How Janice Day Won Part 34

She chanced to be reflecting on this subject on a Sat.u.r.day afternoon near the end of the month Hopewell had allowed to Joe Bodley to find the rest of the purchase price for the violin. She had been up to the church vestry to attend a meeting of her Girls' Guild. As she pa.s.sed the Public Library this thought came to her:

"I'll go in and look in the encyclopaedia. _That_ ought to tell about old violins."

She looked up Cremona and read about its wonderful violins made in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries by the Amati family and by Antonio Stradivari and Josef Guarnerius. It did not seem possible that Hopewell's instrument could be one of these beautifully wrought violins of the masters; yet----

"Who knows?" sighed Janice. "You read about such instruments coming to light in such queer places. And Hopewell's fiddle _looks_ awfully old.

From all accounts his father must have been a musician of some importance, despite the fact that he was thought little of in Polktown by either his wife or other people. Mr. Drugg might have owned one of these famous violins--not one of the most ancient, perhaps--and told n.o.body here about it. Why! the ordinary Polktownite would think just as much of a two-dollar-and-a-half fiddle as of a real Stradivarius or an Amati."

While she was at the task, Janice took some notes of what she read.

While she was about this, Walky Dexter, who brought the mail over from Middletown, daily, came in with the usual bundle of papers for the reading desk, and the girl in charge that afternoon hastened to put the papers in the files.

Major Price had presented the library with a year's subscription to a New York daily. Janice or Marty always found time to scan each page of that paper for Mexican news--especially for news of the brigand chief, Juan Dicampa.

She went to the reading desk after closing and returning the encyclopaedia to its proper shelf, and spread the New York paper before her. This day she had not to search for mention of her father's friend, the Zapatist chief. Right in front of her eyes, at the top of the very first column, were these headlines:

JUAN DICAMPA CAPTURED

THE ZAPATIST CHIEFTAIN CAPTURED BY FEDERALS WITH 500 OF HIS FORCE AND IMMEDIATELY SHOT. Ma.s.sACRE OF HIS FOLLOWERS.

CHAPTER XXII

DEEP WATERS

The dispatch in the New York paper was dated from a Texan city on the day before. It was brief, but seemed of enough importance to have the place of honor on the front page of the great daily.

There were all the details of a night advance, a b.l.o.o.d.y attack and a fearful repulse in which General Juan Dicampa's force had been nearly wiped out.

The half thousand captured with the famous guerrilla chief were reported to have been hacked to pieces when they cried for quarter, and Juan Dicampa himself was given the usual short shrift connected in most people's minds with Mexican justice. He had been shot three hours after his capture.

It was an awful thing--and awful to read about. The whole affair had happened a long way from that part of Chihuahua in which daddy's mine was situated; but Janice immediately realized that the "long arm" of Dicampa could no longer keep Mr. Broxton Day from disaster, or punish those who offended the American mining man.

The very worst that could possibly happen to her father, Janice thought, had perhaps already happened.

That was a very sorrowful evening indeed at the old Day house on Hillside Avenue. Although Mr. Jason Day and Janice's father were half brothers only, the elder man had in his heart a deep and tender love for Broxton, or "Brocky," as he called him.

He remembered Brocky as a lad--always. He felt the superiority of his years--and presumably his wisdom--over the younger man. Despite the fact that Mr. Broxton Day had early gone away from Polktown, and had been deemed very successful in point of wealth in the Middle West, Uncle Jason considered him still a boy, and his ventures in business and in mining as a species of "wild oat sowing," of which he could scarcely approve.

"No," he sighed. "If Brocky had been more settled he'd ha' been better off--I snum he would! A piece o' land right here back o' Polktown--or a venture in a store, if so be he must trade--would ha' been safer for him than a slather o' mines down there among them Mexicaners."

"Don't talk so--don't talk so, Jason!" sniffed Aunt Almira.

"Wal--it's a fac'," her husband said vigorously. "There may be some danger attached ter store keepin' in Polktown; it's likely ter make a man a good deal of a hawg," added Uncle Jason. "But I guess the life insurance rates ain't so high as they be on a feller that's determined ter spend his time t'other side o' that Rio Grande River they tell about."

"I wonder," sighed Aunt Almira, quite unconscious that she spoke aloud, "if I kin turn that old black alpaca gown I got when Sister Susie died, Jason, an' fas.h.i.+on it after one o' the new models?"

"Heh?" grunted the startled Mr. Day, glaring at her.

"Of course, we'll hafter go inter black--it's only decent. But I did fancy a plum-colored dress this Spring, with r'yal purple trimmins. I seen a pattern in the fas.h.i.+on sheet of the Fireside Love Letter that was re'l sweet."

