Thornton had espied her.

As she came to the edge of the brook, a small boy, that had been lying face down on the turf, with an arm deep in the water, rose up and greeted her.

"Why, hello, Tim," she said, surprised; "what are you doing?"

"Trying to tickle that big trout," replied Tim Reardon. "I've been here half an hour, without moving, but I can't find him. There's where he lies, though; I've seen him often. But he won't come near; he's too smart. I'm going to try the pickerel. See here, look what I've got."

He put a hand into his trousers pocket, and drew forth an object wrapped in a piece of newspaper. It proved to be a new spoon hook, bright and shiny, with gleaming red and silver, and a bunch of bright feathers covering the hooks at the end.

"Isn't that a beauty!" he exclaimed. "Cost a quarter. I bought it. John Ellison gave me that money I found in the mill."

"It's fine," replied the girl. "Going to try it?"

"Sure," answered Tim. "My rod's hid down by the stream. I wanted to try to tickle a trout when the shower ruffled the water here. Ever tickle a trout?"

Bess Thornton laughed. "No," said she; "nor you, either, I guess."

"Honest injun, I have," asserted Tim, warmly. "You just put your hand down in the water, and keep it still for an awful while; and by and by perhaps a fish'll brush against it. Then he'll keep doing it, and then you just move your hand and your fingers easy like, and the trout, he kind er likes it. Then, when you get a good chance, you just grab quick and throw him out on shore."

"Hm!" exclaimed the girl; "I'd like to see you do it."

They went along the brook to the road, passed up the road to a point some way above the dam, when Tim Reardon presently disappeared in a clump of bushes; from this he soon emerged, with his bamboo fish-pole. They went down through the field to the shore.

Jointing up the rod and affixing the reel, Tim Reardon ran out his line, tied on the bright spoon-hook and began trolling. The allurement proved enticing, and presently he hooked a fish. Tim gallantly handed the rod to Bess Thornton.

"Pull him in," he said. "I've caught lots of 'em. You can land this one."

The girl seized the rod, with a little cry of delight, and lifted the fish out of water. Then she swung it in on shore, where it lay, with its green body twisting about in the grass, and its great jaws distended, showing its sharp teeth.

"My, isn't he ugly looking!" she exclaimed. "You take the hook out, will you, Tim?"

Tim, grasping the squirming fish tightly behind the gills, disengaged the hook and threw the fish down in the grass again. "That one's yours," he said.

The girl still held the pole.

"Let me try just a minute, will you?" she asked. "If I get another, you can have it."

Tim assented readily, and she swung the pole and cast the hook far out upon the water. She drew it back and forth past a clump of lily pads, and then cast again. She was not as skilful with the long rod as the boy had been, however; and once, as she cast, the line did not have time to straighten out behind her, and the hook fell in the water close by the shore. She jerked it out and tried to cast again.

The hook swung in, almost striking her in the face; and both she and Tim Reardon dodged. The next moment, she made a sweep with the rod, to throw the hook back toward the water. Something caught, and she felt a slight tug at her neck. She dropped the rod and uttered a cry of dismay.

"What's the matter?" cried Little Tim. "Did you get hooked?"

But the girl made no answer. She stood, holding the ends of the broken chain in either hand, anxiously looking all about her.

"The coin!" she gasped. "Tim, I've lost the coin. Oh, won't gran' give it to me if I've lost that again!"

They hunted everywhere about them, parting the tufts of grass carefully and poking about on hands and knees. But the coin was nowhere to be seen.

"I tell you what," suggested Tim, "it's gone into the water. Never mind, though; I can get it. I'll dive for it."

They were at the edge of a little bank, from which the water went off deep at a sharp angle. They gazed down into the water, but there was not light enough within its depths, nor was it sufficiently clear to enable them to see the bottom.

"I'm going in after it, too," exclaimed Bess Thornton; "but I can't in this dress." She glanced at the sailor-suit she wore. "I'm going back to the house and put on the old one. You try for it while I'm gone, won't you, Tim?"

The boy nodded; and Bess Thornton, half in tears, started off on a smart run to the old house. In her dismay, she had forgotten that Granny Thornton had returned from the inn; but she was speedily aware of that fact as she darted in at the kitchen door. There stood Granny Thornton, with mingled anger and alarm depicted on her countenance.

"Oh," she cried, "I'd just like to shake you, good. Give me back that chain and the coin. Don't say you didn't take it. I found it gone. What do you mean by going into that drawer? Don't you ever – "

She stopped abruptly, for Bess Thornton was facing her, the tears standing in her eyes, and she held in her hand the broken chain.

