Miss Calista was perplexed. Her nephew, Caleb Cramp, who had been her
right-hand man for years and whom she had got well broken into her
ways, had gone to the Klondike, leaving her to fill his place with the
next best man; but the next best man was slow to appear, and meanwhile
Miss Calista was looking about her warily. She could afford to wait a
while, for the crop was all in and the fall ploughing done, so that
the need of a successor to Caleb was not as pressing as it might
otherwise have been. There was no lack of applicants, such as they
were. Miss Calista was known to be a kind and generous mistress,
although she had her "ways," and insisted calmly and immovably upon
wholehearted compliance with them. She had a small, well-cultivated
farm and a comfortable house, and her hired men lived in clover. Caleb
Cramp had been perfection after his kind, and Miss Calista did not
expect to find his equal. Nevertheless, she set up a certain standard
of requirements; and although three weeks, during which Miss Calista
had been obliged to put up with the immature services of a neighbour's
boy, had elapsed since Caleb's departure, no one had as yet stepped
into his vacant and coveted shoes.
Certainly Miss Calista was somewhat hard to please, but she was not
thinking of herself as she sat by her front window in the chilly
November twilight. Instead, she was musing on the degeneration of
hired men, and reflecting that it was high time the wheat was
thrashed, the house banked, and sundry other duties attended to.
Ches Maybin had been up that afternoon to negotiate for the vacant
place, and had offered to give satisfaction for smaller wages than
Miss Calista had ever paid. But he had met with a brusque refusal,
scarcely as civil as Miss Calista had bestowed on drunken Jake Stinson
from the Morrisvale Road.
Not that Miss Calista had any particular prejudice against Ches
Maybin, or knew anything positively to his discredit. She was simply
unconsciously following the example of a world that exerts itself to
keep a man down when he is down and prevent all chance of his rising.
Nothing succeeds like success, and the converse of this is likewise
true--that nothing fails like failure. There was not a person in
Cooperstown who would not have heartily endorsed Miss Calista's
refusal.
Ches Maybin was only eighteen, although he looked several years older,
and although no flagrant misdoing had ever been proved against him,
suspicion of such was not wanting. He came of a bad stock, people said
sagely, adding that what was bred in the bone was bound to come out
in the flesh. His father, old Sam Maybin, had been a shiftless and
tricky rascal, as everybody knew, and had ended his days in the
poorhouse. Ches's mother had died when he was a baby, and he had come
up somehow, in a hand-to-mouth fashion, with all the cloud of heredity
hanging over him. He was always looked at askance, and when any
mischief came to light in the village, it was generally fastened on
him as a convenient and handy scapegoat. He was considered sulky and
lazy, and the local prophets united in predicting a bad end for him
sooner or later; and, moreover, diligently endeavoured by their
general treatment of him to put him in a fair way to fulfil their
predictions. Miss Calista, when she had shut Chester Maybin out into
the chill gloom of the November dusk, dismissed him from her thoughts.
There were other things of more moment to her just then than old Sam
Maybin's hopeful son.
There was nobody in the house but herself, and although this was
neither alarming nor unusual, it was unusual--and Miss Calista
considered it alarming--that the sum of five hundred dollars should at
that very moment be in the upper right-hand drawer of the sideboard,
which sum had been up to the previous day safe in the coffers of the
Millageville bank. But certain unfavourable rumours were in course of
circulation about that same institution, and Miss Calista, who was
nothing if not prudent, had gone to the bank that very morning and
withdrawn her deposit. She intended to go over to Kerrytown the very
next day and deposit it in the Savings Bank there. Not another day
would she keep it in the house, and, indeed, it worried her to think
she must keep it even for the night, as she had told Mrs. Galloway
that afternoon during a neighbourly back-yard chat.
"Not but what it's safe enough," she said, "for not a soul but you
knows I've got it. But I'm not used to have so much by me, and there
are always tramps going round. It worries me somehow. I wouldn't give
it a thought if Caleb was here. I s'pose being all alone makes me
nervous."
