“Come on, Sweet William! Sweet William!” sang Patsy, catching her small
brother by the hand and dancing down the walk. “Let’s go to Broad Acres
for a look around. Alice! uh, Alice!” She called Alice Blair, who was
sitting in the swing, with her knitting. “Come and see how our gardens
are growing. We’ve been so busy being field hands for Mr. Spencer’s
cotton, I’ve not been to our garden for two whole days.”
“I ran by to look at it this morning,” said Alice. “I feel real
lonesome if I don’t see it every day.”
“So do I,” agreed Patsy. “I know now how David felt that first year he
had corn at Happy Acres, and he used to ‘go by’ to see it every time he
was sent to the store for the mail or a spool of thread.”
At the garden gate they paused and called Ruth. She came out on the
back porch, but stopped at the head of the steps.
“I’ve j-just come in,” she said. “I weeded a row of p-peas. Now I’m
helping mother. I’ll see you p-p-presently.”
The others went into the garden, admired the flourishing vegetables,
and pulled up a few stray weeds.
“Isn’t it beautorious?” exclaimed Patsy. “Things have just been leaping
and bounding along these two days.”
“Scrumptious!” agreed Alice.
“We-all boys have got the biggest potatoes,” said Sweet William,
wagging his head proudly.
“You-all boys! Will you look at those beans? What about them, Mr.
William Taliaferro Osborne?” demanded Patsy. “Anne Lewis had a lot to
say about their Washington gardens. They aren’t a bit better than this;
they can’t be. Just think! Anne is coming next week.”
“Goody, goody, goody!” cried Sweet William, clapping his hands.
As they went chattering back up the walk, Ruth came out to ask them to
stay to supper; her mother had a strawberry shortcake.
“I’ll go and ask----” “If mother knew----” began Patsy and Alice.
“If I had a piece of strawberry shortcake in my hand,” suggested Sweet
William, “I could go home and tell them you were invited. We are going
to have batter-cakes for supper; Emma makes good little batter-cakes
with lacy brown edges.”
Patsy was properly horrified at her small brother’s greediness, but
Mrs. Wilson laughed and sent him home, munching a generous slice of
shortcake.
After supper Mrs. Wilson and the girls went out on the front porch. It
was wide and long, set high on brick pillars, with a flight of steps
leading down to the long boxwood-bordered walk.
“There is a loose railing,” said Mrs. Wilson. “I must nail it in place
to-morrow.”
“You are as careful about mending and tending Broad Acres as you are
about Ruth’s darning and patching,” laughed Patsy.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Wilson. “It’s all in the family. Broad Acres is a dear
old part of the family.”
“How old is it, Cousin Agnes?”
“The house was built in 1762,” said Mrs. Wilson, with quiet pride. “It
was made strong, to be a fort, in case of Indian attacks. That is why
the shutters are so thick, with the little hinged middle pieces for
loopholes to fire from.”
“The Yankees came by here in The War,” said Ruth.
“In April, ’65,” agreed her mother. “The doors and shutters were
closed, with crape hanging from them, in mourning for the dead
Confederacy. Sherman’s men marched past, without disturbing the house,
thinking there was a corpse in it.”
“This very bench we’re s-s-sitting on is c-called the President’s
bench, because W-W-Washington sat here when he was v-visiting my
way-back-grandfather. Tell about that, mother,” said Ruth.
But an interruption came before Mrs. Wilson could begin the story, the
more loved because it was old and well known. The front gate clicked.
Patsy glanced toward it and, seeing a negro girl standing there,
exclaimed in surprise, “Why, there’s Lou Ellen!”
“Go to the side gate, Lou Ellen,” Mrs. Wilson said sharply. “What do
you mean by coming the front way?”
“I ain’t comin’ in,” said Lou Ellen, in a pert, high voice, as she
lounged on the gate. “I jest come to de store an’ stopped to leave you
a message, Miss Agnes. I was comin’ down de mill path an’ a man--I
reckon he was Van--hollered to me an’ said Mr. Black Mayo say for you
please’m to go an’ spen’ de night wid Miss Polly. He got to go ’way an’
she was feelin’ sort o’ puny, an’ he didn’t want to left her at home by
herse’f.”
“It’s strange he didn’t tell me when he was in The Village to-day,”
said Mrs. Wilson. “Van told you, you say?”
“It sounded like Van,” answered Lou Ellen. “He was in de woods an’ I
didn’t see him good.”
She tossed her head and strolled away.
“She’s a horrid thing!” said Ruth.
“How could she help it?” asked Alice. “Her mother, Louviny, is as
trifling as she can be, and so is her father, Lincum; and his father
is that horrid old Solomon Gabe that they call a trick doctor; all the
other darkies are afraid of him.”
“Darkies are queer things,” laughed Patsy. And then she told what Emma
had said about the draft.
