THE RUINED HOUSE
"Well, it's been a pretty lively day for me, and every move I make I seem
to be getting deeper and deeper into trouble."
This was the sentiment expressed by Frank as he retired to rest at the end
of the most eventful day in his young life. The hours had indeed been full
of incidents. He reviewed them all as he lay, his head on his pillow.
Frank smiled to himself as he remembered Gill Mace. The boy who had called
Frank a thief was unable to repeat the vile accusation when he emerged from
the puddle into which Frank had pushed him. His mouth was full of mud, his
hair was a dripping mop, his clothes were plastered with it. Frank had
waited to respond to any later move that Gill might decide on. The
jeweler's nephew, however, made none. As he emerged from the puddle three
schoolgirls, arms linked in friendly companionship, passed the spot. They
noticed Gill and tittered, and Gill sneaked away without so much as even
glancing at Frank again.
"I always thought you three fellows a pretty good lot," Frank spoke to the
companions of Gill. "I'd hate to change my opinion by thinking you believe
what Gill Mace said about my being a thief."
Frank looked so manly and earnest as he spoke these words that his hearers
were impressed. One of them stepped up and shook hands with him. Another
remarked that he believed no story until he had evidence of its
truthfulness, and a third half intimated that he would have served Gill
Mace just as Frank had done if he made an untrue accusation.
When Frank got home he discovered that his pocket knife was missing. He
tried to remember what had become of it, and finally decided that he must
have left it on the log frame or dropped it to the ground when he had
started out to meet Gill Mace. Frank valued the knife as a pleasant
reminder of Ned Foreman, and planned to get up extra early the next morning
and make a search for it.
He was pretty well satisfied as he closed his eyes in sleep that the
jeweler would not dare to have him arrested for the theft of the diamond
bracelet.
Nothing would probably come of the ridiculous charge, except that the
underhanded public insinuations of Mace would damage Frank's character. Now
that he had taught Gill Mace a needed lesson, of course his family would be
more bitter against Frank than ever.
"The thing will die down," decided Frank. "If they get too rampant,
I'll--yes, I'll actually sue them for slander."
It must have been about midnight when Frank awoke with a shock. The echo of
a frightful rumble and crash deafened his ears, and he fancied that the bed
was vibrating. A scream inside the house made him sit up and listen. He was
startled and bewildered.
"Frank! Frank!" quavered the terror-filled tones of his aunt, as she
knocked sharply at the door of his bedroom, "get up at once!"
"What has happened?" inquired Frank quickly.
"I don't know--something dreadful, I am sure!" gasped the affrighted
spinster. "It felt like an earthquake. It shook the whole town. It must
have been an explosion."
"Humph! Good thing you know I'm in the house," observed Frank, as he jumped
to the floor and hustled into his clothes.
"Why is that, Frank?"
"Because it may have been a dynamite explosion blowing up somebody's safe,
and of course Mace would say I did it."
"Don't jest, Frank," pleaded his aunt. "I'm chilled through and shaking all
over. Get outside and see if you cannot learn what it all means."
"I think myself it was probably an accidental blast at the quarry down the
river," said Frank; "but I'll soon find out."
He did not dress fully, and let himself out on the porch in his slippers.
As he walked down to the gate Frank noticed lights appear in many houses
nearer the village, as if their inmates had been suddenly aroused from
sleep.
Then distant voices, a rumbling wagon, people talking in loud tones, boyish
shouts and a vague chorus of sounds unusual for the midnight hour, were
drifted to Frank's hearing. From all this, however, he could think out no
coherent idea as to what might be going on nearer town.
"It's not a fire, for there's no glare," he decided. "There's some kind of
a commotion over near the schoolhouse, it seems. Reckon I'll dress fully
and investigate."
There was a certain attraction for Frank in the distant bustle and turmoil.
He went back into the house to find his aunt seated in the front hall. She
was wrapped up in a shawl, pale and shivering.