"Oh, gran'," she cried, "don't scold. I didn't mean any harm. I just wanted to wear it a little while. But it's – it's gone."

And she told the story of the loss of the coin.

Granny Thornton stared at the girl in amazement. Then she burst forth in querulous tones, seemingly as though she were addressing the girl and soliloquizing at the same time.

"It's gone!" she gasped. "Gone again – and sure there's a fate in it. Plenty of chains like that to be had, but never another coin of the kind seen about these parts. Oh, but you've gone and done it. Don't you know that coin meant luck for you, girl? You might have gone to the big house to live some day; but you'll never go now. You've lost the luck. You're bad – bad. There's no making you mind. Give me the chain."

Her voice grew more harsh and angry. "Let the coin go," she said. "You've lost it, and you can suffer for it. You'll not go out of this house again to-day."

Puzzled at her strange words, and hurt at the scolding, Bess Thornton sat sullenly. "I'll get it back to-morrow, if I can't to-day," she said. "I'm going to dive for it."

"You keep away from the water, do you hear?" replied Granny Thornton; but, a half-hour later, she seemed to have changed her mind. "Go and get it, if you can," she said, shortly. "Change that dress – and don't get drowned."

But Little Tim, in the mean time, had not been idle. Hastily throwing off his clothing, he dived again and again into the deep pool, swimming to the bottom and groping about there. He brought up handfuls of sticks and small stones, and the debris of the water's bed. A dozen times he was unsuccessful – and then, at last, as he clung to the bank and opened his fist for the water to thin the mud and ooze that he had clutched, there lay the golden coin, bright and shining in his palm.

He scrambled out, had his clothes on in a twinkling, dropped the coin into one of his pockets, and started off on a run down the road.

Perhaps old Granny Thornton had been right, however, when she exclaimed that there was a fate in the mysterious foreign piece; for when Tim Reardon reached his hand into his pocket presently, to see that the coin was safe – lo, it had once more disappeared. Little Tim, with a look of chagrin, turned his pocket inside out. A tell-tale hole in one corner accounted for the disappearance. Tim, muttering his disgust, slowly retraced his steps, kicking away the dust with his bare feet.

He was still searching for the coin when Bess Thornton returned. They were both searching for it an hour later. But the coin was lost.

"I'm awful sorry," said Tim, as they finally relinquished the search. "I'll tell you what, though. It's my fault, and I've got a dollar and sixty cents left at home, and I'll give you that."

The girl shook her head sadly. "I wouldn't take it," she replied.

Two hours later, Benny Ellison, strolling homeward, with gun over shoulder, and two pickerel dangling from a crotched stick, espied something gleaming in the grass by the roadside. He stooped and picked up a golden coin.

"What luck!" he exclaimed. He put the coin in his pocket and carried it home. He had a collection of curiosities there, in an old cabinet, that he valued highly: coins, stamps, birds' nests, queer bits of stone and odds and ends of stuff. Seeing that the coin was punched, and foreign, and not available for spending money, he placed it among his treasures. He was a curiously unsocial youth; had few pleasures that he shared with his cousins, but gloated over his own acquisitions quietly like a miser. He rejoiced silently in this new addition to his hoard, and said nothing about it.

CHAPTER XVII

A STRANGE ADMISSION

The days went by, and summer was near its end. Then, with the vacation drawing to a close, there came a surprise for Henry Burns, in the form of a letter from his aunt. It was she with whom he lived, in a Massachusetts town; but now she wrote that she had decided to spend the winter in Benton, and that he must enter school there at the fall term, along with Tom Harris and Bob White. "Then I stay, too," exclaimed Jack Harvey, when he had read the important news – and he did. The elder Harvey, communicated with, had no objection; and, indeed, there was a most satisfactory arrangement made, later, that Jack Harvey should board with Henry Burns and his aunt; an arrangement highly pleasing to the two boys, if it added later to the concern and worry of the worthy Miss Matilda Burns.

The days grew shorter and the nights cool; and, by and by, with much reluctance, the canoes were hauled ashore for the last time, of an afternoon, and stored away in a corner of the barn back of the camp; and fishing tackle for summer use was put carefully aside, also. There were lessons to be learned, and fewer half-days to be devoted to the sport for which they cared most.

The pickerel in the stream and the trout in the brook sought deeper waters, in anticipation of winter. The boys spent less and less of their time in the vicinity of the old Ellison farm.

Tim and Young Joe Warren stuck mostly by the camp, and drew the others there on certain select occasions. For Little Tim, by reason of long roving, had a wonderful knowledge of the resources of the country around the old stream. He had a beechnut grove that he had discovered, three miles back from the water, on the farther shore; likewise a place where the hazel bushes were loaded with nuts, and where a few butternut trees yielded a rich harvest. Young Joe and he gathered a great store of these, as the nights of early frost came on; and they spread a feast for the others now and then, with late corn, roasted in questionable fashion over a smoky box-stove that heated the camp stifling hot.