“She isn’t the only one who believes that,” said Alice. “Unc’ Isham
told father he’d heard tell they are all going to be put back in
slavery; he said they always told him if the Democrats got strong in
power, they would make the darkies slaves again.”
“I wonder how they get these foolish notions into their heads?” said
Mrs. Wilson. “Well, chickens, Ruth and I must be starting to Larkland.”
“Let Ruth spend the night with me, Cousin Agnes,” entreated Patsy.
Mrs. Wilson consented, and the three girls walked with her as far as
the mill on her way to Larkland. Sweet William did not see them go,
and he was surprised to find the house dark and deserted when he came
running back, with Scalawag at his heels, for his sweater. He went,
with a little feeling of awe, down the somber boxwood walk--it was now
nearly dark--and it was a relief to hear Scalawag, who had run ahead of
him, give a sharp bark.
“Cats-s! cats-s!” hissed Sweet William urgingly.
Scalawag ran to a rose arbor at the back of the garden, but his furious
barking changed to a sudden yelp and whine; he ran back to his master.
“Old tabby cat must have scratched you,” said Sweet William. “Sic her!
sic her, Scalawag!”
But the dog, bristling and growling, kept at his master’s heels, as
if unwilling to encounter again whatever he had found in that dark,
secluded place. Sweet William groped around for his sweater and ran
home. Then he had his bath and went to bed. The older children followed
soon, as behooved those who must be at Sunday school at half past nine
o’clock and know a Psalm and the story of Gideon and be ready to answer
seven new questions in the Shorter Catechism.
The next morning, when the Osbornes were at breakfast, Steve came
running into the room, with a tragic face.
“Our gardens are ruined!” he cried.
“Oh, Steve! What do you mean?”
“Ruined?”
“They can’t be!”
“Ruined!” he repeated, with doleful emphasis. “I went by there, just
after breakfast, taking our cow to pasture. I saw the gate open----”
“Who left it open?” demanded David.
“And Miss Fanny Morrison’s old cow was there, gorging herself on our
corn and peas. Everything is grazed off; trampled down.”
With no more appetites for breakfast, the war gardeners ran to Broad
Acres, to see the wreck of their gardens.
“But who left the gate open?” David demanded sternly.
“We were the last ones here,” said Patsy; “and I know we shut it.”
“I was here about dark,” Sweet William confessed bravely; “I came for
my sweater. But I shut the gate and I fastened it. I had to climb up on
the garden fence to put the hook in the hole.”
“You didn’t put it in,” Patsy said severely. “You let it slip to the
side. And our gardens are ruined.”
“It’s my garden, too. And I did fasten the gate,” sobbed Sweet William.
He seemed so clearly the culprit that black looks and little pity were
being given him when Mrs. Wilson came up.
She, too, was horrified and distressed, but she said: “If Sweet William
is sure he fastened the gate, I am sure he fastened it. There is
something strange about this matter. Mayo did not send for me. He is
away, but Polly had told him she would have Chrissy sleep in the house.
She was surprised--but of course pleased--to see me; I would have come
back home, if it hadn’t been so late.”
“Could Lou Ellen have done it?” suggested Patsy. “She came with that
message; and she’s so pert and horrid.”
They examined the premises carefully. Near the rose arbor, at the back
of the garden, they found footprints, the track of a big, bare, flat
foot. Dick carefully made a copy of it on a piece of paper, and Mr.
Blair and Mr. Red Mayo Osborne went with the gardeners to Lincum’s
cabin on the Redville road, and confronted Lou Ellen. She stoutly
denied the charge, and when her foot was measured it proved to be much
smaller than the print. Evidently, then, she was not the intruder. Who
could it be?
That was a doleful Sabbath for the young villagers. They were thinking
more about their wrecked garden than their Sunday school lesson; the
sermon fell on deaf ears; and in the afternoon they stood mournfully
around the scene of their destroyed hopes.
But with the next morning came cheer and good counsel. Black Mayo,
having come back on an early train, stopped at the post office and was
told about the catastrophe and he went to view the garden.
“It is pretty bad, but it might be worse,” he said cheerily. “Some of
these things will come up from the roots. Some of the rows will have
to be plowed up and planted in things that will still have plenty of
growing time. The soil is in fine condition. Let’s get to work and make
a garden day of it. One of you boys go to Larkland, and get Rosinante
and a plow.”
Mr. Tavis came to help them, and so did Mr. Blair, who shut up the post
office, saying casually that any one who came for mail could look him
up or wait till he got back.
Several hours of diligent, intelligent toil worked wonders. The gardens
would be later, of course, but with a long growing season before them
that was no serious disadvantage; it would require more work, much more
work, but that they were all willing and glad to give. Why, Dick had
offered to help this morning, and he had been just as interested and
busy as any one else. Perhaps he would join the garden club now. But he
did not. When Mr. Osborne went home to dinner, Dick started off with
him, to get a pigeon for a trial flight.