Miss Calista was still rather nervous when she went to bed that night,
but she was a woman of sound sense and was determined not to give way
to foolish fears. She locked doors and windows carefully, as was her
habit, and saw that the fastenings were good and secure. The one on
the dining-room window, looking out on the back yard, wasn't; in fact,
it was broken altogether; but, as Miss Calista told herself, it had
been broken just so for the last six years, and nobody had ever tried
to get in at it yet, and it wasn't likely anyone would begin tonight.
Miss Calista went to bed and, despite her worry, slept soon and
soundly. It was well on past midnight when she suddenly wakened and
sat bolt upright in bed. She was not accustomed to waken in the night,
and she had the impression of having been awakened by some noise. She
listened breathlessly. Her room was directly over the dining-room, and
an empty stovepipe hole opened up through the ceiling of the latter at
the head of her bed.
There was no mistake about it. Something or some person was moving
about stealthily in the room below. It wasn't the cat--Miss Calista
had shut him in the woodshed before she went to bed, and he couldn't
possibly get out. It must certainly be a beggar or tramp of some
description.
Miss Calista might be given over to nervousness in regard to imaginary
thieves, but in the presence of real danger she was cool and
self-reliant. As noiselessly and swiftly as any burglar himself, Miss
Calista slipped out of bed and into her clothes. Then she tip-toed out
into the hall. The late moonlight, streaming in through the hall
windows, was quite enough illumination for her purpose, and she got
downstairs and was fairly in the open doorway of the dining-room
before a sound betrayed her presence.
Standing at the sideboard, hastily ransacking the neat contents of an
open drawer, stood a man's figure, dimly visible in the moonlight
gloom. As Miss Calista's grim form appeared in the doorway, the
midnight marauder turned with a start and then, with an inarticulate
cry, sprang, not at the courageous lady, but at the open window behind
him.
Miss Calista, realizing with a flash of comprehension that he was
escaping her, had a woman-like impulse to get a blow in anyhow; she
grasped and hurled at her unceremonious caller the first thing that
came to hand--a bottle of peppermint essence that was standing on the
sideboard.
The missile hit the escaping thief squarely on the shoulder as he
sprang out of the window, and the fragments of glass came clattering
down on the sill. The next moment Miss Calista found herself alone,
standing by the sideboard in a half-dazed fashion, for the whole thing
had passed with such lightning-like rapidity that it almost seemed as
if it were the dissolving end of a bad dream. But the open drawer and
the window, where the bits of glass were glistening in the moonlight,
were no dream. Miss Calista recovered herself speedily, closed the
window, lit the lamp, gathered up the broken glass, and set up the
chairs which the would-be thief had upset in his exit. An examination
of the sideboard showed the precious five hundred safe and sound in an
undisturbed drawer.
Miss Calista kept grim watch and ward there until morning, and thought
the matter over exhaustively. In the end she resolved to keep her own
counsel. She had no clue whatever to the thief's whereabouts or
identity, and no good would come of making a fuss, which might only
end in throwing suspicion on someone who might be quite innocent.
When the morning came Miss Calista lost no time in setting out for
Kerrytown, where the money was soon safely deposited in the bank. She
heaved a sigh of relief when she left the building.
I feel as if I could enjoy life once more, she said to herself.
Goodness me, if I'd had to keep that money by me for a week itself,
I'd have been a raving lunatic by the end of it.
Miss Calista had shopping to do and friends to visit in town, so that
the dull autumn day was well nigh spent when she finally got back to
Cooperstown and paused at the corner store to get a bundle of matches.
The store was full of men, smoking and chatting around the fire, and
Miss Calista, whose pet abomination was tobacco smoke, was not at all
minded to wait any longer than she could help. But Abiram Fell was
attending to a previous customer, and Miss Calista sat grimly down by
the counter to wait her turn.
The door opened, letting in a swirl of raw November evening wind and
Ches Maybin. He nodded sullenly to Mr. Fell and passed down the store
to mutter a message to a man at the further end.
