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The Great Quest
Charles Hawes
Part 1
OLD ACQUAINTANCE
Chapter 1 THE STRANGER
ONE morning early in the summer of 1826, I brushed the sweat from my forehead and the flour from my clothes, unrolled my shirt-sleeves to my wrists, donned my coat, and, with never a suspicion that that day was to be unlike any other, calmly walked out into the slanting sunshine. Rain had fallen in the night, and the air was still fresh and cool. Although the clock had but just struck six, I had been at work an hour, and now that my uncle, Seth Upham, had come down to take charge of the store, I was glad that some business discussed the evening before gave me an excuse to go on an errand to the other end of the village.
Uncle Seth looked up from his ledger as I passed. "You are prompt to go," said he. "I've scarce got my hat on the peg. Well, the sooner the better, I suppose. Young Mackay's last shipment of oil was of poor quality and color. The rascal needs a good wigging, but the best you can do is tell the old man my opinion of his son's goods. If he gets a notion that we're likely to go down to nine cents a gallon on the next lot, he'll bring the boy to taw, I'll warrant you. Well, be gone. The sooner you go, the sooner you'll come, and we're like to have a busy day."
I nodded and went down the steps, but turned again and looked back. As Uncle Seth sat at his desk just inside the door, his bald head showing above the ledgers, he made me think of a pigeon-holed document concerned with matters of trade — weights and measures, and dollars and cents. He was a brisk, abrupt little man, with keen eyes and a thin mouth, and lines that cut at sharp angles into his forehead and drew testy curves around his chin; and in his way he was prominent in the village. Though ours was a community of Yankees, he had the reputation, in which he took great pride, of being an uncommonly sharp hand at a bargain. That it could be a doubtful compliment, he never suspected.
He owned property in three towns besides our own village of Topham; he kept a very considerable balance in a Boston bank; he loaned money at interest from one end of the county to the other, and he held shares in two school ers and a bark — not to mention the bustling general store that was the keystone of his prosperity.
If anyone had presumed so far as to suggest that a close bargain could be aught but creditable, Uncle Seth would have shot a testy glance at him, -with some such comment as, "Pooh! He's drunk or crazy!" And he would then have atoned for any little trickery by his generosity, come Sunday, when the offering was taken at church.
There were, to be sure, those who said, by allusion or implication, that he would beat the devil at his own game, for all his pains to appear so downright honest. But they were ne'er-do-weels and village scoundrels, whom Uncle Seth, although he was said to have known them well enough in early youth, passed without deigning to give them so much as a nod; and of course no one believed the word of such as they.
For my own part, I had only friendly feelings toward him, for he was always a decent man, and since my mother died, his odd bursts of generosity had touched me not a little. Grumpy old Uncle Seth! Others might call him "nigh," but for all his abrupt manner, he was kind to me after a queer, short fashion, and many a banknote had whisked from his pocket to mine at moments when a stranger would have thought him in furious temper.
Turning on my heel, I left him busy at his desk amid his barrels and cans and kegs and boxes, and unwittingly set forth to meet the beginning of the wildest, maddest adventure that I ever heard of outside the pages of fiction.
As I went down past the church, the parsonage, and the smithy, the little group of buildings that, together with our general store, formed the hub on which the life of the country for many miles thereabouts revolved, — I was surprised to see no one astir. Few country people then were — or now are — so shameless as to lie in bed at six o'clock of a summer morning.
By rights I should have heard the clank of metal, the hum of voices, men calling to their horses, saws whining through wood, and hammers driving nails. But there was no sound of speech or labor; the nail-kegs on which our village worthies habitually reposed during long intervals of the working day were unoccupied; the fire in the blacksmith's forge, for want of blowing, had died down to a dull deep red. Three horses were tugging at their halters inside the smithy, and a well-fed team was waiting outside by a heavy cart; yet no one was anywhere to be seen.
Perceiving all this from a distance, I was frankly puzzled; and as I approached, I cast about with lively curiosity to see what could cause so strange a state of affairs. It was only when I had gone past the smithy, that I saw the smith and his customers and his habitual guests gathered on the other side of the building, where I had not been able to see them before. They were staring at the old village tavern, which stood some distance away on a gentle rise of land.
My curiosity so prevailed over my sense of duty that I turned from the road through the tall grass, temporarily abandoning my errand, and picked my way among some old wheels and scrap iron to join the men.
Their talk only aggravated my wonder.
Clearing his throat, the smith gruffly muttered, "It does act like him, and yet I can't believe it'll be him."
"Why shouldn't he come back?" one of the farmers asked in a louder voice. "Things done twenty years ago will never be dragged up to face him, and he'd know that,"
The smith grunted. "Where would Neil Gleazen find the money to buy a suit of good clothes and a beaver hat?"
"That's easy answered," a third speaker put in. And they all exchanged significant glances.
In the silence that followed I made bold to put a question for myself. "Of whom are you talking?" I asked.
They looked closely at me and again exchanged glances.
"There's someone up yonder at the inn, Joe," the smith said kindly; "and Ben, here, getting sight of him last night and again this morning, has took a notion that it's a fellow who used to live here years ago and who left town — well, in a hurry. As to that, I can't be sure, but I vum, I'd not be surprised if it was Neil Gleazen after all."
I now discerned in one of the rocking-chairs on the porch the figure of a stranger, well dressed so far as we could see at that distance, who wore a big beaver hat set rakishly a trifle forward. He had thrust his thumbs into the armholes of his waistcoat, and as he leaned back, with his feet raised against one of the columns that supported the porch-roof, he sent clouds of white cigar-smoke eddying up and away.
The others were so intent on their random speculations that, when I asked more about who and what Neil Gleazen was, they ignored my question, and continued to exchange observations in low voices.
I could hear little of their talk without forcing myself into their very midst, and of what little I heard I made still less, for it was full of unfamiliar names and reminiscences that meant nothing to me.
When some one spoke of Seth Upham, my mother's brother, I was all ears on the instant; but I saw the smith glance at me, and probably he nudged the speaker, for, after a moment's pause, they went on about indifferent matters. I then perceived that I was unlikely to learn more, so I returned to the road and continued on my way.
As I passed the tavern I took occasion to see what I could, in courtesy, of the stranger; but he looked so hard at me while I was passing that I could steal only glances at him, unless I gave him stare for stare, which I did not wish to do. So I got only a brief glimpse of tall hat, bold dark eyes under bushy brows, big nose, smooth-shaven chin, and smiling mouth, all of which a heavy stock and voluminous coat seemed to support. I thought that I caught the flash of a jeweled pin in the man's stock and of a ring on his ringer, but of that I was not sure until later. Pushing on, I left him in the old inn chair, as proud as a sultan, puffing clouds of white smoke from a long cigar and surveying the village as grandly as if he owned it, while I went about my uncle's business at the other end of the town.
But when I had gone far on my way, his dark face and arrogant manner were still in my mind. While I was arguing with surly old Dan Mackay about whale-oil and horses and sugar and lumber, I was thinking of those proud, keen eyes and that smiling, scornful mouth; while I was bargaining with Mrs. Mackay for eggs and early peas, I was thinking of the beaver that the man had worn and the big ring on his finger; and while I was walking back over two miles of country road, on which the sun was now pouring down with ever-increasing heat, I was thinking of how my uncle's name had popped out in the conversation beside the smithy — and how it had popped, so to speak, discreetly back again.
I was all eagerness, now, for another and better look at the stranger, and was resolved to stare him out of countenance, if need be, to get it. Imagine, then, my disappointment when, hot and sweaty, I once more came in sight of the tavern and saw the unmistakable figure under the beaver hat walk jauntily down the steps, pause a moment in the road, and, turning hi the opposite direction, go rapidly away from me.
The stranger should not escape me like that, I thought with a grim chuckle; and warm though I was, I lengthened my stride and drew slowly up on him.
As he passed the smithy, he looked to neither right nor left, yet I was by no means sure that he did not see the curious faces that filled the door when he went by. A man can see so much without turning his head!
While I toiled on after him, trying to appear indifferent and yet striving to overtake him before he should go beyond the store, where I must turn in, would I or would I not, he passed the church, the parsonage, and the schoolhouse. He wore his hat tilted forward at just such an angle, and to one side over his right eye; swinging his walking-stick nonchalantly, he clipped the blossoms off the buttercups as he passed them; now he paused to light a fresh cigar from the butt of the one that he was smoking; now he lingered a moment in the shade of an old chestnut tree. All the time I was gaining on him; but now the store was hard by.
Should I keep on until I had passed him and, turning back, could meet him face to face? No, Uncle Seth would surely stop me. In my determination to get a good look at the man, I was about to break into a run, when, to my amazement, he turned to the left toward the very place where I was going.
So close to him had I now come that, when he stood on the threshold, I was setting foot on the lower step. I could see Uncle Seth's clerks, Arnold Lament, a Frenchman, and Simeon Muzzy, busily at work in the back room. I could see, as before, Uncle Seth's bald head shining above the top of his desk. But my eyes were all for the stranger, and I now saw plainly that in the ring on his finger there flashed a great white diamond.
Uncle Seth, hearing our steps, raised his head. "Well?" he said sharply, in the dictatorial way that was so characteristic of him.
"Well!" repeated the stranger in a voice that startled me. It was deep and gruff, and into the monosyllable the man put a solid, heavy emphasis, which made my uncle's sharpness seem as light as a woman's burst of temper.
Uncle Seth, too, was startled, I think, for he raised his head and irritably peered over the steel rims of his spectacles. "Well," he grumpily responded, "what do you want of me?';
"An hour of your time," said the stranger, lowering his voice.
"Time's money," returned my uncle.
"I'm the lad to transmute it into fine gold for you, Seth Upham," said the stranger.
"How do you know my name?"
"That's a foolish question to ask. Everyone in town can tell a stranger the name of the man who keeps the village store."
My uncle grunted irritably, and brushed his chin with the feather of his quill.
"Come," said the stranger, "where's a chair?"
"Them that come to this store to loaf," my uncle cried, "generally sit on cracker-boxes. I'm a busy man."
He was still looking closely at the stranger, but his voice indicated that, after all, it might not be so hard to mollify him.
"Well, I ain't proud," the stranger said with a conciliatory gesture, but without the faintest nicker of a smile. "It won't be the first time I've set on a crackerbox and talked to Seth Upham. I mind a time once when old Parker used to keep the store, and me and you had stole our hats full of crackers, which we ate in the little old camp over by the river."
"Who," cried Uncle Seth, "who in heaven's name are you?"
He was pale to the very summit of his bald head; unconscious of what he was doing, he had thrust his pen down on the open ledger, where it left a great blotch of wet ink.
"Hgh! You've got no great memory for old friends, have you, Seth? You're rich now, I hear. Money-bags full of gold. Well, 'tune's money,' you said. You're going to put in a golden hour with me this day."
Uncle Seth got up and laid a trembling hand on the back of his desk. "Neil Gleazen! Cornelius Gleazen!" he gasped.
The stranger pushed his beaver back on his head, and with the finger on which the diamond sparkled flicked the ash from his cigar. "It's me, Seth," he returned; and for the first time since I had seen him he laughed a deep, hearty laugh.
"Well, what'll you have?" Uncle Seth demanded hotly. "I'm an honest man. I'm a deacon in the church. My business is an honest business. There's nothing here for you, Neil! What do you want?':
In spite of his apparent anger, or because of it, Uncle Seth's voice trembled.
"Well, what do you mean by all this talk of an honest man? Ain't I an honest man?"
"Why —why—"
"Hgh! You've not got much to say to that, have you?"
"I — why — I don't — know—"
"Of course you don't know. You don't know an honest man when you see one. Don't talk to me like that, Seth Upham. You and me has robbed too many churches together when we was boys to have you talk like that now. You and me—"
"For heaven's sake keep still!" Uncle Seth cried. "Customers are coming."
Neil Gleazen grunted again. Pushing a cracker-box into the corner behind Uncle Seth's desk and placing his beaver on it, he settled back in Uncle Seth's own chair, with a cool impudent wink at me, as if for a long stay, while Uncle Seth, with an eagerness quite unlike his usual abrupt, scornful manner, rushed away from his unwelcome guest and proceeded to make himself surprisingly agreeable to a pah- of country women who wished to barter butter for cotton cloth.
Chapter 2 MY UNCLE BEHAVES QUEERLY
THE village of Topham, to which, after an absence of twenty years, Cornelius Gleazen had returned as a stranger, lay near the sea and yet not beside it, near the post road and yet not upon it. From the lower branches of an old pine that used to stand on the hill behind the tavern we could see a thread of salt water, which gleamed like silver in the sun; and, on the clearest days, if we climbed higher, we could sometimes catch a glimpse of tiny ships working up or down the coast.