"Oh, Frank, what is it?" she chattered.
"I didn't find out, but I'm going to," he announced, as he hurried on to
his room.
"Is--is it coming here?"
"Is what coming here?"
"The--the--whatever it is."
"It hasn't hurt us any, has it? And I don't think it will."
Frank got back to the road ten minutes later and started on a run toward
the town. Taking the middle of the road, he nearly bumped into a man where
the highway turned.
"Hi, there!" challenged the latter.
"Hello!" responded Frank, recognizing a truck gardner who lived just beyond
the Jordan place. "What's happened, Daley?"
"Old Dobbins' house."
"What, the one they're moving?"
"Yes. It broke loose from its bearings and has rolled right back to where
it stood."
"You don't say so?" exclaimed Frank, with something of a shock.
"Yes, it has," asserted Daley, "only it's the greatest wreck of bricks and
plaster now you ever saw."
"No one hurt, I hope?"
"No, except old Dobbins' feelings. He's capering around at a great rate,
saying that the town, or the county, or the government, will have to pay
him for the damage."
"The movers couldn't have understood their business very well to have such
a thing happen." said Frank.
"Looks that way," acceded Daley, and they parted at the gateway of the
Jordan home.
Frank advised his aunt of the state of affairs and went back to bed.
Naturally he was curious to have a view of the wrecked house. He got up
early before breakfast and took a stroll over to the scene of the disaster.
The lad, too, thought of his lost knife and bore that fact in mind.
He gave up all hopes of recovering the knife, however, as he reached the
spot where he believed he had lost it the afternoon previous. Where the
Dobbins house had been anchored on the hillside the ground was torn up and
disturbed as though a cyclone had passed over the place. At the bottom of
the hill, jammed half way through the rickety old stable, was what was left
of the dismantled house.
Miss Brown made Frank stay in the house and study from eight until ten
every morning. With all the exciting thoughts that were passing through his
mind, Frank found it difficult to fix his attention on his books that
morning. He was glad to get out of the house when ten o'clock came. His pet
pigeons were his first care. Then he started for the post-office, hoping
that he would find a letter from his father.
"Hi, Frank," a voice hailed him as he made a short cut through a little
grove at the rear of the house, and a familiar form emerged from some
bushes.
"Why, it's Mr. Dobbins!" exclaimed Frank in some surprise. He had expected
to find the miserly old fellow in the depths of despair over the loss of
his house, but Dobbins was grinning and chuckling at a great rate.
"So 'tis Frank," he bobbed with a broad smile. "Was looking for you."
"What for, Mr. Dobbins?"
The old man blinked. Then he laughed in a pleased, crafty way and put his
hand in his pocket.
"See here," he cried, and Frank noticed that he held three coins in his
palm. There was a twenty, a ten and a five-dollar gold piece.
"Um-m," observed Dobbins. "Double eagle a good deal of money, isn't it now,
Frank?"
"Why, yes," assented Frank wonderingly, and the old fellow picked out the
twenty-dollar gold piece with his free hand and put it in his vest pocket.
"It would be extravagant for a boy to squander even as much as ten dollars,
hey?"
Frank did not answer, for he could not surmise what the old fellow was
getting at.
"So, if you'll consider this five-dollar gold piece the right thing,"
resumed Dobbins, "you're mightily welcome to it, and say, Frank--you're a
bully boy!"
"How's that?" inquired Frank.
"Oh, you know," asserted Dobbins. "Take it quick, before I change my mind."
"Take the five dollars, you mean?" questioned Frank.
"Exactly."
"Why should I do that? You don't owe me anything."
"Don't?" cried Dobbins. "Why, boy, I owe you everything. No nonsense
between friends, you see."
"I don't see--" began Frank.
Old Dobbins placed a finger beside his nose in a crafty, expressive way. He
winked blandly at Frank, with the mysterious words:
"That's all right, Frank, boy. No need of going into particulars, but--you
know right enough. Mum's the word. Take the five dollars."