Treasure Valley Part 32

Sawed-Off told the doc on us, though, the time we took the wheel off his buggy. We've promised, anyhow," he continued righteously.

"Yes, an' I'd have to help Elsie anyhow," added Davy, with an air of crus.h.i.+ng responsibility. "Ye see, she's a sort o' a sister, ye know, Tim, 'count o' Jean."

Tim made a horrible grimace. "Well, come on! Let's think o' somethin'

good an' awful to do to Sawed-Off!" he cried, anxious to change the subject.

All winter the double wooing of Miss Long had caused great excitement in the village. Folks declared it was scandalous the way Ella Anne carried on with those two fellows of hers, never giving either one more chance than the other, and it would be a caution if she wasn't left again, the way she was when young McQuarry married the squaw.

Ella Anne's conduct caused consternation in the Long family, too. The young lady was suspected of favoring young MacDonald, while her parents strongly encouraged Mr. Wilmott. Sawed-Off was decidedly "well fixed,"

with his cattle and his cheese factory, while the young fellow from the Highlands was a gay lad, with never an acre to his name, and no match for a girl who had had a year's music lessons, not to speak of all the other attainments of Miss Long.

So far, Davy and Tim had been quite impartial, and had strewn both suitors' paths with such difficulties that the younger man had finally laid violent hands upon them; and Sawed-Off had complained to the respective authorities set over each. The latter treatment had not troubled the mischief-makers much. Mrs. Munn declared that talking always did harm, and talking to boys was worse than useless. Jake and Hannah bewailed their eldest's sudden fall from grace, and wondered if his growing intimacy with John McIntyre was having an evil effect upon the child. And there it ended. The boys still continued their attentions to the rival lovers, and so closely had they watched the proceedings that on the last night of May they were in possession of a secret plot for the morrow, which the lovers fondly believed to be their own.

Hidden behind the Longs' cedar hedge one night, the eldest orphan had overheard some whispers between Ella Anne and the young Lochinvar.

They were going to run away, Tim had gathered--have a regular elopement, like Evelina and Daring d.i.c.k, in the book he and Davy had just read. "The night before the mill starts," young MacDonald had whispered, "everybody'll be too busy to notice." Well, the mill started to-morrow! And besides that, Davy, who had been on the lookout while his fellow conspirator lay beneath the hedge, had spied Sawed-Off Wilmott come crawling from behind the lilac bushes at the Longs' gate, and go sneaking down the road. So the boys were antic.i.p.ating high times. Sawed-Off would certainly be along to prevent the elopement, and they had determined to be on the watch, and miss none of the sport.

And here, like two chivalrous knights, at the request of a distressed damsel, they had pledged themselves to help the lovers! Elsie was evidently in the plot with Ella Anne, and evidently neither girl guessed at Sawed-Off's perfidy. Tim jumped up in excitement and began to swagger up and down, his hands in his pockets. It was as good as Daring d.i.c.k's dilemmas, this situation. Elsie would certainly admire him, and consider him the cleverest young man in the village. They must perform some glorious deed that very night.

"What'll we do?" asked Davy. He was a ready helper when Tim was on the warpath, but the orphan's more fertile brain always supplied the material for their misdeeds.

Tim's eyes grew luminous. "Say! he's scared stiff about the banshee that yells down in the Drowned Lands. He'll be comin' up that way soon's it gets dark. If he seen a ghost there, he'd cut an' run, an'

never come back."

Davy's languor dropped from him like a garment. "Come on!" he whispered, his eyes s.h.i.+ning. "You scoot home an' git that last year's punkin skin, an' I'll sneak some white duds out o' maw's bureau.

Golly! Ella Anne an' her feller'll be back from their weddin' tower 'fore Sawed-Off quits runnin'!"

Meanwhile, in a little house farther up the street, the three people concerned in another runaway match were sitting in the twilight. No one would have guessed that the forlorn, drooping little figure by the window was the bride of the morrow, and the idea of an elopement was as far removed from her as from a Jenny Wren. For, as the crucial moment approached, poor Miss Arabella's small courage had dwindled away. To get married would have been a tremendous undertaking in itself, but to elope! For the first time, she realized the magnitude of the enterprise. To get away from Susan's rule back into the joy of girlhood dreams, had seemed, at first sight, like escaping from prison; but now Susan and her laws seemed her only support, and Martin seemed strange and far away.

"I don't know what makes me feel so queer," she faltered, "but ever since that dress was finished I feel jist as if I'd been finished, too."

"Oh, you're jist nervous, Arabella," said Mrs. Munn, while Elsie patted her hand soothingly. "It ain't no use talkin' about it now, anyhow.

It jist makes you feel worse. I tell you," she said, suddenly rising, "let's go over to my place, an' I'll get you a drink o' my last year's alderberry wine. The doctor's away, an' n.o.body'll see."

Elsie acquiesced, glad to second anything that would distract Arabella's mind from her fears. She would go in with them for a few minutes, and then slip away before Dr. Allen came back.

"No sign o' Davy," sighed Mrs. Munn, as they entered the dark and deserted house. "Well, I s'pose it's no use talkin' to boys, talkin'

only makes things worse. Come in, an' I'll get a light."

She groped her way through the parlor, and lit the lamp that stood on a yellow crocheted mat in the middle of the table. "Now, we'll go an'

have a drink o' that alderberry," she said cheerfully.