In the other direction, if we faced about, we could see, far down a long, broad valley, between low hills, a bit of white road that ran for a mile or two between meadows and marshes; and on the road we sometimes saw moving black dots trailing tiny clouds of dust, which we knew were men and horses and coaches.
In Topham I was born, and there I spent my boyhood. I suppose that I was quieter than the average boy and more studious, for I was content to find adventures in the pages of books, and I read from cover to cover all the journals of the day that came to hand. Certainly I was a dreamy lad, who knew books better than men, and who cared so little for "practical affairs" that much passed me by unnoticed which many another youth of no more native keenness would instantly have perceived.
When my mother, some years after my father's death, came to live with her brother and keep his house for him, it did not make so great a change in my manner of life as one might have expected. Bustling, smart Uncle Seth ruled the household with a quick, nervous hand; and for the time, as he bent all his energies to the various projects in which he was interested and in which he was more than ordinarily successful, he almost ignored his nephew.
It was not strange that after my mother died Uncle Seth should give me more thought, for he was left a second time alone in the world, and except for me he had neither close friend nor blood relation. I think that his very shrewdness, which must have shown him how much a man needs friends, perversely kept him from making them; it built around him a fence of cold, calculating, selfish appraisal that repelled most people whom he might have drawn closer to him. But to me, who had on him claims of a kind, and whom he had come by slow stages to know intimately, he gave a queer, testy, impulsive affection; and although the first well-meant but illchosen act by which he manifested it was to withdraw me from my books to the store, where he set me to learn the business, for which I was by no means so grateful as I should have been, both I and his two clerks, Sim Muzzy and Arnold Lamont, to whom long association had revealed the spontaneous generosity of which he seemed actually to be ashamed, had a very real affection for him.
It was no secret that he intended to make me his heir, and I was regarded through the town as a young man of rare prospects, which reconciled me in a measure to exchanging during the day my worn volumes of Goldsmith and Defoe for neat columns that represented profit and loss on candles and sugar and spice; and my hard, faithful work won Uncle Seth's confidence, and with it a curiously grudging acknowledgment. Thus our little world of business moved monotonously, though not unpleasantly, round and round the cycle of the seasons, until the day when Cornelius Gleazen came back to his native town.
He continued to sit in my uncle's chair, that first morning, while Uncle Seth, perspiring, it seemed to me, more freely than the heat of the day could have occasioned, bustled about and waited on his customers. I suppose that Neil Gleazen really saw nothing out of the ordinary in Uncle Seth's manner; but to me, who knew him so well now, it was plain that, instead of trying to get the troublesome women and their little business of eggs and cloth done with and out of the store as quickly as possible, which under the circumstances was what I should have expected of him, he was trying by every means hi his power to prolong their bartering. And whether or not Neil Gleazen suspected this, with imperturbable assurance he watched Uncle Seth pass from one end of the store to the other.
When at last the women went away and Uncle Seth returned to his desk, Gleazen removed the beaver from the cracker-box, and blowing a ring of smoke out across the top of the desk, watched the draft from the door tear it into thin blue shreds. "Sit down," he said calmly.
I was already staring at them in amazement; but my amazement was fourfold when Uncle Seth hesitated, gulped, and seated himself on the cracker-box.
"Joe," he said in an odd voice, "go help Arnold and Sim in the back shop."
So I went out and left them; and when I came back, Cornelius Gleazen was gone. But the next day he came again, and the next, and the next.
That he was the very man the smith and his cronies had thought him, I learned beyond peradventure of a doubt. Strange tales were whispered here and there about the village, and women covertly turned their eyes to watch him when he passed. Some men who had known him in the old days tried to conceal it, and pretended to be ignorant of all that concerned him, and gave him the coldest of cold stares when they chanced to meet him face to face. Others, on the contrary, courted his attention and called on him at the tavern, and went away, red with anger, when he coldly snubbed them.
At the time it seemed to make little difference to him what they thought. Strangely enough, the Cornelius Gleazen who had come back to his boyhood home was a very different Cornelius, people found, from the one who, twenty years before, had gone away by night with the town officers hot on his trail.
Strange stories of that wild night passed about the town, and I learned, in one way and another, that Gleazen was not the only lad who had then disappeared. There was talk of one Eli Norton, and of foul play, and an ugly word was whispered. But it had all happened long before, much had been forgotten, and some things had never come to light, and the officers who had run Gleazen out of town were long since dead. So, as the farmer by the smithy had said would be the case, the old scandals were let lie, and Gleazen went his way unmolested.
That my uncle would gladly have been rid of the fellow, for all his grand airs and the pocketfuls of money that he would throw out on the bar at the inn or on the counter at the store, I very well knew; I sometimes saw him wince at Gleazen's effrontery, or start to retort with his customary sharpness, and then go red or pale and press his lips to a straight line. Yet I could not imagine why this should be. If any other man had treated him so, Uncle Seth would have turned on him with the sharpest words at his command.
It was not like him to sit meekly down to another's arrogance. He had been too long a leading man in our community. But Cornelius Gleazen seemed to have cast a spell upon him. The longer Gleazen would sit and watch Uncle Seth, the more overbearing would his manner become and the more nervous would Uncle Seth grow.
I then believed, and still do, that if my uncle had stood up to him, as man to man, on that first day, Neil Gleazen would have pursued a very different course. But Uncle Seth, if he realized it at all, realized it too late.
At the end of a week Gleazen seemed to have become a part of the store. He would frown and look away out of the window, and scarcely deign to reply if any of the poorer or less reputable villagers spoke to him, whether their greeting was casual or pretentious; but he would nod affably, and proffer cigars, and exchange observations on politics and affairs of the world, when the minister or the doctor or any other of the solid, substantial men of the place came in.
I sometimes saw Uncle Seth surreptitiously watching him with a sort of blank wonder; and once, when we had come home together late at night, he broke a silence of a good two hours by remarking as casually as if we had talked of nothing else all the evening, "I declare to goodness, Joe, it does seem as if Neil Gleazen had reformed. I could almost take my oath he's not spoken to one of the old crowd since he returned. Who would have thought it? It's strange — passing strange."
It was the question that the whole town was asking - who would have thought it? I had heard enough by now of the old escapades, drunken revels in the tavern, raids on a score of chicken-roosts and gardens, arrant burglary, and even, some said, arson, to understand why they asked the question. But more remarkable by far to me was the change that had come over my uncle. Never before had the business of the store been better; never before had there been more mortgages and notes locked up in the big safe: never had our affairs of every description flourished so famously. But whereas, in other seasons of greater than ordinary prosperity, Uncle Seth had become almost genial, I had never seen him so dictatorial and testy as now. Some secret fear seemed to haunt him from day to day and from week to week.
Thinking back on that morning when Cornelius Gleazen first came to our store, I remembered a certain sentence he had spoken. "You and me has robbed too many churches together when we was boys - I wondered if I could not put my finger on the secret of the change that had come over my uncle.
Chapter 3 HIGGLEBY'S BARN
THAT Cornelius Gleazen had returned to Topham a reformed and honest man, the less skeptical people in the village now freely asserted. To be sure, some said that no good could come from any man who wore a diamond on his finger, to say nothing of another in his stock, and the minister held aloof for reasons known only to himself. But there was something hearty and wholesome in Gleazen's gruff voice and blunt, kindly wit that quite turned aside the shafts of criticism, particularly when he had made it plain that he would associate only with people of unquestioned respectability; and his devout air, as he sat in the very front pew in church and sang the hymns in a fine, reverberating bass, almost - although never quite — won over even the minister. All were agreed that you could pardon much in a man who had lived long in foreign parts; and if any other argument were needed, Gleazen's own free-handed generosity for every good cause provided it.
There were even murmurs that a man with Seth Upham's money might well learn a lesson from the stranger within our gates, which came to my uncle's ears, by way of those good people you can find in every town who feel it incumbent on them to repeat in confidence that which they have gained in confidence, and caused him no little uneasiness.
Of the probity of Cornelius Gleazen the village came gradually to have few doubts; and those of us who believed in the man were inclined to belittle the blacksmith, who persisted in thinking ill of him, and even the minister. Unquestionably Gleazen had seen the error of his youthful ways and had profited by the view, which, by all accounts, must have been extensive.
It was a fine thing to see him sitting on the tavern porch or in my uncle's store and discoursing on the news of the day. By a gesture, he would dispose of the riots in England and leave us marveling at his keenness. The riots held a prominent place in the papers, and we argued that a man who could so readily place them where they belonged must have a head of no mean order. Of affairs in South America, where General Paez had become Civil and Military Dictator of Venezuela, he had more to say; for General Paez, it seemed, was a friend of his. I have wondered since about his boasted friendship with the distinguished general, but at the time he convinced us that Venezuela was a fortunate state and that her affairs were much more important to men of the world than a bill to provide for the support of aged survivors of the Army of the Revolution, which a persistent onelegged old chap from the Four Corners tried a number of times to introduce into the conversation.
There came a day when both the doctor and the minister joined the circle around Cornelius Gleazen. Never was there prouder man! He fairly expanded in the warmth of their interest. His gestures were more impressive than ever before; his voice was more assertive. Yet behind it all I perceived a curious twinkle in his eyes, and I got a perverse impression that even then the man was laughing up his sleeve. This did not in itself set my mind on new thoughts; but to add to my curiosity, when the doctor and the minister were leaving, I saw that they were talking in undertones and smiling significantly.
Late one night toward the end of that week, I was returning from Boston, whither I had gone to buy ten pipes of Schiedam gin and six of Old East India Madeira, which a correspondent of my uncle's had lately imported. An acquaintance from the next town had given me a lift along the post road as far as a certain short cut, which led through a pine woods and across an open pasture where once there had been a farmhouse and where, although the house had burned to the ground eight or ten years since, a barn still stood, which was known throughout the countryside as "Higgleby's."
The sky was overcast, but the moonlight nevertheless sifted through the thin clouds: and with a word of thanks to the lad who had brought me thus far, I vaulted the bars and struck off toward the pines.
My eyes were already accustomed to the darkness, and the relief from trying to see my way under the thickly interwoven branches of the grove made the open pasture, when I came to it, seem nearly as light as day, although, of course, to anyone coming out into it from a lighted room, it would have seemed quite otherwise. Of the old barn, which loomed up on the hill, a black, gaunt, lonesome object a mile or so away, I thought very little, as I walked along, until it seemed to me that I saw a glimmer of fire through a breach where a board had been torn off.
Now the barn w T as remote from the woods and from the village; but the weather had been dry, the dead grass in the old pasture was as inflammable as tinder, and what wind there was, was blowing toward the pines. Since it was plain that I ought to investigate that flash of fire, I left the path and began to climb the hill.
Stopping suddenly, I listened with all my ears. I thought I had heard voices; it behooved me to be cautious. Prudently, now, I advanced, and as silently as possible. Now I knew that I heard voices. The knowledge that there were men in the old barn relieved me of any sense of duty in the matter of a possible fire, but at the same time it kindled my imagination. Who were they, and why had they come, and what were they doing? Instead of walking boldly up to the barn door, I began to climb the wall that served as the foundation.
The wall was six or eight feet high, but built of large stones, which afforded me easy hold for foot and hand, and from the top I was confident that I could peek in at a window just above. Very cautiously I climbed from rock to rock, until I was on my knees on the topmost tier. Now, twisting about and keeping flat to the barn with both arms extended so as not to overbalance and fall, I raised myself little by little, only to find, to my keen disappointment, that the window was still ten inches above my eyes.
That I should give up then, never occurred to me. I placed both hands on the sill and silently lifted myself until my chin was well above it.
In the middle of the old barn, by the light of four candles, a number of men were playing cards. I could hear much of what they said, but it concerned only the fortunes of the game, and as they spoke in undertones I could not recognize their voices.
For all that I got from their conversation they might as well have said naught, except that the sound of their talking and the clink of money as it changed hands served to cover whatever small noises I may have made, and thus enabled me to look in upon them undiscovered. Nor could I see who they were, for the candle light was dim and flickered, and those who were back to me, as they pressed forward in their eagerness to follow the play, concealed the faces of those opposite them. Moreover, my position was extremely uncomfortable, perhaps even dangerous. So I lowered myself until my toes rested on the wall of rock, and kneeling very cautiously, began to descend.
Exploring with my foot until I found a likely stone, I put my weight on it, and felt it turn. Failing to clutch the top of the wall, I went down with a heavy thud.
For a moment I lay on the ground with my wind knocked out of me, completely helpless. Then sharp voices broke the silence, and the sound of someone opening the barn door instilled enough wholesome fear into me to enable me to get up on all fours after a fashion, and creep cautiously away.
