GILL MACE
About the middle of the afternoon Frank strolled down to the village. He
had been worked up a good deal all morning, and when dinner time came he
was made aware that his aunt was determined to treat him as a kind of
culprit.
The cross-grained old maid did not speak to him during the entire meal. She
sat prim and erect, barely glanced at him, and as Frank arose from the
table, half choked with the unwelcome food he had eaten, he resolved to
speak his mind.
"I'd like to say a word or two, Aunt Tib," he began.
"Say it," snapped his ungracious relative sharply.
"About this monstrous charge made against me by Mr. Mace," continued Frank.
"It is indeed a terrible charge," remarked Miss Brown, with a chilling,
awesome groan.
"Of course it isn't true, and of course you can't believe it," went on
Frank. "I am sure that a day or two will change things that look so black
for me now. All that I am worrying about is that this affair may get to
father and mother. It would simply worry them both to death, and it mustn't
be. I hope you wouldn't be so cruel, so wicked, as to add to their
troubles."
"I shall not write to them until you have confessed."
"Confessed!" cried Frank hotly. "There is nothing to confess. Don't I tell
you that I never saw old man Mace's bracelet? Aunt Tib, I am ashamed of
you. I tell you, I'm holding in a good deal. If I thought you believed that
man's story I'd leave the house for good."
"You mustn't do that, Frank," she said quickly. "We must bear our crosses
patiently."
"It's no use; I'm just fighting mad," declared Frank to himself as he left
the house. "I just hope Mace and Roseberry will do something to bring
affairs to a focus. If this thing gets around the village, it will be a
nice, pleasant thing for me, won't it, now? I've half a mind to make a
break and get out of it all."
Frank was in a decidedly disturbed state of mind. From being angry he got
dejected, and for some time he allowed his thoughts to wander unrestrained.
He actually envied Ned Foreman and his wandering career. If it had not been
for his loyalty to his parents he would have hunted up the grinding wagon
to ask the man who had relieved Ned to give him a job.
It would not have been so hard for Frank if he had had any close chum to
whom he could have confided his troubles. But Miss Brown had spoiled all
that. She kept the garden like a parlor, and scared away what few
acquaintances Frank had with her severe looks and manner. The Jordans had
lived at Tipton for only a year. The greater part of that time Frank had
been absent at a boarding-school in a neighboring town. The lads with whom
he had formerly associated in Tipton were away at various academies. Frank
did not know the town schoolboys very well.
He went downtown and strolled about for a time. Defiantly he walked calmly
past Mace's jewelry store, and even paused and looked through its front
plate-glass show window. He passed the usual hangout of Judge Roseberry,
and did not hasten his steps a bit when he saw that the judge, lounging on
a bench, noticed him.
Frank fancied that after he had passed the tavern the judge said something
to some of his fellow hangers on, and that they glanced after him with some
curiosity. A little farther on two little schoolboys paused in their walk,
stared hard at him and then scooted away, saying something about a
"burglary."
"Mace is bluffing, and so is the judge," determined Frank. "They have no
evidence against me, and they don't dare to arrest me. If they spread their
false stories, all the same, they shall suffer for it."
Frank felt pretty lonesome and gloomy as he passed the schoolhouse. The
boys were rushing out, free from the tasks of the day. It might have been
imagination, but Frank fancied that one or two of them greeted him with a
cool nod and hurried on. As he politely lifted his cap to a bevy of girls,
he imagined that they were rather constrained in their return greeting and
looked at him queerly.
Beyond the schoolhouse was Bolter's Hill, a famous place for coasting in
the winter time. Just now it had a new power of attraction for the
schoolboys. An old hermit-like fellow named Clay Dobbins had lived for
years at the other side of the hill. He owned a little patch of ground and
a dilapidated house. His wife had died recently, and all the village knew
of his two chronic complaints.
The first was that "Sairey had died leaving a sight less money than he had
expected," and old Dobbins had wondered if the lawyers or the speculators
had got it.