Miss Calista lifted her head as he passed and sniffed the air as a
charger who scents battle. The smell of tobacco was strong, and so was
that of the open boxes of dried herring on the counter, but plainly,
above all the commingled odours of a country grocery, Miss Calista
caught a whiff of peppermint, so strong as to leave no doubt of its
origin. There had been no hint of it before Ches Maybin's entrance.
The latter did not wait long. He was out and striding along the
shadowy road when Miss Calista left the store and drove smartly after
him. It never took Miss Calista long to make up her mind about
anything, and she had weighed and passed judgement on Ches Maybin's
case while Mr. Fell was doing up her matches.
The lad glanced up furtively as she checked her fat grey pony beside
him.
"Good evening, Chester," she said with brisk kindness. "I can give you
a lift, if you are going my way. Jump in, quick--Dapple is a little
restless."
A wave of crimson, duskily perceptible under his sunburned skin,
surged over Ches Maybin's face. It almost seemed as if he were going
to blurt out a blunt refusal. But Miss Calista's face was so guileless
and her tone so friendly, that he thought better of it and sprang in
beside her, and Dapple broke into an impatient trot down the long
hill lined with its bare, wind-writhen maples.
After a few minutes' silence Miss Calista turned to her moody
companion.
"Chester," she said, as tranquilly as if about to ask him the most
ordinary question in the world, "why did you climb into my house last
night and try to steal my money?"
Ches Maybin started convulsively, as if he meant to spring from the
buggy at once, but Miss Calista's hand was on his arm in a grasp none
the less firm because of its gentleness, and there was a warning gleam
in her grey eyes.
"It won't mend matters trying to get clear of me, Chester. I know it
was you and I want an answer--a truthful one, mind you--to my
question. I am your friend, and I am not going to harm you if you tell
me the truth."
Her clear and incisive gaze met and held irresistibly the boy's
wavering one. The sullen obstinacy of his face relaxed.
"Well," he muttered finally, "I was just desperate, that's why. I've
never done anything real bad in my life before, but people have always
been down on me. I'm blamed for everything, and nobody wants anything
to do with me. I'm willing to work, but I can't get a thing to do. I'm
in rags and I haven't a cent, and winter's coming on. I heard you
telling Mrs. Galloway yesterday about the money. I was behind the fir
hedge and you didn't see me. I went away and planned it all out. I'd
get in some way--and I meant to use the money to get away out west as
far from here as I could, and begin life there, where nobody knew me,
and where I'd have some sort of a chance. I've never had any here.
You can put me in jail now, if you like--they'll feed and clothe me
there, anyhow, and I'll be on a level with the rest."
The boy had blurted it all out sullenly and half-chokingly. A world of
rebellion and protest against the fate that had always dragged him
down was couched in his voice.
Miss Calista drew Dapple to a standstill before her gate.
"I'm not going to send you to jail, Chester. I believe you've told me
the truth. Yesterday you wanted me to give you Caleb's place and I
refused. Well, I offer it to you now. If you'll come, I'll hire you,
and give you as good wages as I gave him."
Ches Maybin looked incredulous.
"Miss Calista, you can't mean it."
"I do mean it, every word. You say you have never had a chance. Well,
I am going to give you one--a chance to get on the right road and make
a man of yourself. Nobody shall ever know about last night's doings
from me, and I'll make it my business to forget them if you deserve
it. What do you say?"
Ches lifted his head and looked her squarely in the face.
"I'll come," he said huskily. "It ain't no use to try and thank you,
Miss Calista. But I'll live my thanks."
And he did. The good people of Cooperstown held up their hands in
horror when they heard that Miss Calista had hired Ches Maybin, and
prophesied that the deluded woman would live to repent her rash step.
But not all prophecies come true. Miss Calista smiled serenely and
kept on her own misguided way. And Ches Maybin proved so efficient
and steady that the arrangement was continued, and in due time people
outlived their old suspicions and came to regard him as a thoroughly
smart and trustworthy young man.
"Miss Calista has made a man of Ches Maybin," said the oracles. "He
ought to be very grateful to her."
And he was. But only he and Miss Calista and the peppermint bottle
ever knew the precise extent of his gratitude, and they never told.