From the darkness outside, my eyes being already accustomed to the absence of light, I could see a number of men standing together in front of the barn door. They must have blown out the candles, for the door and the windows and the chinks between the boards were dark. Cursing myself for a silly fool, I made off as silently as possible.
I had not recognized one of the players, I had got a bad tumble and sore joints for my trouble, and my pride was hurt. In short, I felt that I had fallen out of the small end of the horn, and I was in no cheerful mood as I limped along. But by the tune I came into the village half an hour later, I had recovered my temper and my wind; and so, although I earnestly desired to go home and to bed, to rest my lame bones, I decided to go first to the store and report to Uncte Seth the results of my mission.
Through the lighted windows of the store, as I approached, I could see Arnold Lamont and Sim Muzzy playing chess in the back room. They were a strange pair, and as ill matched as any two you ever saw. Lamont was a Frenchman, who had appeared, seemingly from nowhere, ten or a dozen years before, and in quaintly precise English had asked for work — only because it was so exceedingly precise, would you have suspected that it was a foreigner's English. He carried himself with a strange dignity, and his manner, which seemed to confer a favor rather than to seek one, had impressed Uncle Seth almost against his will.
"Why, yes," he had said sharply, "there's work enough to keep another man. But what, pray, has brought you here?"
"It is the fortune of war," Lamont had replied. And that was all that my uncle ever got out of him.
Without more ado he had joined Sim Muzzy, a wellmeaning, simple fellow who had already worked for Uncle Seth for some eight years, and there he had stayed ever since.
Arnold and Sim shared the room above the store and served both as watchmen and as clerks; but it was Sim who cooked their meals, who made their beds, who swept and dusted and polished. Although the two worked for equally small pay and, all in all, were as satisfactory men as any storekeeper could hope to have, Arnold had carried even into the work of the store that same odd, foreign dignity; and it apparently never occurred, even to petulant, talkative Sim, that Arnold, so reserved, so quietly assured, should have lent his hand to mere domestic duties.
Learning early in their acquaintance, each that the other played chess, they had got a board and a set of men, and, hi spite of a disparity in skill that for some people must have made it very irksome, had kept the game up ever since. Arnold Lamont played chess with the same precision with which he spoke English; and if Sim Muzzy managed to catch him napping, and so to win one game in twenty, it was a feat to be talked about for a month to come.
Through the windows, as I said, I saw them playing chess in the back shop; then, coming round the corner of the store, I saw someone just entering. It was no other than Cornelius Gleazen, in beaver, stock, coat, and diamonds, with the perpetual cigar bit tight between his teeth.
A little to my surprise, I noticed that there were beads of perspiration on his forehead. I had been walking fast myself, and yet I had not thought of it as a warm evening: the overcast sky and the wind from the sea, with then* promise of rain to break the drouth, combined to make the night the coolest we had had for some weeks. It surprised me also to see that Gleazen was breathing hard — but was he? I could not be sure.
Then, through the open door, I again saw Arnold Lament in the back room. In his hand he was holding a knight just over the square on which it was to rest; but with his eyes he was following Cornelius Gleazen across the store and round behind my uncle's desk, where now there was a second chair in place of the cracker-box.
When Gleazen had sat down beside my uncle, he tapping the desk with a long pencil, which he had drawn from his pocket, Uncle Seth bustling about among his papers, with quick useless sallies here and there, and into the pigeonholes, as if he were confused by the mass of business that confronted him, — it was a manner he sometimes affected when visitors were present, — Arnold Lamont put down the knight and absently, as if his mind were far away, said in his calm, precise voice, "Check!"
"No, no! You mustn't do that! You can't do that! That's wrong! See! You were on that square there - see? and you moved so! You can't put your knight there," Sim Muzzy cried.
That Lament had transgressed by mistake the rules of the game hit Sim like a thunderclap and even further befuddled his poor wits.
"Ah," said Lamont, "I see. I beg you, pardon my error. So! Check."
He again moved the knight, apparently without thought; and Sim Muzzy fell to biting his lip and puzzling this way and that and working his fingers, which he always did when he was getting the worst of the game.
Arnold Lamont seemed not to care a straw about the game. Through the door he was watching Cornelius Gleazen. And Cornelius Gleazen was wiping his forehead with his handkerchief.
I wondered if it was my lively imagination that made me think that he was breathing quickly. How long would it have taken him, I wondered, to cut across the pasture from Higgleby's barn to the north road? Coming thus by the Four Corners, could he have reached the store ahead of me? Or could he, by way of the shunpike, have passed me on the road?
Chapter 4 SWORDS AND SHIPS
HAVING succeeded in establishing himself in the society and confidence of the more substantial men of the village, and having discomfited completely those few — among whom remained the blacksmith — who had treated him shabbily in the first weeks of his return and had continued ever since to regard him with suspicion, Cornelius Gleazen began now to extend his campaign to other quarters, and to curry favor among those whose good-will, so far as I could see, was really of little weight one way or another. He now cast off something of his arrogant, disdainful air, and won the hearts of the children by strange knickknacks and scrimshaws, which he would produce, sometimes from his pockets, and sometimes, by delectable sleight of hand, from the very air itself. Before long half the homes in the village boasted whale's teeth on which were wrought pictures of whales and ships and savages, or chips of ivory carved into odd little idols, and every one of them, you would find, if you took the trouble to ask, came from the old chests that Neil Gleazen kept under the bed in his room at the tavern, where now he was regarded as the prince of guests.
To those who were a little older he gave more elaborate trinkets of ivory and of dark, strange woods; and the report grew, and found ready belief, that he had prospered greatly in trade before he decided to retire, and that he had brought home a fortune with which to settle down in the old town; for the toys that he gave away so freely were worth, we judged, no inconsiderable sum. But to the lads in their early twenties, of whom I was one, he endeared himself perhaps most of all when, one fine afternoon, smoking one of his long cigars and wearing his beaver tilted forward at just such an angle, he came down the road with a great awkward bundle under his arm, and disclosed on the porch of my uncle's store half a dozen foils and a pair of masks.
He smiled when all the young fellows in sight and hearing gathered round him eagerly, and called one another to come and see, and picked up the foils and passed at one another awkwardly. There was an odd satisfaction in his smile, as if he had gained something worth the having. What a man of his apparent means could care for our good-will, I could not have said if anyone had asked me, and at the time I did not think to wonder about it. But his air of triumph, when I later had occasion to recall it to mind, convinced me that for our good-will he did care, and that he was manoeuvring to win and hold it.
It was interesting to mark how the different ones took his playthings. Sim Muzzy cried out in wonder and earnestly asked, "Are those what men kill themselves with in duels? Pray how do they stick 'em in when the points are blunted?" Arnold Lament, without a word or a change of expression, picked up a foil at random and tested the blade by bending it against the wall. Uncle Seth, having satisfied his curiosity by a glance, cried sharply, "That's all very interesting, but there's work to be done. Come, come, I pay no one for gawking out the door."
The lively hum of voices continued, and a number of town boys remained to examine the weapons; but Arnold, Sim, and I obediently turned back into the store.
"That's all right, lads," Cornelius Gleazen cried. "Come evening, I'll show you a few points on using these toys. I'll make a fencing-master and a good one, I'll have you know, and there are some among you that have the making of swordsmen. You're one, Joe Woods, you're one."
I was pleased to be singled out, and went to my work with a will, thinking meanwhile of the promised lessons. It never occurred to me that Cornelius Gleazen could have had a motive that did not appear on the surface for so choosing my name from all the rest.
That evening, true to his promise, he took us in hand on the village green, with four fifths of the village standing by to watch, and gave us lessons in thrusting and parrying and stepping swiftly forward and backward. We were an awkward company of recruits, and for our pains we got only hearty laughter from the onlookers; but the new sport captured our imagination, and realizing that, once upon a time, even Cornelius Gleazen himself had been a tyro, we zealously worked to learn what we could, and in our idle moments we watched with frank admiration the grand flourishes and great leaps and stamps of which Gleazen was master.
The diamond on the finger of his gracefully curved left hand flashed as he sprang about, and his ruffled shirt, damped by his unwonted exercise, clung close to his big shoulders and well-formed back. Surely, we thought, few could equal his surprising agility; the great voice in which he roared his suggestions and commands increased our confidence in his knowledge of swordsmanship.
When, after my second turn at his instruction, I came away with my arms aching from the unaccustomed exertion and saw that Arnold Lament was watching us and covertly smiling, I flamed red and all but lost my temper. Why should he laugh at me, I thought. Surely I was no clumsier than the others. Indeed, he who thought himself so smart probably could not do half so well. Had not Mr. Gleazen praised me most of all? In my anger at Arnold's secret amusement, I avoided him that evening and for several days to come.
It was on Saturday night, when we were closing the store for the week, that quite another subject led me back to my resentment in such a way that we had the matter out between us; and as all that we had to say is more or less intimately connected with my story I will set it down word for word.
A young woman in a great quilted bonnet of the kind that we used to call calash, and a dress that she no doubt thought very fetching, came mincing into the store and ordered this thing and that in a way that kept me attending closely to her desires. When she had gone mincing out again, I turned so impatiently to put the counter to rights, that Arnold softly chuckled.
"Apparently," said he, with a quiet smile, "the lady did not impress you quite as she desired, Joe."
"Impress me!" I snorted, ungallantly imitating her mincing manner. "She impressed me as much as any of them."
"You must have patience, Joe. Some day there will come a lady—"
"No, no!" I cried, with the cocksure assertiveness of my years.
"But yes!"
"Not I! No, no, Arnold , 'needles and pins, needles and pins' —"
"'When a man marries his trouble begins'?" Sadness now shadowed Arnold's expressive face. "No! Proverbs sometimes are pernicious."
"You are laughing at me!"
I had detected, through the veil of melancholy that seemed to have fallen over him, a faint ray of something akin to humor.
"I am not laughing at you, Joe." His voice was sad. "You will marry some day marry and settle down. It is good to do so. I—"
There was something in his stopping that made me look at him in wonder. Immediately he was himself again, calm, wise, taciturn; but in spite of my youth I instinctively felt that only by suffering could a man win his way to such kindly, quiet dignity.
I had said that I would not marry: no wonder, I have since thought, that Arnold looked at me with that gentle humor. Never dreaming that in only a few short months a new name and a new face were to fill my mind and my heart with a world of new anxieties and sorrows and joys, never dreaming of the strange and distant adventures through which Arnold and I were to pass, if a fortuneteller had foretold the story, I should have laughed it to scorn, I was only angry at his amused smile. Perhaps I had expected him to argue with me, to try to correct my notions. In any case, when he so kindly and yet keenly appraised at its true worth my boyish pose, I was sobered for a moment by the sadness that he himself had revealed; then I all but flew into a temper.
"Oh, very well! Go on and laugh at me. You were laughing at me the other night when I was fencing, too. I saw you. I'd like to see you do better yourself. Go on and laugh, you who are so wise."
Arnold's smile vanished. "I am not laughing at you, Joe. Nor was I laughing at you then."
"You were not laughing at me?"
"No."
"At whom, then, were you laughing?"
To this Arnold did not reply.
The fencing lessons, begun so auspiciously that first evening, became a regular event. Every night we gathered on the green and fenced together until twilight had all but settled into dark. Little by little we learned such tricks of attack and defense as our master could teach us, until we, too, could stamp and leap, and parry with whistling circles of the blade. And as we did so, we young fellows of the village came more and more to look upon Cornelius Gleazen almost as one of us.
Though his coming had aroused suspicion, though for many weeks there were few who would say a good word for him, as the summer wore away, he established himself so firmly in the life of his native town that people began to forget, as far as anyone could see, that he had ever had occasion to leave it in great haste.
If he praised my fencing and gave me more time than the others, I thought it no more than my due — was I not a young man of great prospects? If Uncle Seth had at first regarded him with suspicion, Uncle Seth, too, had quite returned now to his old abrupt, masterful way and was again as sharp and quick of tongue as ever, even when Neil Gleazen was sitting in Uncle Seth's own chair and at his own desk. Perhaps, had we been keener, we should have suspected that something was wrong, simply because no one expect a few stupid persons like the blacksmith had a word to say against Neil Gleazen. You would at least have expected his old cronies to resent his leaving them for more respectable company. But not even from them did there come a whisper of suspicion or complaint.
Why should not a man come home to his native place to enjoy the prosperity of his later years? we argued. It was the most natural thing in the world; and when Cornelius Gleazen talked of foreign wars and the state of the country and the deaths of Mr. Adams and Mr. Jefferson, and of the duel between Mr. Clay and Mr. Randolph, the most intelligent of us listened with respect, and found occasion in his shrewd observations and trenchant comment to rejoice that Topham had so able a son to return to her in the full power of his maturity.