Patsy looked after him and set her lips firmly. “Just you wait, young
man,” she promised him, “till next week when Anne Lewis comes. We’ll
show you what it means to dare and double dare us.”
For weeks Dick had been going off alone every few days, and coming back
late, tired and dirty and with a joyful air of mystery. The others were
too busy with gardening and Red Cross and Corn Club work to make any
real effort to find out where he went.
But he always watched to make sure that he was not followed, and he
never relaxed his precautions at the mine. He pulled his ladder in and
out, blurred his footprints, and stirred up the dead leaves so as not
to make a path. It would take, he proudly thought, a Sherlock Holmes or
a bloodhound to trace his course.
He had examined the main room without seeing any place that it seemed
worth while to work in the crude fashion possible to him. The most
promising places, he thought, were in the spurs of the lower tunnel,
where there was more clay than rock. If he dug a little farther--a few
inches or some feet--perhaps he would find silver that the miners had
missed.
He planned to extend each spur a certain distance; at first he said ten
feet, but a little work convinced him that was too far, so he decided
to go six feet--or five--or four. It was too discouraging to compute
how long it would take to go even four feet, at his snail-like rate of
progress. He could not use alone the drill and sledge hammer he had
brought from Mr. Mallett’s shop. So he had to content himself with
digging along a ledge, breaking off rough bits of rock and eagerly
examining them for silver.
He had inquired furtively about dynamite, but the law made it difficult
for him to get it--fortunately; for in his ignorant, inexperienced
hands there would probably have been an accident which might even have
cost him his life.
On this pleasant June afternoon, Dick went blithely with his Cousin
Mayo to Larkland. He nearly always went there on his way to the Old
Sterling Mine; it was only half a mile off the road; and the distance
to the mine seemed shorter to him when he had a carrier pigeon for
company.
Breeding and blood were telling in the Larkland pigeons. Mr. Osborne
showed Dick that afternoon a marked copy of _The Bird World_ telling,
with big headlines, about the thousand-mile flight of a young pigeon
trained by Mr. Mayo Osborne, of Virginia.
“I bet Snapshot will make a record, too,” said Dick, stroking the
plumage of a petted young bird.
“Dick,” said Mr. Osborne, suddenly, “I’m glad to have your help and
interest about these birds; I want you to learn all you can about
training them. Your Cousin Polly knows all there is to know about their
feeding and care. But when I go away----”
“Oh! you are going away?” interrupted Dick. “When, Cousin Mayo?”
“Early this fall, I hope; as soon as some business matters can be
arranged. I’ve been wanting to be in the army from the first.”
“I said you would go. It wasn’t true you wanted to stay at home playing
with birds.”
Mr. Osborne looked at Dick and started to ask a question, but it did
not seem worth while. So he merely said: “When I leave, I’m going to
ask your father to let you stay here at Larkland with your Cousin Polly
and help her with the doves, our doves of war.”
“Thank you, Cousin Mayo; I’ll do my best,” promised Dick.
Mr. Osborne wrote a note and fastened it to the bird’s leg--that was
always part of the ceremony; then he put it into a makeshift cage, an
old shoe box with holes punched in it, and gave it to Dick.
“Where are you going?” asked Mr. Osborne.
“To the mine--creek,” said Dick, almost telling his secret. It was hard
not to give a forthright answer to his cousin’s direct look.
“Why don’t you boys--do you?--ever go to the Old Sterling Mine?”
“Maybe so. Sometimes,” he mumbled.
Black Mayo did not notice the boy’s conscious air. He was watching his
pigeons fluttering and circling about, white against the woodland, dark
against the shining sky.
“I used to go there;” he said. “Ah! the hours and days I spent, seeking
its treasure. It was one of the great adventures of my boyhood.”
“Did you ever find any?--any silver in the mine, I mean,” Dick asked
eagerly.
His cousin gave a smiling negative.
“Do you suppose?--perhaps there isn’t any.” Dick’s voice dropped in
disappointment.
“I believe there is,” said Black Mayo. “Silver was found there by old
Mallett, not long after the Revolution. You’ve heard the tale handed
down in his family. Some years ago, when I was rummaging through old
court records, I found the account of his trial for ‘feloniously
making, uttering, and passing false and counterfeited Coin in the
likeness and similitude of Spanish milled Dollars of the value of six
shillings Current money of Virginia.’ That was in 1792.”
“But the mine was worked after that, wasn’t it?” asked Dick.
“Oh, yes! My grandfather Mayo, your great-grandfather, had it worked,
but it never paid. It doesn’t seem reasonable that the old blacksmith
spaded out all the silver that was there. There’s a tale that a
valuable vein was struck and lost. You might take a look around to-day,
and you and I might go prospecting some time,” he said, now looking
keenly at Dick.
The boy reddened to the roots of his hair. “Yes, sir,” he said. “It’s
time I was gone.”
Mayo Osborne looked after him with a whimsical smile. “Straight to the
Old Sterling Mine, I’ll wager my head!” he laughed.