STAMPEDE AND AVALANCHE.
Is there in all the world a sight more wholesome and comforting to the
tired wayfarer than a loaded hay-cart? When Emily spied one ahead of her
she felt a little throb of pleasure in her bosom and at once hastened
her step to overtake it. The farmer was asleep on the seat, with a
sundown over his face.
"Perhaps I had better wake him," thought Emily. "Won't your horse run
away?"
"Run away?" The peaked old face was wide open of a sudden. "Guess not,
miss, not with that load on. Dobbin ain't no pony. Step aboard? How far
are you baound?"
"I am looking for the Arnold mansion."
"Arnold mansion? This is just the kerridge you want to take. Mrs.
Arnold's a putty close neighbor of aours."
Grateful for the offer, Emily climbed into the creaky seat under the
fragrant, overhanging load.
"You b'long in Foxtaown, I s'pose?"
"No. I'm from the city."
"All the way from the city? Well, I declare. I thot I knew all the
Elmwood leddies. I s'pose things are putty brisk in taown these days?"
"Oh, yes. We always have plenty of excitement. Too much, I fear. Some of
us miss the quiet you enjoy out here among the meadows."
The rustic meditated upon this a moment, chewing a straw.
"Speakin' of medders, haow's hay sellin'?"
"I don't know, really," answered Emily. She was not informed on this
utilitarian side of the subject.
"Just been shavin' my ten-acre lot daown the road. Did most o' the
mowin' ourselves, me and Ike, that's my brother, with the Loomis boy.
But he ain't good for much except forkin' it on. You wouldn't s'pose
there was a clean ton o' hay on this wagon, would you?"
"No, indeed," answered Emily. This was true. She would not have ventured
any supposition at all as to the weight of the hay.
"Good medder-grass, too."
"Do you live in Hillsborough?"
"Aour haouse jest abaout straddles the line, but wife goes to meetin' in
Elmwood."
"I suppose she likes the services better?"
"Nao. You see the Elmwood parson takes all our eggs, and wife thinks
'twouldn't do to spile a payin' customer. Woa! Here comes wife's nephew,
Silas Tompkins."
"Evenin' uncle," nodded the young man in the buggy.
"Evenin', Silas. Been down to the pasture?"
"Yaas."
"Well, haow are the oats lookin'?"
"Comin' putty green, Uncle Silas," drawled the other, speeding by.
Emily was wondering if a life of agricultural labor always gives such a
vegetable cast to people's minds, when a clatter of hoofs behind caused
her to turn her head. The cavalier was clothed in velvet of a soft, rich
bulrush-brown. Just as he passed them his eye caught something afar and
he shouted to the farmer:
"Here's a runaway! Hug the right of the road!"
They were turning a bend, but across the angle through the bushes a pair
of coal-black horses could be seen heading toward them. The farmer's
jerking at the reins was comical but effective. In a twinkling he had
his nag squeezed against the wall which bounded the narrow road.
"Get up, Aladdin!" whispered the rider, and the horse, a powerful
roadster or steeplechaser, yet with limbs like a stag's, cantered
forward, as if to meet the wild blacks. But suddenly his master turned
him about and began trotting gently back, keeping to the other side of
the road and turning his head over his left shoulder toward the
approaching runaways. As they slewed around the bend their coachman was
flung from his seat into the grass border of the roadside.
"Rosalie!" exclaimed the waiting cavalier, cutting his horse over the
flanks. It bounded away abreast of the team. Emily remembered a vague
whirl of spangled reins and a frightened face of rare beauty blushing
through its silver veil.
"He's killed!" she cried, dismounting and running toward the coachman.
But the grass was like a cushion in its midsummer thickness, and he had
already picked himself up uninjured, save for bruises and a tattered
sleeve.
"It was the gobbler frightened 'em," he said, starting off at a lame
dog-trot after the retreating carriage. Emily turned just in time to
witness a rare exhibition of coolness and skill. The chestnut had kept
abreast of the blacks with ease. At the right moment his rider, clinging
to the saddle and stirrup like a cossack, reached over with his left
hand and caught the reins of the foaming pair. Then gradually he slowed
up his steeplechaser, jerking powerfully at the bridles. The added
weight was too much for the runaways to pull, and all three were ambling
peacefully when they faded from sight in a cloud of dust.
"I guess we'll start for hum," said the farmer. Emily was standing with
her finger on her lip, unconscious of his presence.
"Putty slick on a horse, ain't he?"
"Who?"
"Young Arnold. He kin stick on like a clothes-pin, I tell yew."
"Is that Harry Arnold?"
"'Tain't no one else."
Emily remembered how his expression had changed when he recognized the
lady in peril as "Rosalie," and felt like asking the farmer if he knew
her. But Griggs (she now learned his name) was prosing on about his new
barn, and she relapsed into silence. The rest of their road was an
avenue of elms. Through their interstices smiled the calm blue of the
late afternoon sky, tempered by contrast with the green of the foliage.
It was the first time she had ever observed this rare harmony of colors.
"Woa! There!" said Griggs. "I'll set you daown here. The Arnolds' house
is up yonder over the hill. They ain't p'ticler friends of aours, but
the help come over and buy wife's cream."
"Have they a girl in help named Bertha Lund?"
"I s'pose wife knows the women-folks. I don't," replied the old man,
energetically reaching for his rake.
"A new servant, this is."
As if to answer her question, there came a loud bark from the little
woody knoll on the right of the road, and a great St. Bernard came
bounding down. It was Sire, who had recognized Emily. She knew that he
had been left in Bertha's charge and probably the housemaid was behind
him.