There was even talk of sending him to Congress, and that it was not idle gossip I know because three politicians from Boston came to town and conferred with our selectmen and Judge Bordman over their wine at the inn for a long evening; and Peter Nuttles, whose sister waited on them, spread the story to the ends of the county.
Late one night, when Uncle Seth and I were about to set out for home, leaving Arnold and Sim to lock up the store, we parted with Gleazen on the porch, he stalking off to the right hi the moonlight and swinging his cane as he went, we turning our backs on the village and the bright windows of the tavern, and stepping smartly toward our own dark house, in which the one lighted lamp shone from the window of the room that Mrs. Jameson, our housekeeper, occupied.
"He's a man of judgment," Uncle Seth said, as if meditating aloud, "rare judgment and a wonderful knowledge of the world."
He seemed to expect no reply, and I made none.
"He was venturesome to rashness as a boy," Uncle Seth presently continued. "All that seems to have changed now."
We walked along through the dust. The weeds beside the road and the branches of the trees and shrubs were damp with dew.
"As a boy," Uncle Seth said at last, "I should never have thought of going to Neil Gleazen for judgment - aye, or for knowledge." And when we stood on the porch in the moonlight and looked back at the village, where all the houses were dark now except for a lamp here and there that continued to burn far into the night, he added, "How would you like to leave all this, Joe, and wrestle a fall with fortune for big stakes — aye, for rich stakes, with everything in our favor to win?"
At something in his voice I turned on my heel, my heart leaping, and stared hard at him.
As if he suddenly realized that he had been saying things he ought not to say, he gave himself a quick shake, and woke from his meditations with a start. "We must away to bed," he cried sharply. "It's close on midnight."
Here was a matter for speculation. For an hour that afternoon and for another hour that evening Uncle Seth and Neil Gleazen had sat behind my uncle's desk, with their chairs drawn close together and the beaver laid on the cracker-box, and had scribbled endless columns of figures and mysterious notes on sheet after sheet of foolscap. What, I wondered, did it mean?
At noon next day, as I was waiting on customers in the front of the store, I saw a rider with full saddlebags pass, on a great black horse, and shortly afterwards I heard one of the customers remark that the horse was standing at the inn. Glancing out of the window, I saw that the rider had dismounted and was talking with Cornelius Gleazen; though the distance was considerable, Gleazen's bearing and the forward tilt of his beaver were unmistakable. When next I passed the window, I saw that Gleazen was posting down the road toward the store, with his beaver tipped even farther over his right eye, his cane swinging, and a bundle under his arm.
As I bowed the customers out, Gleazen entered the store, brushing past me with a nod, and loudly called, "SethUpham! Seth Upham! Where are you?"
"Here I am. What's wanted?" my uncle testily retorted, as he emerged from a bin into which he had thrust his head and shoulders in his efforts to fill a peck measure.
"Come, come," cried Gleazen in his great, gruff voice. "Here's news!"
"News," returned my uncle, sharply; "news is no reason to scare a man out of a year's growth."
Neil Gleazen laughed loudly and gave my uncle a resounding slap on the back that made him wTithe. "News, Seth, news is the key to fortune. Come, man, come, lay by your pettifogging. Here's papers just in by the post. You ain't going to let 'em lie no more than I am."
To my amazement, I could never get used to it, my uncle's resentment seemed to go like mist before the sun, and he said not a word against the boisterous roughness of the friend of his youth, although I almost believe that, if anyone else had dared to treat him so, he would have grained the man with a hayfork. Instead, he wiped his hands on his coarse apron and followed Gleazen to the desk, where they sat down in the two chairs that now were always behind it.
For a time they talked in voices so low that I heard nothing of their conversation; but after a while, as they became more and more absorbed in their business, their voices rose, and I perceived that Gleazen was reading aloud from the papers some advertisements in which he seemed especially interested.
"Here's this," he would cry. "Listen to this. If this ain't a good one, I'll miss my guess. 'Executor's sale, Ship Congress: on Saturday the 15th, at twelve o'clock, at the wharf of the late William Gray, Lynn Street, will be sold at public auction the ship Congress, built at Mattapoisett near New Bedford hi the year 1823 and designed for the whale fishery. Measures 349 tons, is copper fastened and was copper sheathed over felt in London on the first voyage, and is in every respect a first-rate vessel. She has two suits of sails, chain and hemp cables, and is well found in the usual appurtenances. By order of the executors of the late William Gray, Whitewell, Bond and Company, Auctioneers.' There, Seth, there's a vessel for you, I'll warrant you."
My uncle murmured something that I could not hear; then Gleazen tipped his beaver back on his head — for once he had neglected to set it on the cracker-box — and hoarsely laughed. "Well, I'll be shot!" he roared. "How's a man to better himself, if he's so confounded cautious? Well, then, how's this: 'Marshal's Sale. United States of America, District of Massachusetts, Boston, August 31, 1826. Pursuant to a warrant from the Honorable John Davis, Judge of the District Court for the District aforesaid, I hereby give public notice that I shall sell at public auction on Wednesday the 8th day of September, at 12 o'clock noon, at Long Wharf, the schooner Caroline and Clara, libelled for wages by William Shipley, and the money arising from the sale to be paid into court. Samuel D. Hains, Marshal.' That'll come cheap, if cheap you'll have. But mark what I tell you, Seth, that what comes cheap, goes cheap. There's no good in it. It ain't as if you hadn't the money. The plan's mine, and I tell you, it's a good one, with three merry men waiting for us over yonder. Half's for you, a whole half, mind you; and half's to be divided amongst the rest of us. It don't pay to try to do things cheap. What with gear carried away and goods damaged, it don't pay."
Uncle Seth was marking lines on the margin of the newspaper before them.
"I wonder," he began, "how much-
Then they talked in undertones, and I heard nothing more.
Chapter 5 A MYSTERIOUS PROJECT
FOR three days I watched with growing amazement the strange behavior of my uncle. Now he would sit hunched up over his desk and search through a great pile of documents from the safe; now he would toss the papers into his strong box, lock it, and return it to its place hi the vault, and pace the floor in a revery so deep that you could speak in his very ear without getting a reply. At one minute he would be as cross as a devil's imp, and turn on you in fury if you wished to do him a favor; at the next he would fairly laugh aloud with good humor.
The only man at whom he never flew out in a rage was Cornelius Gleazen, and why this should be so, I could only guess. You may be sure that I, and others, tried hard to fathom the secret, when the two of them were sitting at my uncle's desk over a huge mass of papers, as they were for hours at a time.
On the noon of the third day they settled themselves together at the desk and talked interminably in undertones. Now Uncle Seth would bend over his papers; now he would look off across the road and the meadows to the woods beyond. Now he would put questions; now he would sit silent. An hour passed, and another, and another. At four o'clock they were still there, still talking in undertones. At five o'clock their heads were closer together than ever. Now Neil Gleazen was tapping on the top of his beaver. He had a strange look, which I did not understand, and between his eyes and the flashing of his diamond as his finger tapped the hat, he charmed me as if he were a snake. Even Sim Muzzy was watching them curiously, and on Arnold Lament's fine, sober face there was an expression of mingled wonder and distrust.
Customers came, and we waited on them; and when they had gone, the two were still there. The clocks were striking six when I faced about, hearing their chairs move, and saw them shaking hands and smiling. Then Cornelius Gleazen went away, and my uncle, carefully locking up his papers, went out, too.
Supper was late that night, for I waited until Uncle Seth came in; but he made no excuse for his long absence and late return. He ate rapidly and in silence, as if he were not thinking of his food, and he took no wine until he had pushed his plate away. Then he poured himself a glass from the decanter, tasted it, and said, "I am to be away to-morrow, Joe."
"Yes, sir," said I.
"I may be back to-morrow night and I may not. As to that, I can't say. But I wish, come afternoon, you'd go to Abe Guptil's for me. I've an errand there I want you to do."
I waited in silence.
"I hold a mortgage of two thousand dollars on his place," he presently went on. "I've let it run, out of goodnature. Good-nature don't pay. Well, I'm going to need the money. Give him a month to pay up. If he can't, tell him I'll sell him out."
"You'll what?" I cried, not believing that I heard him aright.
"I'll sell him out. Pringle has been wanting the place and he'll give at least two thousand."
"Now, Uncle Seth, Abraham Guptil's been a long time sick. His best horse broke a leg a while back and he had to shoot it, and while he was sick his crops failed. He can't pay you now. Give him another year. He's good for the money and he pays his interest on the day it's due."
Uncle Seth frowned. "I've been too good-natured," he said sharply. "I need the money myself. I shall sell him out."
"But—"
"Well?"
I stopped short. After all, I could not save Abe Guptil - I knew Uncle Seth too well for that. And it might be easier for Abe if I broke the news than if, say, Uncle Seth did.
"Very well," I replied after a moment's thought. "I will go."
Uncle Seth, appeased by my compliance, gave a short grunt, curtly bade me good-night and stumped off to bed. But I, wondering what was afoot, sat a long time at table while the candles burned lower and lower.
Next morning, clad in his Sunday best, Uncle Seth waited in front of the store, with his horses harnessed and ready, until the tall familiar figure, with cane, cigar, and beaver hat, came marching grandly down from the inn. Then the two got into the carriage and drove away.
Some hours later, leaving Arnold Lament in charge of the store, I set off in turn, but humbly and on foot, toward the white house by the distant sea where poor Abraham Guptil lived; and you can be sure that it made me sick at heart to think of my errand.
From the pine land and meadows of Topham, the road emerged on the border of a salt marsh, along which I tramped for an hour or two; then, passing now through scrubby timber, now between barren farms, it led up on higher ground, which a few miles farther on fell away to tawny rocks and yellow sand and the sea, which came rolling in on the beach in long, white hissing waves. Islands in the offing seemed to give promise of other, far-distant lands; and the sun was so bright and the water so blue that I thought to myself how much I would give to go a-sailing with Uncle Seth in search of adventure.
Late in the afternoon I saw ahead of me, beside the road, the small white house, miles away from any other, where Abraham Guptil lived. A dog came barking out at me, and a little boy came to call back the dog; then a woman appeared in the door and told me I was welcome. Abe, it seemed, was away working for a neighbor, but he would be back soon, for supper-time was near. If I would stay with them for the meal, she said, they should be glad and honored.
So I sat down on the doorstone and made friends with the boy and the dog, and talked away about little things that interested the boy, until we saw Abraham Guptil coming home across the fields with the sun at his back.
He shook hands warmly, but his face was anxious, and when after supper we went out doors and I told him as kindly as I could the errand on which my uncle had sent me, he shook his head.
"I feared it," said he. "It's rumored round the country that Seth Upham's collecting money wherever he can. Without this, I've been in desperate straits, and now"
He spread his hands hopelessly and leaned against the fence. His eyes wandered over the acres on which he was raising crops by sheer strength and determination. It was a poor, stony farm, yet the man had claimed it from the wilderness and, what with fishing and odd jobs, had been making a success of life until one misfortune after another had fairly overwhelmed him.
"It must go," he said at last.
As best I could, I was taking leave of him for the long tramp home, when he suddenly roused himself and cried, "But stay! See! The storm is hard upon us. You must not go back until to-morrow."
Heavy clouds were banking in the west, and already we could hear the rumble of thunder.
It troubled me to accept the hospitality of the Guptils when I had come on such an errand; but the kindly souls would hear of no denial, so I joined Abe in the chores with such good-will, that we had milked, and fed the stock, and closed the barns for the night before the first drops fell.
Meanwhile much had gone forward indoors, and when we returned to the house I was shown to a great bed made up with clean linen fragrant of lavender. Darkness had scarcely fallen, but I was so weary that I undressed and threw myself on the bed and went quietly to sleep while the storm came raging down the coast.
As one so often does in a strange place, I woke uncommonly early. Dawn had no more than touched the eastern horizon, but I got out of bed and, hearing someone stirring, went to the window. A door closed very gently, then a man came round the corner of the house and struck off across the fields. It was Abraham Guptil. What could he be doing abroad at that hour? Going to the door of my room, which led into the kitchen, I softly opened it, then stopped in amazement. Someone was asleep on the kitchen floor. I looked closer and saw that it was a woman with a child; then I turned back and closed the door again.
Rather than send me away, even though I brought a message that meant the loss of their home, those good people had given me the one bed in the house, and themselves, man, w T oman, and child, had slept on hard boards, with only a blanket under them.
