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[Illustration: PAT MURPHY’S TRAP]
The
Village Champion
By
W. O. STODDARD
_Author of “Boys of Bunker Academy,” “On the Old
Frontier,” “The Sword Maker’s Son,” etc._
[Illustration]
PHILADELPHIA
GEORGE W. JACOBS & CO.
PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1903, by
GEORGE W. JACOBS & COMPANY
_Published, September, 1903_
Contents
I. BARNABY LEARNS HIS NAME 7
II. AN UNEXPECTED DUCKING 17
III. MEETING OLD ASSOCIATES 31
IV. THREE CONFERENCES AND THEIR RESULTS 43
V. ZEB’S OPINION OF APPLE SPROUTS 56
VI. BARNABY CALLS ON THE DOCTOR 65
VII. HUNTING THE COWS 78
VIII. AN UNEXPECTED MEETING 98
IX. ZEB’S FAME PRECEDES HIM 114
X. THE PUZZLED PROFESSOR 124
XI. WILLING HANDS 134
XII. NEWLY FOUND FRIENDS 146
XIII. THE HAUNTED HOUSE 160
XIV. A SHARPER OUTWITTED 172
XV. THE MYSTERY OF THE DUN HEIFER 187
XVI. A MESS OF FISH 199
XVII. SKANIGO LAKE 206
XVIII. MAJOR MONTAGUE’S PLANS THWARTED 218
XIX. A NOCTURNAL ESCAPADE 231
XX. THE BOXING MATCH 242
XXI. GEORGE BRAYTON’S DRIVE 254
XXII. GHOSTS IN THE ACADEMY BELFRY 265
XXIII. THE BELL MYSTERY REMAINS UNSOLVED 281
XXIV. MAJOR MONTAGUE HAS A VISITOR 288
XXV. MR. ASHBEL NORTON 301
XXVI. A FEW SURPRISING DISCLOSURES 313
XXVII. THE FISHING PARTY 327
XXVIII. TWO IMPORTANT TELEGRAMS 342
XXIX. THE BLACK VALISE IS OPENED 350
XXX. THE ACADEMY “GHOST” DISCOVERED 359
XXXI. GOOD NEWS FOR BAR 369
XXXII. HOME AGAIN 379
Illustrations
Pat Murphy’s Trap _Frontispiece_
Zeb’s Fight with the Rodney Boys _Facing Page_ 94
“How did Zeb Fuller get that heifer into the Academy?” “ “ 196
“He’d ha’ found it out, if it hadn’t been for me” “ “ 282
“Because he forgot to ask me” “ “ 348
The Village Champion
CHAPTER I
BARNABY LEARNS HIS NAME
It was towards the end of a very hot summer, and all the human
population of that crowded square of the great city had spent the first
half of the night in the streets. Either that, or in leaning halfway
out of their windows to get a breath of fresh air.
Now that sunrise was again so near at hand, however, and the breeze
from the sea had done so much to make the world more comfortable to
live in, the closely-built “hotels” and tenement houses were all asleep.
The former were mostly of the sort that sell lager beer and other
things in the basement, and the latter were just the kind of places in
which men and women ought not to live.
Up in the third-story front room of one of those hotels, however, a boy
of about seventeen--a well-built, dark-eyed, curly-headed, handsome
boy--sat on a wooden-seated chair, wide-awake, and seemed to be
studying the condition of somebody who lay on the bed near him.
There was a curiously-set expression of determination on the bright,
young face, very much as if he had made up his mind to do something,
and did not mean to be very long in going about it.
Such a ludicrously disreputable looking mess of a man was the large
figure that now began to kick about so clumsily among the bedclothes!
He had not taken off his clothes on lying down, and every one might
have wondered what need he had of extra blankets in such weather.
But now a grizzled head and a bloated face rose slowly from the
pillow--one of those faces which defy any guess of within twenty years
of their actual age.
“Jack--Jack Chills!”
“That isn’t my name, but here I am,” responded the boy in the chair.
“No more it is. Alas, for all my sins!” exclaimed the man, “but you
cannot deceive your old uncle, my boy. I know what you’re up to. You
mean to take advantage of my temporary indisposition and abandon me!”
“That’s it,” said the boy, curtly. “It’ll be two or three days before
you get sober enough to follow me, and I’m off.”
“I deserve it, I do,” was the mournful whine of the man on the bed. “I
ought never to have brought you to this.”
“I’ve seen you before,” said the boy, “when you were sick and sorry.
You brought me, years and years ago, but I’m older now and I don’t mean
to stay any longer.”
“What will Monsieur Prosper say when he knows it? He expects great
things of you now the troupe’s broken up.”
“Glad it’s gone to pieces,” half savagely remarked the youngster. “I
don’t want any more of that. What’s more, I won’t pick pockets or cheat
at cards, or that sort of thing, for old Prosper or you either.”
“Oh! alas!” came from the bed, but whether in repentance or
disappointment it would be hard to say.
“Now,” said the boy, in a tone of quiet determination, “I’ve been Jack
Chills long enough; tell me what my real name is.”
“My dear nephew----”
“If you’re really my uncle, you must know, and if you won’t tell, I’ll
empty the ice water all over you.”
“And kill me?”
“No; it won’t kill you, but it’s awful cold,” said the boy, as he
advanced towards the bed with a large pitcher in his hand. “Come, now,
I must be off before sunrise. Don’t tell me any whopper now. Out with
it.”
“Oh!” burst in half-frightened accents from the helpless red-face; but
then a very different look began to creep across it.
“Barnaby Vernon, my boy.”
“Is that my name?”
“It was your father’s before you, and you’re coming out just like him.