The second was that the old man had got nervous and lonely living in the
isolated spot. So he had rented a hut the other side of Bolter's Hill, near
the schoolhouse. He planned to have his house moved there, and intended
starting a little candy and notion store.
There had never been much house-moving in Tipton, and nobody in the village
was equipped to undertake even the simple task of conveying the Dobbins
dwelling uphill and then down again. A house-moving firm from Pentonville,
however, had engaged to perform the work. They had jacked up the house on
screws, chained it securely to a log frame, and, setting a portable
windlass at the top of the hill, operated this by horse power.
An immense rope cable, thick as a man's arm, ran to a pulley under the
house. It was a novelty to the school youngsters to watch the horse go
round and round the windlass, and to see the house come up the hill a slow
inch at a time.
Work on the moving had been suspended for the day, but the boys hung around
the spot. They raced through the house, clambered over the moving frame,
and knocked with the workmen's mallets on the rollers to make the hollow
echo that was new to them and sounded like music.
The house movers had set the windlass locked, and the strain on the rope
brought it taut. The house was anchored about half way up the hill,
straining at the giant cable dangerously and on a sharp tilt.
A little urchin was trying to "walk the tightrope," as he called it, as
Frank came up, shaping a willow stick with his pocket knife.
"Say, Frank Jordan," cried the lad, "won't you make me a whistle?"
"Of course I will," replied Frank accommodatingly, and got astride a moving
timber and set at work. Only a few of the large boys were about the spot.
Frank noticed that Gill Mace, the nephew of the village jeweler, was among
their number.
Frank soon turned out a first-class whistle for the applicant, who went
away tooting at a happy rate. A second urchin preferred a modest request,
and Frank had just completed the second whistle when the boy he had sent
away contented came back sniveling.
"Why, what's the matter?" inquired Frank sympathizingly.
Between sobs the little fellow related his troubles. Gill Mace had forcibly
taken the whistle away from him, and when he had got through testing its
merits had pocketed it and sent its owner away with a cuff on the ear.
"I'll give Gill Mace a piece of my mind, just now," declared Frank, hastily
getting to the ground. The jeweler's nephew was up to just such mean,
unmanly tricks all of the time. Frank felt that he deserved a lesson.
Besides, at just the present moment he had no great love for the whole Mace
family.
Frank hurried around to the side of the house, to come upon Gill and his
companions, who were engaged in leaping across a puddle near a pit in the
hillside. He marched right up to the culprit, the little fellow he had
befriended trailing after him.
"See here, Gill Mace," cried Frank promptly, "can't you find a little
better employment of your time than bullying little children?"
Gill flushed up, but put on a braggart air.
"Any of your business?" he demanded blusteringly.
"I'm making it my business--it ought to be the business of any decent,
fair-minded fellow," asserted Frank staunchly.
"Well, what are you going to do about it?" demanded Gill, doubling up his
fists.
"I'm going to give you just twenty seconds to give that whistle back to
that boy, or I'm going to take it out of your hide," declared Frank
steadily.
"Oho! you are, eh?" snorted Gill, swelling up and glaring wickedly at
Frank. "Well, you won't get the whistle, for it's there in the mud."
"I've a good mind to make you go after it," began Frank, when Gill, making
a sudden jump, landed up against him, and dealt him a quick, foul blow
below the waist.
"I don't care about dirtying my hands with a thief," answered Gill, "but--"
"What's that?" cried Frank, all the pride and anger in his nature coming to
the front.
"I said it," replied Gill, keeping up his doubled fists, but edging away,
for the look in the eyes of his adversary warned and cowed him.
"You call me a thief, do you?" demanded Frank.
"Yes; you stole a diamond bracelet from my uncle's store this morning."
"It's a falsehood!" shouted Frank--"a falsehood as foul and dirty as the
muck in that pool! That for you!"
Frank's arm shot out like a piston-rod, and into the mud-puddle, head over
heels, went Gill Mace with a frightened howl.