Since I could not leave my room without their knowing that I had discovered their secret, I sat down by the window and watched the dawn come across the sea upon a world that was clean and cool after the shower of the night. For an hour, as the light grew stronger, I watched the slow waves that came rolling in and poured upon the long rocks in cascades of silver; and still the time wore on, and still Abe remained away. Another hour had nearly gone when I saw him coming in the distance along the shore, and heard his wife stirring outside.
Now someone knocked at my door.
I replied with a prompt "Good-morning," and presently went into the kitchen, where the three greeted me warmly. All signs of their sleeping on the kitchen floor had vanished.
"I don't know what I shall do, Joe," said Abraham Guptil when I was taking leave of him an hour later. "This place is all I have."
I made up my mind there and then that neither Abraham Guptil nor his wife and child should suffer want.
"I'll see to that," I replied. "There'll be something for you to do and some place for you to go."
Then, with no idea how I should fulfil my promise, I shook his hand and left him.
When at last I got back to the store, Arnold Lament was there alone. My uncle had not returned, and Sim Muzzy had gone fishing. It was an uncommonly hot day, and since there were few customers, we sat and talked of one thing and another.
When I saw that Arnold was looking closely at the foils, which stood in a corner, an idea came to me. Cornelius Gleazen had praised my swordsmanship to the skies, and, indeed, I was truly becoming a match for him. Twice I had actually taken a bout from him, with a great swishing and clattering of blades and stamping of feet, and now, although he continued to give me lessons, he no longer would meet me in an assault. As for the other young fellows, I had far and away outstripped them.
"Would you like to try the foils once, Arnold?' I asked. "I'll give you a lesson if you say so."
For a moment I thought there was a twinkle in the depths of his eyes; but when I looked again they were sober and innocent.
"Why, yes," he said.
Something in the way he tested the foils made me a bit uneasy, in spite of my confidence, but I shrugged it off.
"You have learned well by watching," I said, as we came on guard.
"I have tried it before," said he.
"Then," said I, "I will lunge and you shall see if you can parry me."
"Very well."
After a few perfunctory passes, during which I advanced and retreated in a way that I flattered myself was exceptionally clever, and after a quick feint in low line, I disengaged, deceived a counter-parry by doubling, and confidently lunged. To my amazement my foil rested against his blade hardly out of line with his body — so slightly out of line that I honestly believed the attack had miscarried by my own clumsiness. Certainly I never had seen so nice a parry. That I escaped a riposte, I attributed to my deft recovery and the constant pressure of my blade on his; but even then I had an uncomfortable suspicion that behind the veil of his black mask Arnold was smiling, and I was really dazed by the failure of an attack that seemed to me so well planned and executed.
Then, suddenly, easily, lightly, Arnold Lament's blade wove its way through my guard. His arms, his legs, his body moved with a lithe precision such as I had never dreamed of; my own foil, circling desperately, failed to find his, and his button rested for a moment against my right breast so surely and so competently that, in the face of his skill, I simply dropped my guard and stood in frank wonder and admiration.
Even then I was vaguely aware that I could not fully appreciate it. Though I had thought myself an accomplished swordsman, the man's dexterity, which had revealed me as a clumsy blunderer, was so amazingly superior to anything I had ever seen, that I simply could not realize to the full how remarkable it was.
I whipped off my mask and cried, "You, you are a fencer."
He smiled. "Are you surprised? A man does not tell all he knows."
As I looked him in the face, I wondered at him. Uncle Seth had come to rely upon him implicitly for far more than you can get from any ordinary clerk. Yet we really knew nothing at all about him. "A man does not tell all he knows" He had held his tongue without a slip for all those years.
I saw him now in a new light. His face was keen, but more than keen. There was real wisdom in it. The quiet, confident dignity with which he always bore himself seemed suddenly to assume a new, deeper, more mysterious significance. Whatever the man might be, it was certain that he was no mere shopkeeper's clerk.
That afternoon Uncle Seth and Gleazen, the one strangely elated, the other more pompous and grand than ever, returned in the carriage. Of then- errand, for the tune being they said nothing.
Uncle Seth merely asked about Abe Gup til's note; and, when I answered him, impatiently grunted.
Poor Abe, I thought, and wondered what had come over my uncle.
In the evening, as we were finishing supper, Uncle Seth leaned back with a broad smile. "Joe, my lad," he said, "our fortunes are making. Great days are ahead. I can buy and sell the town of Topham now, but before we are through, Joe, I — or you with the money I shall leave you — can buy and sell the city of Boston — aye, or the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. There are great days ahead, Joe."
"But what," I asked, with fear at my heart, "but what is this great venture?"
Uncle Seth looked at me with a smile that expressed whatever power of affection was left in his hard old shell of a heart, a meagre affection, yet, as far as it went, all centred upon me, and revealed a great conceit of his own wisdom.
"Joe," he said, leaning forward on his elbows till his face, on which the light threw every testy wrinkle into sharp relief, was midway between the two candles at the end of the table, "Joe, I've bought a ship and we're all going to Africa."
For a moment his voice expressed confidence; for a moment his affection for me triumphed over his native sharpness.
"You're all I've got, Joey," he cried, "You're all that's left to the old man, and I'm going to do well by you. Whatever I have is yours, Joey; it's all coming to you, every cent and every dollar. Here, you must be wanting a bit of money to spend, here!" He thrust his hand into his pocket and flung half a dozen gold pieces down on the dark, well-oiled mahogany where they rang and rolled and shone dully in the candle-light. "I swear, Joe, I think a lot of you."
I suppose that not five people in all Topham had ever seen Uncle Seth in such a mood. I am sure that, if they had, the town could never have thought of him as only a cold, exacting man. But now a fear apparently overwhelmed him lest by so speaking out through his reticence he had committed some unforgivable offense — lest he had told too much. He seemed suddenly to snap back into his hard, cynical shell. "But of that, no more," he said sharply. "Not a word's to be said, you understand. Not a word to any one."
When I went back to the store that evening, I sat on the porch in the darkness and thought of Uncle Seth as I had seen him across the table, his face thrust forward between the candles, his elbows planted on the white linen, with the dim, restful walls of the room behind him, with the faces of my father and my mother looking down upon us from the gilt frames on the wall. I knew him too well to ask questions, even though, as I sat on the store porch, he was sitting just behind me inside the open window.
What, I wondered, almost in despair, could we, of all people, do with a ship and a voyage to Africa? Had I not seen Cornelius Gleazen play upon my uncle's fear and vanity and credulity? I had no doubt whatever that the same Neil Gleazen, who had been run out of town thirty years before, was at the bottom of whatever mad voyage my uncle was going to send his ship upon.
Then I thought of good old Abraham Guptil, so soon to be turned out of house and home, and of Arnold Lament, who saw and knew and understood so much, yet said so little. And again I thought of Cornelius Gleazen; and when I was thinking of him, a strange thing came to pass.
Down in the village a dog barked fiercely, then another nearer the store, then another; then I saw coming up the road a figure that I could not mistake. The man with that tall hat, that flowing coat, that nonchalant air, which even the faint light of the stars revealed, could be no other than Cornelius Gleazen himself.
In the store behind me I heard the low drone of conversation from the men gathered round the stove, the click of a chessman set firmly on the board, the voice of Arnold Lament — so clear, so precise, and yet so definitely and indescribably foreign — saying, "Check!" Through the small panes of glass I saw my uncle frowning over his ledgers. Now he noted some figure on the foolscap at his right, now he appeared to count on his fingers.
I turned again to watch Cornelius Gleazen. Of course he could not know that anyone was sitting on the porch in the darkness. When he passed the store, he looked over at it with a turn of his head and a twist of his shoulders. His gesture gave me an impression of scorn and triumph so strong that I hardly restrained myself from retorting loudly and angrily. Then I bit my lip and watched him go by and disappear.
"Who," I wondered, "who and what really is Cornelius Gleazen?"
Part 2
HANDS ACROSS THE SEA
Chapter 1 GOOD-BYE TO OLD HAUNTS AND FACES
THAT some extraordinary thing was afoot next day, every soul who worked in our store, or who entered it on business, vaguely felt. To me, who had gained a hint of what was going forward, — baffling and tantalizing, yet a hint for all that, and to Arnold Lament, who, I was convinced as I saw him watch my uncle's nervous movements, although he had no such plain hint to go upon, had by his keen, silent observation unearthed even more than I, the sense of an impending great event was far from vague. I felt as sure as of my own name that before nightfall something would happen to uproot me from my native town, whose white houses and green trees and hedges, kindly people and familiar associations, lovely scenes and quiet, homely life I so deeply loved.
The strange light in Cornelius Gleazen's eyes, as he watched us hard at work taking an inventory of stock, confirmed me in the presentiment. My uncle's harassed, nervous manner as he drove us on with our various duties, Sim Muzzy's garrulous bewilderment, and Arnold Lament's keen, silent appraisal, added each its little to the sum of my convictions.
The warmer the day grew, the harder we worked. Uncle Seth flew about like a madman, picking us up on this thing and that, and urging one to greater haste, another to greater care. Throwing off his coat, he pitched in with his own hands, and performed such prodigies of labor that it seemed as if our force were doubled by the addition of himself alone. And all the time Neil Gleazen sat and smiled and tapped his beaver.
He was so cool, so impudent about it, that I longed to turn on him and vent my spleen; but to Uncle Seth it apparently seemed entirely suitable that Gleazen should idle while others worked.
Of the true meaning of all this haste and turmoil I had no further inkling until in the early afternoon Gleazen called loudly,
"He's here, prompt to the minute."
Then Uncle Seth drew a long breath, mopped the sweat from his face and cried,
"I'm ready for him, thank heaven! The boys can be finishing up what little's left."
I looked, and saw a gentleman, just alighted from his chaise, tying a handsome black horse to the hitching-post before the door.
Turning his back upon us all, Uncle Seth rushed to the door, his hands extended, and cried, "Welcome, sir I Since cock-crow this morning we have been hard at work upon the inventory, and it's this minute done — at least, all but adding a few columns. Sim, another chair by my desk. Quick! Mr. Gleazen, I wish to present you to Mr. Brown. Come in, sir, come in."
The three shook hands, and all sat down together and talked for some time; then, at the stranger's remark, "Now for figures. There's nothing like figures to tell a story, Mr. Upham. Eh, Mr. Gleazen? We can run over those columns you spoke of, here and now," - they bestirred themselves.
"You're right, sir," Uncle Seth cried: and then he sharply called, "Arnold, bring me those lists you've just finished. That's right; is that all? Well, then you take the other boys and return those boxes in the back room to their shelves. That'll occupy you all of an hour."
No longer able to pick up an occasional sentence of their talk, we glumly retired out of earshot and were more than ever irritated when Gleazen, his cigar between his teeth, stamped up to the door between the front room and the back and firmly closed it.
"Why should they wish so much to be alone?" Arnold asked.
I ventured no reply; but Sim Muzzy, as if personally affronted, burst hotly forth: -
"You'd think Seth Upham would know enough to ask the advice of a man who's been working for him ever since Neil Gleazen ran away from home, now wouldn't you? Here I've toiled day in and out and done good work for him and learned the business, for all the many times he's said he never saw a thicker head, until there ain't a better hand at candling eggs, not this side of Boston, than I be. And does he ask my advice when he's got something up his sleeve? No, he don't! And yet I'll leave it to Arnold, here, if my nose ain't keener to scent sour milk than any nose in Topham — yes, sir."
The idea of Sim Muzzy's advice on any matter of greater importance than the condition of an egg or the sweetness of milk, in determining which, to do him justice, he was entirely competent, struck me as so funny that I almost sniggered. Nor could I have restrained myself, even so, when I perceived Arnold looking at me solemnly and as if reproachfully, had not Uncle Seth just then opened the door and called, "Sim, there's a lady here wants some calico and spices. Come and wait on her."
When, fifteen minutes later, Sun returned, closing the door smartly behind him, Arnold asked with a droll quirk, which I alone perceived, "Well, my friend, what did you gather during your stay in yonder?"
"Gather? Gather?" Sun spluttered. "I gathered nothing. There was talk of dollars and cents and pounds and pence, and stocks and oils, and ships and horses, and though I listened till my head swam, all I could make out was when Neil Gleazen told me to shut the door behind my back. If they was to ask my advice, I'd tell 'em to talk sense, that's what I'd do."
"Ah, Sim," said Arnold, "if only they were to ask thy advice, what advice thee would give them!"
"Now you're talking like a Quaker," Sim replied hotly. "Why do Quakers talk that way, I'd like to know. Theeing and thou-ing till it is enough to fuddle a sober man's wits. I declare they are almost as bad as people in foreign parts who, I've heard tell, have such a queer way of talking that an honest man can't at all understand what they're saying until he's got used to it."
"Such, indeed, is the way of the inconsiderate world, Sim," Arnold dryly replied.