October came in, with the leaves growing scarlet in the woods and sharp winds whistling through the corn and bean stacks. Henry Burns and his friends had seen but little of the Ellisons, who were out of school for the winter, caring for the farm; but now the night of the 31st of October found Henry Burns and Jack Harvey, George Warren, Bob White and Tom Harris seated in the big kitchen of the Ellison farmhouse.

It was plainly to be seen that, although the Ellisons had been reduced in circumstances through the loss of the mill, there was still an abundance of its kind yielded by the farm. On a table were dishes of apples and fall pears; two pumpkin pies of vast circumference squatted near by, close to a platter of honey and a huge pitcher of milk.

It was dark already, though only half-past seven o'clock, and the lights of two kerosene lamps gleamed through the kitchen windows.

As hosts on this occasion, John and James Ellison presently proceeded to introduce their city friends to the delights of milk and honey; a dish composed of the dripping sweet submerged in a bowl of creamy milk, and eaten therewith, comb and all.

"Never hurt anybody eaten that way," explained John Ellison, "and this is the real thing. The milk is from the Jersey cows in the barn, and the honey's from the garret, where there's five swarms of bees been working all summer."

They need no urging, however.

"Poor Joe! He'll die of grief when I tell him about this," remarked George Warren, smacking his lips over a mouthful.

"Why didn't you bring him along?" asked John Ellison. "I wanted you all to come."

"Arthur's off down town, and Joe's gone to the camp with Tim Reardon," explained the eldest of the Warren brothers. "Tim and Joe'll be sky-larking around somewhere later. They're great on Hallowe'en night, you know. They've got a supply of cabbage-stumps to deliver at the doors."

And thus the talk drifted to Hallowe'en, the night when, if old romances could only be believed, there are witches and evil spirits abroad, alive to all sorts of pranks and mischief.

In the midst of which, and most timely, there came suddenly a sharp tap at one of the windows. They paused and turned quickly in that direction. James Ellison sprang to the window and peered out.

"Nothing there," he said; "one of those big beetles, I guess, attracted by the light."

They fell to eating again, when presently another smart rap at the window startled them.

John Ellison laughed. "It's some of fat old Benny's nonsense," he said. "He wouldn't come in, because you city chaps were coming. He's rigged a tick-tack; I can see the string of it. Wait a minute and I'll just steal 'round the other door and catch him at it. You fellows go on eating, and don't pay any attention. I'll catch him."

They resumed the feast; and again the sharp rap sounded upon the window pane, caused by the clicking of a heavy nail – suspended from the window sash by a pin and string, and yanked by somebody at the end of a longer string attached – swinging in against the glass.

There came a yell of surprise shortly; and, in a moment, there appeared John Ellison clutching the culprit by the collar. Which culprit, to their astonishment, proved to be, not Benny Ellison but Young Joe.

"Here he is," laughed John Ellison, dragging in his prisoner. "What'll we do with him?"

"Clean him," suggested George Warren, winking at the others. "He's got a dirty face."

True enough, Young Joe had, in the course of his evening's adventures, acquired a streak of smut across one cheek.

Roaring at the suggestion, they seized the struggling captive, lifted him up bodily to the sink, where they held him face upward under a stream of water, pumped with a vigour. When they had done with him, Young Joe's face was most assuredly clean.

"Now," said John Ellison, as they set Joe on his feet again, "there's a towel. Dry up and come and have some honey."

Young Joe, grinning, and with a joyous vision of honey and pumpkin pie before him, obeyed with alacrity.

"Say," he said, cramming a spoonful of the mess into his mouth, and gulping it with huge satisfaction, "can Tim come in? He's out there."

"Sure, bring him in," assented John Ellison.

A few shrill whistles from Young Joe brought his companion to the door; and Tim Reardon was soon likewise equipped with bowl and spoon – but not before he had got his ducking at the kitchen pump, which he took with Spartan fortitude.

Honey and milk, pies and fruit soon disappeared rapidly at the renewed attack. A fresh pie, added largely for the benefit of Young Joe and Tim, went the way of the others. Young Joe gave a murmur of surfeited delight as the last piece of crust disappeared; while Little Tim was gorged to the point almost of speechlessness, and could hardly shake his head at the proffer of more.

"Well," said George Warren, at length, "what are you two chaps doing around here, anyway – I'll bet Joe smelled the food, clear down to the camp."