"What's eatin' on you, Maw?" demanded her son gruffly. "Whatcher wanter talk that way for right in front of Janice? I reckon we won't none of us put on crepe for Uncle Brocky yet awhile," he added, stoutly.

On Monday arrived another letter from Mr. Broxton Day. Of course, it was dated before the dreadful night attack which had caused the death of General Juan Dicampa and the destruction of his forces; and it had pa.s.sed through that chieftain's hands and had been remailed.

Janice put away the envelope, directed in the sloping, clerkly hand, and sighed. Daddy was in perfect health when he had written this last epistle and the situation had not changed.

"But no knowing what has happened to poor daddy since he wrote,"

thought Janice. "We can know nothing about it. And another whole month to wait to learn if he is alive."

The girl was quite well aware that she could expect no inquiry to be made at Was.h.i.+ngton regarding Mr. Broxton Day's fate. The administration had long since warned all American citizens to leave Mexico and to refrain from interference in Mexican affairs. Mr. Day had chosen to stay by his own, and his friends', property--and he had done this at his peril.

"Oh, I wish," thought the girl, "that somebody could go down there and capture daddy, and just make him come back over the border! As Uncle Jason says, what's money when his precious life is in danger?"

In almost the same breath, however, she wished that daddy could send her more money. For Lottie Drugg had gone to Boston. Her father had given over the violin to Joe Bodley, and that young speculator paid the storekeeper the remainder of the hundred dollars agreed upon. With this hundred dollars Hopewell started for Boston with Lottie, leaving his wife to take care of the store for the few days he expected to be absent. Janice went over to stay with Mrs. Drugg at night during Hopewell's absence.

Perhaps it was just as well that Janice was not at home during these few days, as it gave her somebody's troubles besides her own to think about. And the Day household really, if not visibly, was in mourning for Broxton Day. Uncle Jason's face was as "long as the moral law,"

and Aunt 'Mira, lachrymose at best, was now continuously and deeply gloomy. Marty was the only person in the Day household able to cheer Janice in the least.

'Rill and Hopewell were in deep waters, too. Had Lottie not been such an expense, the little store on the side street would have made a very comfortable living for the three of them. They lived right up to their income, however; and so Hopewell was actually obliged to sell his violin to get Lottie to Boston.

Mrs. Scattergood was frequently in the store now that her son-in-law was away. She was, of course, ready with her criticisms as to the course of her daughter and her husband.

"Good Land o' Goshen!" chirped the little old woman to Janice, "didn't I allus say it was the fullishest thing ever heard of for them two to marry? Amarilly had allus airned good money teachin' and had spent it as she pleased. And Hope Drugg never did airn much more'n the salt in his johnny-cake in this store."

Meanwhile she was helping herself to sugar and tea and flour and b.u.t.ter and other little "notions" for her own comfort. Hopewell always said that "Mother Scattergood should have the run of the store, and take what she pleased," now that he had married 'Rill; and, although the woman was not above maligning her easy-going son-in-law, she did not refuse to avail herself of his generosity.

"An' there it is!" went on Mrs. Scattergood. "'Rill was fullish enough to put the money she'd saved inter a mortgage that pays her only five per cent. An' ter git th' int'rest is like pullin' eye-teeth, and I tell her she never will see the princ.i.p.al ag'in."

Mrs. Scattergood neglected to state that she had urged her daughter to put her money in this mortgage. It was on her son's farm, across the lake at "Skunk's Hollow," as the place was cla.s.sically named; and the money would never have been tied up in this way had her mother not begged and pleaded and fairly "hounded" 'Rill into letting the s.h.i.+ftless brother have her savings on very uncertain security.

"Them two marryin'," went on Mrs. Scattergood, referring to 'Rill and Hopewell, "was for all the worl' like Famine weddin' with Poverty. And a very purty weddin' that allus is," she added with a sniff. "Neither of 'em ain't got nothin', nor never will have--'ceptin' that Hopewell's got an enc.u.mbrance in the shape of that ha'f silly child."

Janice was tempted to tell the venomous old woman that she thought Hopewell's only enc.u.mbrance was his mother-in-law.

"And him fiddlin' and drinkin' and otherwise wastin' his substance,"

croaked Mrs. Scattergood.

At this Janice did utter an objection:

"Now, that is not so, Mrs. Scattergood. You know very well that that story about Hopewell being a drinking man is not true."

"My! is that so? Didn't I see him myself? And you seen him, too, Janice Day, comin' home that night, a wee-wawin' like a boat in a heavy sea. I guess I see what I see. And as for his fiddlin'----"

"You need not be troubled on that score, at least," sighed Janice.

"Poor Hopewell! He's sold his violin."