Then the three of us put our shoulders to a hogshead, and in the mighty effort of lifting it to the bulkhead sill ceased to talk.
As we finally raised it and shoved it into the yard, Sim stepped farther out than Arnold and I, and looking toward the street, whispered, "He's going."
I sprang over beside him and saw that the visitor, having already unhitched his horse, was shaking hands with Uncle Seth. Stepping into the chaise, he then drove off.
For a space of time so long that the man must have come to the bend in the road, Uncle Seth and Cornelius Gleazen watched him as he went; then, to puzzle us still further, smiling broadly, they shook hands, and turning about, still entirely unaware that we were watching them, walked with oddly pleased expressions back into the store.
My uncle's face expressed such confidence and friendliness as even I had seldom seen on it.
"Now ain't that queer?" Sim began. "If Seth Upham was a little less set in his ways, I'd—"
With a shrug Arnold Lament broke in upon what seemed likely to be a long harangue, and made a comment that was much more to the point. "Now," said he, "we are going to hear what has happened."
Surely enough, we thought. No sooner were we back in the store, all three of us, than the door opened and in came Uncle Seth.
"Well," said he, brusquely, and yet with a certain pleased expression still lingering about his eyes, "I expected you to have done more. Hm! Well, work hard. We must have things in order come morning."
Arnold smiled as my uncle promptly returned to the front room, but Sim and I were keenly disappointed.
"How now, you who are so clever?" Sim cried when Uncle Seth again had closed the door. "How now, Arnold? We have heard nothing."
"Why," said Arnold, imperturbably, "not exactly 'nothing.' We have learned that the man is coming back to-morrow."
"Are you crazy?" Sim responded. "Seth Upham said nothing of the kind."
Arnold only smiled again. "Wait and see," he said.
So we worked until late at night, putting all once more to rights; and in the morning, true to Arnold's prophecy, the gentleman with the big black horse, accompanied now by a friend, made a second visit in the front room of the store.
This time he talked but briefly with Uncle Seth and Neil Gleazen, who had already waited an hour for his arrival. As if eager to see our business for himself, he then walked through the store, examining every little detail of the stock and fixtures, and asked a vast number of questions, which in themselves showed that he knew what he was about and that he was determined to get at the bottom of our affairs. There was talk of barrels of Alexandria superfine flour and hogsheads of Kentucky tobacco; of teas — Hyson, young Hyson, Hyson skin, Powchong and Souchong; of oil, summer and winter; of Isles of Shoals dun fish and Holland gin and preserved ginger, and one thing and another, until, with answering the questions they asked me, I was fairly dizzy.
Having examined store and stock to his satisfaction, he then went with Uncle Seth, to my growing wonder, up to our own house; and from what Sim reported when he came back from a trip to spy upon them, they examined the house with the same care. In due course they returned to the store and sat down at the desk, and then the friend who accompanied our first visitor wrote for some time on an official-looking document; Uncle Seth and the strange gentleman signed it; Arnold Lament, whom they summoned for the purpose, and Cornelius Gleazen witnessed it; and all four drove away together, the gentleman and his friend in their chaise and Uncle Seth and Neil Gleazen in our own.
"When Seth Upham returns," said Arnold, "we shall be told all."
And it was so.
Coming back alone in the late afternoon, Uncle Seth and Gleazen left the chaise at the door, and entering, announced that we should close the store early that day. Gleazen was radiant with good-nature, and there was the odor of liquor on his breath. Uncle Seth, on the contrary, appeared not to have tasted a drop. He was, if anything, a little sharper than ever at one moment, a little more jovial at the next, excited always, and full of some mysterious news that seemed both to delight and to frighten him.
Obediently we fastened the shutters and drew the shades and made ready for the night.
"Now, lads," said Uncle Seth, "come in by my desk and take chairs. I have news for you."
Exchanging glances, we did so. Even Sim Muzzy was silent now.
We all sat down together, Uncle Seth and Neil Gleazen at the desk, Arnold Lamont and I a little at one side, and Sim Muzzy tilting back importantly at a point from which he could watch us all.
At the time I thought what an interesting study in character the others made; but since then I have come to think that by my own attitude toward them I revealed more of the manner of youth I myself was, than by their bearing they revealed of the manner of men they were. There was Neil Gleazen, who held his cigar in his left hand and, with the finger on which his great diamond flashed, knocked each bit of ash on the floor so promptly after it formed, that the glowing coal of fire seemed to eat into the dark tobacco and leave no residue whatever. I was confident that he thought more of me both for my good fellowship and for my sound sense than he thought of any of the others present — or in town, for that matter! As for Uncle Seth, who was at once nervous and elated, I must confess, although it did not take me long to learn enough to be heartily ashamed of it, that I was just a little inclined in my own mind to patronize him; for although all my excellent prospects came entirely from his shrewd labors, I felt that he was essentially the big toad in the small puddle.
With the others, I smiled at Sim Muzzy. But with regard to Arnold Lamont I was less confident. There had been a world of philosophy in his brief remark that a man does not tell all he knows; and my fencing bout with him was still too fresh in my mind to permit me actually to patronize him. He sat now with his thoughtful eyes intent on my uncle, and of the five of us he was by long odds the most composed.
Although I have betrayed my vanity in a none too flattering light, it would be unjust, I truly think, not to add, at the risk of seeming to contradict myself, that I was instinctively kind-hearted, and that I did not lack for courage.
"I have news for you, boys," Uncle Seth began, with a manner at once abrupt and a little pompous, but with a warm smile at me. "I hope you'll be glad to hear it, although it means a radical change in the life we've lived together for so many years. First of all, I want to say that each of you will be well looked after."
Uncle Seth paused and glanced at Cornelius Gleazen, who nodded as if to encourage him to go on.
"Yes, you will be well looked after, however it may appear at first flush. I'll see that no faithful man suffers to my profit, even though I have sold the store."
"What's that? You've sold the store?" Sim wildly broke in. "If you've — you've gone and sold the store? What —what?"
"Be still, Sim," Uncle Seth interposed. "Yes, I have sold the store. I know that Joe'll not be surprised to hear it; but even he has had only the vaguest hint of what's going forward. The gentleman who was here yesterday and to-day, has bought me out, store and house, lock, stock, and barrel."
"The house!" I cried.
"Yes," said Uncle Seth shortly.
"But what'll I do? And Arnold? And Joe?" Sim demanded. "Oh, Seth Upham! Never did I think to see this day and hear them words."
"I'm coming to that," said Uncle Seth. "There'll be room here for the three of you if you want to stay, and there'll be work in abundance in the store; but — ah, lads, here's the chance for you! — there'll be room for you with me, if 3"ou wish to come. I have bought a ship-
"A brig," Cornelius Gleazen put in.
"A brig," said Uncle Seth, accepting the correction. "The Adventure, a very tidy little craft, and well named."
Cornelius Gleazen gave his cigar a harder flick and in a reminiscent voice again forced his way into the conversation. "Ninety-seven foot on deck, twenty-four foot beam, sixteen foot deep, and a good two hundred and fifty ton, built of white oak and copper fastened. Baltimore bow and beautiful rake. Trim as a gull and fast as a duck. Tidy's the word, Seth, tidy."
Gleazen's fingers were twitching and his eyes were strangely alight.
"Yes, yes," said Uncle Seth, sharply.
"But that's not all," Gleazen insisted.
"Well, what of it?" Uncle Seth demanded. "Are you going to tell 'em everything?"
At this Gleazen paused and looked hard at his cigar. His fingers, I could see, were twitching more than ever.
"No," he slowly said, "not everything. Go ahead, Seth."
"If you keep putting in, how can I go ahead."
"Oh, stow it!" Gleazen suddenly roared. "This is no piffling storekeeper's game. Goon!"
As you can imagine, we were all eyes and ears at this brush between the two; and when Gleazen lost his temper and burst out so hotly, in spite of my admiration for the man, I hoped, and confidently expected, to see Uncle Seth come back, hammer and tongs, and give him as good as he sent. Instead, he suddenly turned white and became strangely calm, and in a low, subdued voice went on to the rest of us: -
"We shall take on a cargo at Boston and sail for the West Indies, where we shall add a few men to the crew and thence sail for Africa. I'm sure the voyage will yield a good profit and—"
"OSeth, O Seth!" cried Gleazen, abruptly. "That is no manner of way to talk to the boys. Let me tell 'em!"
My uncle, at this, drew back in his chair and said with great dignity, "Sir, whose money is financing this venture?"
"Money?" Gleazen roared with laughter. "What's money without brains? I'll tell 'em? You sit tight."
We were all but dumbfounded. White of face and blue of lip, Seth Upham sat in his chair — his no longer I — and Gleazen told us.
He threw his cigar-butt on the floor and stepped on it, and drummed on his beaver hat with nimble fingers.
"It's like this, lads," he said in a voice that implied that he was confiding in us: "I've come home here to Topham with a fortune, to be sure, and I've come to end my days in the town that gave me birth. But —" his voice now fell almost to a whisper —"I've left a king's wealth on the coast of Guinea."
He paused to see the effect of his words. I could hear my uncle breathing hard, but I held my eyes intently on Neil Gleazen's face.
"A fit treasure for an emperor!" he whispered, in such a way that the words came almost hissing to our ears.
Still we sat in silence and stared at him.
"With three good men to guard it," he went on after another pause. "Three tried, true men — friends of mine, every one of them. Suppose I have made my fortune and come home to end my days in comfort? I'd as soon have a little more, hadn't you f And I'd as soon give a hand to a hard-working, honest boyhood friend, hadn't you f Here's what I done: I said to Seth Upham, who has robbed many a church with me"
At that, I thought my uncle was going to cry out in protest or denial; but his words died in his throat.
"I said to him, 'Seth, you and me is old friends. Now here's this little scheme. I've got plenty myself, so I'll gladly share with you. If you'll raise the money for this venture, you'll be helping three good men to get their little pile out of the hands of heathen savages, and half of the profits will be yours.' So he says he'll raise money for the venture, and he done so, and he's sold his store and his house, and now he can't back down. How about it, Seth?"
My uncle gulped, but made no reply. Gleazen, who up to this point had been always deferential and considerate, seemed, out of a clear sky, suddenly to have assumed absolute control of our united fortunes.
"Of course it won't do to turn off old friends," he continued. "So he made up his mind to give you lads your choice of coming with us at handsome pay one third of his lay is to be divided amongst those of you that come—"
"No, I never said that," Uncle Seth cried, as if startled into speech.
"You never?" Gleazen returned in seeming amazement. "The papers is signed, Seth."
"But I never said that!"
Gleazen turned on my uncle, his eyes blazing. "This from you!" he cried with a crackling oath. "After all I've done! I swear I'll back out now then where'll you be? What's more, I'll tell what I know!"
My uncle in a dazed way looked around the place that up to now had been his own little kingdom and uttered some unintelligible murmur.
"Ah," said Gleazen, "I thought you did." Then, as if Uncle Seth had not broken in upon him, as if he had not retorted at Uncle Seth, as if his low, even voice had not been raised in pitch since he began, he went on, "Or, lads, you can stay. What do you say?"
Still we sat and stared at him.
Sim Muzzy, as usual, was first to speak and last to think. "I'll go," he exclaimed eagerly, "I'll go, for one."
"Good lad," said Gleazen, who, although they were nearly of an age, outrageously patronized him.
With my familiar world torn down about my shoulders, and the patrimony that I long had regarded as mine about to be imperiled in this strange expedition, it seemed that I must choose between a berth in the new vessel and a clerkship with no prospects. It was not a difficult choice for a youth with a leaning toward adventure, nor was I altogether unprepared for it. Then, too, there was something in me that would not suffer me lightly to break all ties with my mother's only brother. After a moment for reflection, I said, "I'll go, for two."
Meanwhile, Arnold Lament had been studying us all and had seen, I am confident, more than any of us. He had taken time to notice to the full the sudden return of all Cornelius Gleazen's arrogance and the extraordinary meekness of Uncle Seth who, without serious affront, had just now taken words from Gleazen for which he would once have blazed out at him in fury.
It did not take Arnold Lamont's subtlety to see that Gleazen, by some means or other, had got Seth Upham under his thumb and was taking keen pleasure in feeling him there. Gleazen's attitude toward my uncle had undergone a curious series of changes since the day when, for the first time, I had seen him enter our store: from arrogance he had descended to courtesy, even to deference; but from deference he had now returned again to arrogance. In his attitude on that first day there had been much of the cool insolence that he now manifested; but after a few days it had seemed to a certain extent to have vanished. Rather, the consideration with which he had of late treated my uncle had been so great as to make this new impudence the more amazing.