Miss Arabella touched Elsie's arm timidly, "Couldn't we have jist one more look at the dress, first?" she whispered. "I feel as if the sight of it would do me more good than a dose o' medicine. I know I'm an awful goose, Harriet," she faltered.

Mrs. Munn smiled indulgently. "Come along," she said, "we'll go right up now, an' you can slip it home in the dark, an' it'll be ready for to-morrow."

She led the way upstairs, and along the creaking floor to the back hall. As she opened the door of the lumber room a little breeze, bearing the scent of lavender and mint, met them, and made the lamp flare.

"Goodness me!" said Mrs. Munn in surprise, "how on earth did that window come to be opened?"

Miss Arabella uttered a cry. She clutched Elsie's arm and pointed to the wall. Mrs. Munn set the lamp down upon the bare pine table and stared. There was the hook where the dress had so lately hung, in its winding-sheet; there on the floor were great muddy tracks across to it from the doorway, and where--oh, where---- The three women turned and looked at each other in speechless dismay. The room was empty; the wedding gown had eloped!

CHAPTER XVI

THE CALL OF THE BANSHEE

The sunset has faded, there's but a tinge Saffron pale, where a star of white Has tangled itself in the trailing fringe Of the pearl-gray robe of the summer night.

--JEAN BLEWETT.

By the time Gilbert had attended to his patients, and was returning along the old corduroy road, the night had long fallen. The bird chorus of the swamp had died away, and only the sweet note of the little screech-owl awoke the echoes of the dark woods. Now and then a gleam of spectral light through the trees showed where lay the waters of the Drowned Lands. The young man tramped moodily along the pathway, following the strip of pale sky between the black lines of trees. He was thinking of Martin's last letter, in answer to the money he had sent. It contained only the humblest thanks, with never a hint of past suffering. He could see before him his old friend's honest, generous face, with no reproach in it, and beside it another face, with its golden-brown eyes full of sorrowful accusation.

He was aroused from his painful reflections by the appearance of a point of light far down the dim roadway. It was not so much the light itself that attracted his attention, as its strange movements. It darted hither and thither, crossing and recrossing the road; now it disappeared among the trees, now reappeared, and swung wildly to and fro. Gilbert was reminded of the ghostly tales of the will-o'-the-wisp, and the banshee, and other terrifying creatures, which, village gossip said, inhabited the Drowned Lands. But he had a more practical explanation of the strange phenomenon.

"If it isn't some other infernal agency," he said to himself grimly, "I'm willing to take my oath that it's Jake Sawyer's eldest orphan that's performing those queer dodges."

As he drew nearer, the light stood still, and he could discern two forms, Tim, of course, and equally of course, his companion in mischief, Davy Munn. They stood in the ring of light and gazed apprehensively toward the approaching figure. "h.e.l.lo!" called the young man. "What are you two scamps doing down here at this hour of the night?"

The boys' expression of fear changed to relief, and then to sheepish apprehension. "Jist walkin' 'round," replied Davy vaguely, making a poor attempt at his usual leisurely indifference.

"You've got a mighty queer method of taking exercise," said the doctor, coming to a standstill in front of them. "Come, you might as well tell me right out what you're up to."

"We--we lost somethin'," stammered the eldest orphan.

"What is it? Yourselves?"

The boys glanced at each other interrogatively. Should they make a clean breast of their plight and enlist the doctor's help, or would it be quite safe? Davy nodded acquiescence, and Tim burst forth:

"Aw, say! It ain't no joke. Somethin' fearful's happened. Me an'

Dave we rigged up a ghost down here to scare Sawed-Off when he was comin' to stop--to see Ella Anne."

"He played lots o' mean tricks on us, you bet," put in Davy, for his own safety.

"He didn't scare, though, worth a cent," complained the orphan, "an' he saw us hidin' behind it, an' put after us"--in spite of his perturbation the boy grinned at the remembrance of the exciting chase--"an' we lost the ghost somewheres 'way back here, an' when we got home, Dave's maw an' old Arabella Winters an' Elsie Cameron was all over to your place, chewin' away like wildcats, 'cause it was Arabella's weddin' dress we'd took for a ghost. Dave's maw'd been makin' it. An' Elsie Cameron said we'd gotter find it, or when Arabella's fella'd come he'd bust up somethin'!"

The doctor uttered a sharp exclamation.

"When is he coming?"

"I dunno," answered Tim wonderingly. "She never told us. Elsie Cameron needn't 'a' got so mad, either," put in Davy aggrievedly. "It was her put us up to it in the first place, 'cause Sawed-Off----"

"Shut up!" hissed his accomplice in his ear. "Don't you go an' blab it all, now."

The culprits were antic.i.p.ating at least a vigorous shaking for their misdemeanor, and were filled with amazed relief when the doctor grasped the lantern. "You two will end on the gallows yet," was all the censure he vouchsafed. "Come along! We must find it! Now tell me exactly where you started on this idiotic business."

The boys led the way with grateful alacrity. Fortune had indeed taken a wonderful turn.

"My! Elsie Cameron was mad!" complained Davy, encouraged by the doctor's cordial a.s.sistance. "An' she needn't 'a' been. It was all her own fault. An' she up an' told maw that me an' Tim knew all about old Arabella goin' to get married, an' that's a whoppin' lie, 'cause----"