I reckon it’s that that fetches me now. Bar Vernon, if you make me one
promise, I’ll be fair with you.”
“Now that I know my own name, I’ll promise anything,” excitedly
exclaimed Barnaby.
“Well, then--quick now, listen, before I change my mind--you see that
little black valise?”
“Seen it a thousand times,” said Bar.
“That’s yours, but you must promise not to open it for a year and a
day. I’ll be either dead or a thousand miles from here then.”
“Most likely dead,” growled Bar, who evidently bore small affection to
his big relative. “But I’ll promise. Will it tell me anything?”
“Everything; but, Barnaby, not for a year and a day! You always kept
your word, just like your father.”
“I’ll keep it,” said Bar, firmly, “and now, good-bye, Major Montague,
if that’s your name--only it isn’t. I can’t say I forgive you exactly,
but we’ll part friends. No more acrobat and juggling and tight-rope and
wonderful performances for me.”
“But what’ll you do? ’Twon’t be long before you’ll be hunting me up
again.”
“Guess not,” said Bar. “My clothes are pretty good, and I’ve collected
my last six months’ wages out of the money you gave me when you came
in last night. There’s a receipt for it, and there’s the rest of the
money. You’ll find it all right.”
“Wages? Receipt? Jack Chills!” almost screamed Major Montague.
“Exactly,” said Bar. “I’ve stopped working for nothing and being
knocked down for it; good-bye, old fellow.”
So saying, Barnaby Vernon, for he somehow felt safe about so calling
himself, picked up a very well-filled leather traveling bag with one
hand and the mysterious little valise with the other, and started for
the door.
“Jack Chills! Barnaby! Come back with that money! I’ll have you
arrested! I’ll strangle you!”
“Stop that noise,” replied Bar, “or I’ll douse you all over.”
“Barnaby!”
“There, then if I must!”
Barnaby had put down the valise and caught up the pitcher, and the
voice of the man on the bed died away in a wretched sort of shivering
whine as the chilly flood came swashing down upon him.
“How he does hate water,” muttered Bar, as he again seized his
new-found property, and glided out into the passageway. Neither voice
nor pursuing feet came after him, for Major Montague was struggling
frantically, like a man with the hydrophobia, to divest himself of his
saturated habiliments, and his rum-destroyed strength was by no means
equal to the task.
“That’s what rum’ll do if it gets a fair hold of a man,” said Barnaby
to himself, on the stairs. “He must have been a gentleman once, and
look at him now! None of it for me. I don’t like that kind of an
ending, if you please.”
He stepped into the bar-room office on the first floor, for he had
no intention of “sneaking,” but not a soul was there, and in another
moment he was in the deserted, gloomy, sordid-looking street.
“Plenty of time,” he said to himself. “I’m going to start fair. I must
go to my hotel from the ferry, in the regular coach with the passengers
from the Philadelphia morning train.”
Barnaby Vernon had taken his lesson of life in a hard school, thus
far, and he had done an amount of thinking for himself which does not
often fall to the share of boys of his age. He knew very well that no
questions would be asked of a “regular passenger” who looked well, and
who brought his baggage with him.
Two hours later, he came out from breakfast at a respectable, but not
too expensive hotel, on the other side of the city, as quiet and
self-possessed a young fellow as the sharp-eyed clerk had ever seen in
his life.
“Looks as if he knew his own business, and meant to mind it,” was the
sufficient commentary of the latter.
If any of the sharpers who lie in wait for the young and unwary set his
eyes on Barnaby that morning, he speedily took them off again, for his
instincts must have told him plainly, “Not a cent to be made out of
that fellow.”
Under Barnaby’s external composure, however, there was more than a
little of inner fermentation.
“All right, so far,” he said to himself. “The old rascal will take it
for granted that I’ve left the city. Once his penitent fit is over,
he’ll be sure to go for me again. I ain’t half sure but what I’d better
go to Europe or California, only a hundred dollars isn’t quite enough
for that. What’ll I do?”
He was not so unwise as to spend his time around the hotel, however,
and he carried his mental puzzle with him on two or three short trips
on the Sound steamers and up the Hudson.
“I’ve a name of my own,” he said to himself, as he returned to his
hotel from the last of these, “and I’ve got rid forever of that
horrible old time, but what shall I do with my ‘New Time’? I must
settle that before my funds run out. They’d last longer in the country.”
No doubt of that, but what was he to do in the country?
There had been work enough cut out for him in town, of a kind that
he knew how to go about, and very remarkable had been the discussion
thereof by the bedside of “Major Montague,” some three or four hours
after Barnaby’s escapade.
“Might set the police after him, on account of that money,” said a
tall, thin, foreign-looking man, in a tone of deep dejection.
“The police, Prosper?” exclaimed the major. “I guess not. The less you
say to them the better. They understand your kind of French.”
“He’d make a better hand than any of us, in time,” groaned Prosper.
“He’s cut his stick, though, as far as we are concerned,” added a
third, a dapper little fellow, who stood by Prosper’s chair. “I’m glad
he’s gone before he learned too much.”
“He knows enough now,” said the major, “but I don’t believe he’ll do us
any harm. He isn’t any common kind of boy, and we never could have kept
him in hand. I tell you, he’ll be bossing a crowd of his own before a
great while.”
“But I mean to have the use of him for a while first,” said Prosper,
“if I can only lay my hands on him!”
“Better not try,” said the major.
“He may come back of his own accord,” said the third man.
“You hold your breath till he does,” kindly remarked the major.
It was a doleful sort of conference; and the high opinion of Barnaby
Vernon’s, _alias_ Jack Chills’s, capacity in their peculiar line which
that trio entertained was expressed in language decidedly too powerful
to be reported.