Many things may have influenced Arnold in his decision; but among them, I think, were his gratitude to Uncle Seth, who had taken him in and given him a good living, and who, we both could see, was likely now to need the utmost that a friend could give him; his friendliness for Sim and me, with whom he had worked so* long; and, which I did not at the time suspect, the desire of a keen, able, straightforward man to meet and beat Cornelius Gleazen at his own game.
"I will go with you," he quietly said.
"Good lads!" Gleazen cried.
"One thing more," said I.
"Anything — anything within reason, aye, or without."
"Uncle Seth once spoke to me of selling out Abraham
Gupta."
My uncle now bestirred himself and, shaking off the discomfiture with which he had received Gleazen's earlier words, said with something of his usual sharpness, "The sheriff has had the papers these three days."
"Then," I cried, "I beg you, as a favor, let him have a berth with us."
"What's that? Some farmer?" Gleazen demanded.
"He's bred to the sea," I returned.
"That puts another face on the matter," said Gleazen.
"Well," said my uncle. "But his lay comes out of the part that goes to you, then."
"But," I responded, "I thought of his signing on at regular wages." Then I blushed at my own selfishness and hastened to add, "Never mind that. I for one will say that he shall share alike with us."
And the others, knowing his plight, agreed as with a single voice.
"Now, then, my lads," Cornelius Gleazen cried, "a word in confidence: to the village and to the world we'll say that we are going on a trading voyage. And so we are! All this rest of our talk," he continued slowly and impressively, "all this rest of our talk is a secret between you four and me and God Almighty." He brought his great fist down on the desk with a terrific bang. "If any one of you four men — I don't care a tinker's damn which one lets this story leak, I'll kill him."
At the time I did not think that he meant it; since then I have come to think that he did.
Chapter 2 A WILD NIGHT
UNLESS you have lived in a little town where every man's business is his neighbor's, you cannot imagine the furor in the village of Topham when our fellow citizens learned that Seth Upham had actually sold his business and his house, and was to embark with Cornelius Gleazen on a voyage of speculation to the West Indies and Africa. The friction with Great Britain that had closed ports in the West Indies to American ships added zest to their surmises; and the unexpected news that that very worthy gentleman, Cornelius Gleazen, who had so recently returned to his old home, was so soon to depart again, sharpened their regrets. All were united in wishing us good fortune and a safe, speedy return; all were keenly interested in whatever hints of the true character of the voyage we let fall, which you can be sure were few and slender. It was such an extraordinary affair in the annals of the village, that the more enterprising began to prepare for a grand farewell, which should express their feelings in a suitable way and should do honor both to their respected fellow townsman, Seth Upham, and to their distinguished resident, Cornelius Gleazen.
There was to be a parade, with a band from Boston at its head, a great dinner at the town hall, to which with uncommon generosity they invited even the doubting blacksmith, and a splendid farewell ceremony, with speeches by the minister and the doctor, and with presentations to all who were to leave town. It was to mark an epoch in the history of Topham. Nothing like it had ever taken place in all the country round. And as we were to go to Boston in the near future, the man who had bought out Uncle Seth was to take over the house and store almost at once, they set the date for the first Saturday in September.
Because I, in a way, was to be one of the guests of the occasion, I heard little of the plans directly, for they were supposed to be secret, in order to surprise us by their splendor. But a less curious lad than I could not have helped noticing the long benches carried past the store and the platform that was building on the green.
The formal farewell, as I have said, was to take place on the first Saturday in September, and the following Wednesday we five were to leave town. But meanwhile, in order to have everything ready for our departure, and because we needed another pah* of hands to help in the work during the last days at the store, I went on Friday to get Abraham Guptil to join us.
He had been so pleased at the chance to ship for a voyage, thus to recover a little of the goods and gear that misfortune had swept away from him almost to the last stick and penny, that I was more than glad I had given him the chance. Well satisfied, accordingly, with myself and the world, I turned my uncle's team toward the home of Abe's father-in-law, where Mrs. Guptil and the boy were to stay until Abe should return from the voyage; and when I passed the green, where the great platform was almost finished, I thought with pleasure of what an Important part I was to play in the ceremonies next day.
It was a long ride to the home of Abraham Guptil's father-in-law, and the way led through the pines and marshes beside the sea, and up hill and down valley over a winding road inland. The goldenrod beside the stone walls along the road was a bright yellow, and the blue frost flowers were beginning to blossom. In the air, which was as clear as on a winter night, was the pleasant, almost indescribable tang of autumn, in which are blended so mysteriously the mellow odors of stubble fields and fallen leaves, and fruit that is ready for the market; it suggested bright foliage and mellow sunsets, and blue smoke curling up from chimneys, and lighted windows in the early dusk.
On the outward journey, but partly occupied by driving the well-broken team, I thought of how Neil Gleazen, before my very eyes, had at first frightened Uncle Seth, and had then cajoled him, and, finally, had completely won him over. I had never put it in so many words before, that Gleazen had got my uncle into such a state that he could do what he wished with him; but to me it was plain enough, and I suspected that Arnold Lament saw it, too. Although I had watched Gleazen from the moment when he first began to accomplish the purpose toward which he had been plotting, I could not understand what power he held over Uncle Seth that had so changed my uncle's whole character. Then I fell to thinking of that remark, twice repeated, about robbing churches, and meditated on it while the horses quietly jogged along. Never, I thought, should the people of the town learn of my suspicions; they concerned a family matter, and I would keep them discreetly to myself.
It was touching to see Abraham Guptil bid farewell to his wife and son. Their grief was so unaffected that it almost set me sniffling, and I feared that poor Abe would make a dreary addition to our little band; but when we had got out of sight of the house, he began to pick up, and after wiping his eyes and blowing his nose, he surprised me by becoming, all things considered, quite lively.
"Now," said he, "you can tell me all about this voyage for which I've shipped. It seems queer for a man to sign the articles when he don't know where his lay is coming from, but, I declare, it was a godsend to me to have a voyage and wages in prospect, and you were a rare good friend of mine, Joe, to put my name in like you done."
It puzzled me to know just how much to tell him, but I explained as well as I could that it was a trading voyage to the West Indies and Africa, and gave him a hint that there was a secret connected with it whereby, if all went well, we were to get large profits, and let him know that he was to share a certain proportion of this extra money with Arnold, Sim, and me, in addition to the wages that we all were to draw.
It seemed to satisfy him, and after thinking it over, he said, "I've heard Seth Upham was getting all his money together for some reason or other. There must be more than enough to buy the Adventure. He's been cashing in notes and mortgages all over the county, and I'm told the bank is holding it for him in gold coin." : In gold!" I cried.
; Gold coin," he repeated. "It's rumored round the county that Neil Gleazen's holding something over him that's frightened him into doing this and that, exactly according to order."
"Where did you hear that?" I demanded.
It was so precisely what I myself had been thinking that it seemed as if I must have talked too freely; yet I knew that I had held my tongue.
"Oh, one place and another," he replied. Then, changing the subject, he remarked, "There'll be a grand time in town to-morrow, what with speeches and all. I'd like to have brought my wife to see it, but I was afraid it would make it harder for her when I leave."
"She doesn't want you to go?"
"Oh, she's glad for me to have the chance, but she's no hand to bear up at parting."
Conversing thus, we drove on into the twilight and falling dusk, till we came so near the town that we could see ahead of us the tavern, all alight and cheerful for the evening.
"I wonder," Abe cried eagerly, "who'll be sitting by the table with a hot supper in front of him, and Nellie Nuttles to fetch and carry."
I was hungry after my day's drive and could not help sharing Abe's desire for a meal at the tavern, which was known as far as Boston and beyond for its good food; but I had no permission thus wantonly to spend Uncle Seth's money, so I snapped the whip and was glad to hear the louder rattling of wheels as the horses broke into a brisk trot, which made our own supper seem appreciably nearer.
And who, indeed, would be sitting now behind those lighted windows? Abe's question came back to me as we neared the tavern. The broad roofs seemed to suggest the very essence of hospitality, and as if to indorse their promise of good fare, a roar of laughter came out into the night.
As we passed, I looked through one of the windows that but a moment since had been rattling from the mirth within, and saw — I looked again and made sure that I was not mistaken! — saw Neil Gleazen, red-faced and wild-eyed, standing by the bar with a glass raised in his hand.
The sight surprised me, for although Gleazen, like almost everyone else in old New England, took his wine regularly, in all the months since his return he had conducted himself so soberly that there had been not the slightest suggestion that he ever got himself the worse for liquor; and even more it amazed me to see beside him one Jed Matthews who was, probably, the most unscrupulous member of the lawless crew with whom Gleazen was said to have associated much in the old days, but of whom he had seen, everyone believed, almost nothing since he had come home.
As we drove on past the blacksmith shop, I saw the smith smoking his pipe in the twilight. It's a fine evening," I called.
It is," said he, coming into the road. And in a lower voice he added, "Did you see him when you passed the inn?"
"Yes," I replied, knowing well enough whom he meant.
"They've called me a fool," the smith responded, "but before this night's over we'll see who's a fool." He puffed away at his pipe and looked at me significantly. "We'll see who's a fool, I or them that has so much more money and wisdom than I."
He went back and sat down, and Abe and I drove on, puzzled and uncomfortable. The smith was vindictive. Could he, I wondered, be right?
A good supper was keeping hot for us in the brick oven, and we sat down to it with the good-will that it merited; but before we were more than half through, my uncle burst in upon us. He seemed harassed by anxiety, and went at once to the window, where he stood looking out into the darkness.
"Have you heard anything said around town?" he presently demanded, more sharply, it seemed to me, than ever.
"I've heard little since I got back," I returned. "Only the smith's ravings. He was in an ill temper as we passed. But I saw Neil Gleazen at the inn drinking with Jed Matthews."
"The ungrateful reprobate!" Uncle Seth cried with an angry gesture. "He's drawn me into this thing hand and foot —hand and foot. I'm committed. It's too late to withdraw, and he knows it. And now, now for the first time, mind you, he's starting on one of his old sprees."
"He's not a hard drinker," I said. "In all the tune he's been in Topham he's not been the worse for liquor, and this evening, so far as I could see, he was just taking a glass—"
"You don't know him as he used to be," my uncle cried.
"A glass," put in Abe Guptil; "but with Jed Matthews!"
"You've hit the nail on the head," Uncle Seth burst out —"with Jed Matthews. God save we're ruined by this night's work. If he should go out to Higgleby's barn with that gang of thieves, my good name will go too. I swear I'll sell the brig."
Uncle Seth wildly paced the room and scowled until every testy wrinkle on his face was drawn into one huge knot that centred in his forehead.
The only sounds, as Abe and I sat watching him in silence, were the thumping of his feet as he walked and the hoarse whisper of his breathing. Plainly, he was keyed up to a pitch higher than ever I had seen him.
At that moment, from far beyond the village, shrilly but faintly, came a wild burst of drunken laughter. It was a single voice and one strange to me. There was something devilish in its piercing, unrestrained yell.
"Merciful heavens!" Uncle Seth cried, actually his hand was shaking like the palsy; a note of fear in his strained voice struck to my heart like a finger of ice, "I'd know that sound if I heard it in the shrieking of hell; and I have not heard Neil Gleazen laugh like that in thirty years. Come, boys, maybe we can stop him before it's too late."
Thrusting his fingers through his hair so that it stood out on all sides in disorder, he wildly dashed from the room.
Springing up, Abe and I followed him outdoors and down the road. We ran with a will, but old though he was, a frenzy of fear and anxiety and shame led him on at a pace we could scarcely equal. Down the long road into town we ran, all three, breathing harder and harder as we went, past the store, the parsonage, and the church, and past the smithy, where someone called to us and hurried out to stop us.
It was the smith, who loomed up big and black and ominous in the darkness.
"They've gone," he said, "they've gone to Higgleby's barn."
"Who?" my uncle demanded. "Who? Say who! For heaven's sake don't keep me here on tenterhooks!"
"Neil Gleazen," said the smith, "and Jed Matthews and all the rest. Ah, you wouldn't listen to me."
"And all the rest!" Uncle Seth echoed weakly.
For a moment he reeled as if bewildered, even dazed. Whatever it was that had come over him, it seemed to have pierced to some unsuspected weakness in the fibre of the man, some spot so terribly sensitive that he was fairly crazed by the thrust. To Abe and me, both of us shocked and appalled, he turned with the madness of despair in his eyes.
"Boys," he said hoarsely, "we've got to be ready to leave. Call Sim and Arnold! Hitch up the horses! Pack my bag and — and, Joe,"— he laid his hand on my shoulder and whispered hi my ear, a mere trembling breath of a whisper, —"here's the key to the house safe. Pack all that's in it in the bed of the wagon while the others are busy elsewhere. Joe! what a wretched man I am! Why in heaven's name could he not walk straight for just one day more?"
Why, indeed? I thought. But I remembered Higgleby's barn, and in my own heart I knew the reason. Secretly, all this time, Neil Gleazen had been hand in glove with his old disreputable cronies; now that he had got Uncle Seth so far committed to this new venture that he could not desert it, Gleazen was entirely willing to throw away his hard-won reputation for integrity, for the sake of one farewell fling with the "old guard."
"Go, lads," Uncle Seth cried; "go quickly." He rested a shaking hand on my arm as Abe turned away. "My poor, poor boy!" he murmured. "I've meant to do so well by you, Joey! Heaven keep us all!"
"But you?" I asked.
"I'm going, if I can, to bring Neil Gleazen back before it is too late," Uncle Seth replied. And with that he set off into the darkness.
As we turned back to the store to rouse up Arnold and Sim, I caught a glimpse of the stark white platform on the green, which was visible even in the darkness, and ironically I thought of the farewell ceremonies that were to take place next day.
I shall never forget how the store looked that night, as Abe and I came hurrying up to it. The shadows on the porch were as black as ink, and the shuttered windows seemed to stare like the sightless eyes of a blind man who hears a familiar voice and turns as if to see whence it comes. From the windows of the room above, which Arnold and Sim occupied, there shone a few thin shafts of light along the edges of the shades, and the window frames divided the shades themselves into small yellow squares, on which a shadow came and went as one of the men moved about the room.
In reply to our cries and knocks, Arnold raised the curtain and we saw first his head, then Sim's, black against the lighted room.
"Who is there?" he called, "and what's wanted?"
Almost before we had finished pouring out our story, Arnold was downstairs and fumbling at the bolts of the door; and as we entered the dark store, Sim, his shoes in his hand, followed him, even more than usually grotesque in the light from above.
"My friends," said Arnold, calmly, "let us now, all four, prove to ourselves and to Seth Upham, the mettle that is hi us."
We lost no time in idle speculation. Dividing among us all that was to be done, we fell to with a will. Working like men possessed, we packed our own possessions and Uncle Seth's, both at the store and at the barn; and while the others were still busy in the carriage-shed, I hurried back to the house and opened the safe, and brought out bags of money and papers and heaven knows what, and as secretly as possible packed them in the bottom of the wagon. For three hours we toiled at one place and the other; then, hot, tired, excited, apprehensive of we knew not what, we rested by the wagon and waited.
"I never heard of anything so rattle-headed in all my life," Sim Muzzy cried, when he had caught his breath. "Seth Upham gets crazier every day. Here all's ready for the grand farewell to-morrow and all of us to be there, and not one of us to leave town until next week, and yet he gets us up at all hours of the night as if we was to start come sunrise. I'm not going to run away at such an hour, I can tell you. Why it may be they'll call on me to make a speech! Who knows?"
"We'll be lucky, I fear," said Arnold Lamont, "if we do not start before sunrise."
"Before sunrise! Well, I'll have you know-
I simply could not endure Sim's interminable talk. "Watch the goods and the wagon, you three," I said. "I'm going to look for Uncle Seth and see what he wants us to do next."
Before they could object, I had left them sitting by the wagon and the harnessed horses, ready for no one knew what, and had made off into the night. Having done all that I could to carry out my uncle's orders, I had no intention of returning until I had solved the mystery of Higgleby's barn.
I hurried along and used every short cut that I knew; and though I now stumbled in the darkness, now fell headlong on the dewy grass, now barked my shins as I scrambled over a barway, I made reasonably good progress, all things considered, and came in less than half an hour to the pasture where Higgleby's lonely barn stood. The door of the barn, as I saw it from a distance, was open and made a rectangle of yellow light against the black woods beyond it. When I listened, I heard confused voices. As I was about to advance toward the barn, a certain note in the voices warned me that a quarrel was in progress. I hesitated and stopped where I was, wondering whether to go forward or not, and there I heard a strange sound and saw a strange sight.
First there came a much louder outcry than any that had gone before; then the light hi the barn suddenly went out; then I heard the sound of running back and forth; then the light appeared again, but flickering and unsteady; then a single harsh yell came all the way across the dark pasture; then the light grew and grew and grew.
It threw its rays out over the pasture land and revealed men running about like ants around a newly destroyed hill. A tongue of flame crept out of one window and crawled up the side of the old building. A great wave of fire came billowing out of the door. Sparks began to fly and the roar and crackling grew louder and louder.
As I breathlessly ran toward the barn, from which now I could see little streams of fire flowing in every direction through the dry grass, I suddenly became aware that there was someone ahead of me, and by stopping short I narrowly escaped colliding with two men whom, with a sudden shock, I recognized as my uncle and Neil Gleazen.
"Uncle Seth!" I gasped out.
Nothing then, I think, could have surprised Seth Upham. There was only relief in his voice when he cried, "Quick, Joe, quick, take his other arm."
Obediently, if reluctantly, I turned my back on the conflagration behind us, and locking my right arm through Neil Gleazen's left, helped partly to drag him, partly to carry him toward the village and the tavern.
"I showed the villains!" Gleazen proclaimed thickly. "The scoundrels! The despicable curs! I showed them how a gentlemen replies to such as them. I showed them, eh, Seth?"
"Yes, yes, Neil! Hush! Be still! There are people coming. Merciful heavens! That fire will bring the whole town out upon us."
"I showed them, the villains! the scoundrels! the despicable curs! They are not used to the ways of gentlemen, eh, Seth?':
"Yes, yes, but do be still! Do, do be still!"
"I showed them how a gentleman acts-
The man was as drunk as a lord, but in his thick ravings there was a fixed idea that sent a thrill of apprehension running through me.
"Uncle Seth," I gasped, "Uncle Seth, what has he done?"
"Quick! quick! We must hurry!"
"What has he done?"
"Come, come, Joe, never mind that now!"
For the moment I yielded, and we stumbled along, arm in arm, with Gleazen now all but a dead weight between us.
"I showed them!" he cried again. "I showed them!"
I simply could not ignore the strange muttering in his voice.
"Tell me," I cried. "Uncle Seth, tell me what he has done."
"Not yet! Not yet!"
"Tell me!"
"Not yet!"
"Or I'll not go another step!"
My uncle gasped and staggered. My importunity seemed to be one thing more than he could bear, poor man! and even in my temper, pity sobered me and cooled my anger. For a moment he touched my wrist. His hand was icy cold. But his face, when I looked at him, was set and hard, and my temper flashed anew.
"Not another step! Tell me."
Glancing apprehensively about, my uncle gasped in a hoarse undertone, "He has killed Jed Matthews."
As people were appearing now on all sides and running to fight the fire, Uncle Seth and I tried our best to lead Gleazen into a by-path and so home by a back way; but with drunken obstinacy he refused to yield an inch. "No, no," he roared, "I'm going to walk home past all the people. I'm not afraid of them. If they say aught to me, I'll show 'em."
So back we marched, supporting between us, hatless but with the diamonds still flashing on his finger and in his stock, that maudlin wretch, Cornelius Gleazen. I felt my own face redden as the curious turned to stare at us, and for Uncle Seth it was a sad and bitter experience; but we pushed on as fast as we could go, driven always by fear of what would follow when the people should learn the whole story of the brawl in the burning barn.
Back into the village we came, now loitering for a moment in the deeper shadows to avoid observation, now pushing at top speed across a lighter open space, always dragging Cornelius Gleazen between us, and so up to the open door of the tavern.
"Now," murmured Uncle Seth, "heaven send us help! Neil, Neil —Neil, I say!"
"Well?"
"We must get your chests and run. Your money, your papers — are they packed?"
"Money? What money?"
"Your fortune! You can never come back here. Sober up, Neil, sober up! You killed Jed Matthews."
"Served him right. Despicable cur, villain, scoundrel! I'll show them."
"Neil, Neil Gleazen!" cried my uncle, now all but frantic.
"Well, I hear you."
"Oh, oh, will he not listen to reason? Take his arm again, Joe."
We lifted him up the steps and led him into the inn, and there in the door of the bar-room came face to face with the landlord, who was hot with anger.
"Don't bring him in here, Mr. Upham," he cried; "I keep no house for sots and swine."
"What!" gasped my uncle, "you'll not receive him?':
"Not I!"
"But what's come over you? But you never would treat Mr. Gleazen like this /"
"But, but, but!" the landlord snarled. "This very night he threw my good claret in my own face and called it a brew for pigs. Let him seek his lodgings elsewhere."
"Where are his chests, then?" my uncle demanded. "We'll take his chests and go."
"Not till he's paid my bill."
For a moment we stood at deadlock, Uncle Seth and I, with Gleazen between us, and the landlord in the bar-room door. Every sound from outside struck terror to us lest the village had discovered the worst; lest at any moment we should have the people about our ears. But the landlord, who, of course, knew nothing of what had been going forward all this time, and Gleazen, who seemed too drunk to care, were imperturbable, until Gleazen raised his head and with inflamed eyes stared at the man.
"Who's a swine?" he demanded. "Who's a sot?"
Lurching forward, he broke away from us and crashed against the landlord and knocked him into the bar-room, whither he himself followed.
"You blackfaced bla 'guard!" the landlord cried; and, raising a chair, he started to bring it down on Gleazen's head.
I had thought that the man was too drunk to move quickly, but now, as if a new brawl were all that he needed to bring him again to his faculties, he stepped back like a flash and raised his hand.
A sharp, hook-like instrument used to pull corks w T as kept stuck into the beam above his head, where, so often was it used, it had worn a hollow place nearly as big as a bowl. This he seized and, holding it like a foil, lunged at the landlord as the chair descended.
The chair struck Gleazen on the head and knocked him down, but the cork-puller went into the landlord's shoulder, and when Gleazen, clutching it as he fell, pulled it out again, the hooked end tore a great hole in the muscles, from which blood spurted.
Clapping his hand to the wound, the landlord went white and leaned back against the bar; but Gleazen, having received a blow that might have killed a horse, got up nimbly and actually appeared to be sobered by the shock. Certainly he thought clearly and spoke to a purpose.
"Now, by heaven!" he cried, "I have got to leave town. Come, Seth, come, Joe."
"But your chests! Your money!" my uncle repeated in a dazed way. The events of the night were quite too much for his wits.
"Let him keep them for the bill," said Gleazen with a harsh laugh. "Come, I say!"
"But—but—"
"Come! Hear that?"
"Watch the back door," someone was crying. "He's probably dead drunk, but he's a dangerous man and we can't take chances."
It was the constable's voice.
Gleazen was already running through the long hall, and we followed him at our best speed.
As we left the room, the landlord fell and carried down with a crash a table on which a tray of glasses was standing. I would have stayed to help him, but I knew that other help was near, and to tell the truth I was beginning to fear the consequences of even so slight a part as mine had been in the ghastly happenings of the night. So I followed the others, and we noiselessly slipped away through the orchard, just as the men sent to guard the back door came hurrying round the house and took their stations.
With the distant fire flaming against the sky, with the smell of smoke stinging in our nostrils, and with the clamor of the aroused town sounding on every side, we hurried, unobserved, through dark fields and orchards, to my uncle's house, where Arnold and Sim and Abe were impatiently waiting.
They started up from beside the wagon as we drew near, and crowded round us with eager questions. But there was no time for mere talking. Already we could hear voices approaching, although as yet they were not dangerously near.
"Come, boys," my uncle cried, "into the wagon, every one. Come, Neil, come — for heaven's sake
"Be still, Seth, I am sober."
"Sober!" Uncle Seth put a world of disgust into the word.
"Yes, sober, curse you."
"Very well, but do climb in"
"'Climb in? I'll climb in when it suits my convenience."
Jostling and scrambling, we were all in the wagon at last. Uncle Seth held reins and whip; Neil Gleazen, who was squeezed in between him and me on the seat, snored loudly; and the others, finding such seats as they could on boxes or the bed of the wagon, endured their discomfort in silence.
The whip cracked, the horses started forward, the wheels crunched in gravel and came out on the hard road. Turning our backs on the village of Topham, we left behind us the benches on the green, the fine new platform, the banquet that was already half prepared, and all our anticipations of the great farewell.
We went up the long hill, from the summit of which we could see the lights of the town shining in the dark valley, the great flare of fire at the burning barn, and the country stretching for miles in every direction, and thence we drove rapidly away.
Thus, for the second time, twenty years after the first, Cornelius Gleazen left his native town as a fugitive from justice. But this time the fortunes of five men were bound up with his, and we whom he was leading on his mad quest knew now only too well what we could expect of our drunken leader.