"Sire! Sire!" her cheerful voice was heard calling through the
stillness. How fresh she looked with her soft country bloom and a golden
tan.
"Is it you, Miss Barlow?" cried Bertha, opening her eyes in amazement. A
cream pitcher in one hand revealed her errand, but Farmer Griggs was
already half-way to his new barn, which lay fifty yards off the left of
the road.
"Yes, Bertha," answered Emily, fondling Sire, who seemed almost to know
that she bore him a message from his master. "I have come all the way
out to meet you."
"How is poor Mr. Robert?"
"Not very well contented with his present quarters."
"He is still in jail? Ah, poor young man! What a shame! And Ellen gone,
too! It was the beginning of trouble for all of us when the old
professor died."
"It wasn't easy to find you, Bertha. You didn't leave your address with
Mrs. Christenson."
"Indeed I did not." Bertha gave an independent toss of her head. "I had
no wish to be chased by her and coaxed to come back, and I'm very well
satisfied where I am, with my $5 and light duties and out of the city
and as kind treatment as if I was a visitor."
Emily thought she might understand the reason of this bountiful
hospitality.
"Mr. Shagarach, the lawyer, who is defending Robert, suggested that I
come and see you. You were so near the fire when it broke out, he
thought that you might know something that would help our side."
"That I'll tell heartily. They sha'n't tie my tongue."
"You don't believe Robert set the fire?"
"No more than I did or Sire."
Emily looked at the dog, who was crouched before them. He had lifted his
head at the mention of his name.
"Ah, Sire, you know the solution of all this mystery, don't you? And
you'd tell it if you could."
Sire barked an answer to this appeal and turned his head away, blinking,
as old dogs do.
"But who could have done it, Bertha?"
"Nobody in all the world. It just happened, like the other fire before."
"Was there another fire before?" asked Emily, all eagerness.
"Two or three years ago we had a fire in the study."
"Tell me about it."
"Oh, the professor had just gone upstairs a minute and when I went in
the big waste basket was blazing up."
"There wasn't much damage then?"
"If I hadn't opened the window and thrown it out on the sidewalk the
whole house might have been burned. Why, the study was nothing but a
tinder-box with the books on the shelves and magazines and papers always
thrown about."
"After the fire had once started, I can see how it would spread. But the
mystery is, how did it start? You never followed the first fire up?"
"Indeed we did. The professor was careful to follow it up, but they
could find nobody then and they'll find nobody now. It was just the will
of heaven."
"I wish you could have told about this other fire at the examination,
Bertha."
"I had it in my mind to tell, but the little thread of a man made me so
cross with his nagging, it all flew out of my head."
"Robert--was Robert in the house when the other fire happened?"
"Yes. I remember calling him, and he flew downstairs four at a time and
stamped out the sparks on the carpet."
"What time of day was it?"
"I'm not good to remember time. It was daytime, I know."
"Forenoon or afternoon?"
Bertha's knitted forehead brought no clarity to her recollections.
"I've forgotten, Miss Barlow. I know it was the hot summer time, but
forenoon or afternoon, that's all gone from me now."
"But you will try to bring it back, Bertha? It may be important. Mr.
Shagarach is a wonderfully wise man who could build up a great
explanation out of a little thing like that. You will tell him all you
know if he comes to see you?"
"I'll be as free-spoken as I choose, and forty inspectors won't stop
me."
"Could you describe the study again, Bertha, just as it looked when you
were dusting it, with Robert standing over the hearth?"
"Why, you know the room, Miss Barlow--square, high-studded, with two
windows, the professor's desk at one and the bird cage before the other.
Shelves and books all round, hundreds of them, and magazines and papers
scattered about. Chairs, pictures, the safe and the professor's things
just as he left them--his slippers on the floor, his spectacles and
bible on the desk, his dressing-gown over the back of the arm-chair----"
"And a waste-basket?"
"Oh, yes, the big waste-basket always beside his desk. The professor had
so much writing to do."
"Was it full?"
"All full of black wrapping paper that came off of his books. The
professor got so many books."
"And his safe with the papers in it?"
"Nobody ever touched it but the professor. At least, I never meddled
with it."
Emily noticed the emphasis Bertha laid on the first person, but an
unwelcome interruption prevented further disclosures.
The knoll which Bertha and Sire had descended made a grade like the
pitch of an old gable roof. Toward the top a tempting tussock of clover
lay in sight, scenting the atmosphere and titillating the nostrils of
the horse attached to Farmer Griggs' hay-cart. Dobbin was ordinarily a
staid and trustworthy animal, who might be left alone for hours; but on
this occasion his carnal appetite overmastered his sense of duty and led
him gradually higher and higher up the grade toward the odorous herbage.
The first hint the two girls had of the peril which was imminent was
when they heard the voice of the farmer shouting from the barn.
Turning in that direction, they beheld him running toward them, hat in
hand, as if racing for a guerdon, and brandishing a pitchfork. Whether
they or some one else were the object of his outcries they could not in
the confusion of the moment determine. But the doubt was speedily
settled by the occurrence of the very catastrophe which Farmer Griggs
was hastening to avert.
Dobbin had just climbed within reach and was relishing the first morsel
of his stolen supper, when suddenly the top of the hay load, which was
tipped up to an exceedingly steep angle by his ascent of the knoll, slid
down like a glacier and deposited itself at the feet of the startled
girls.
But this was not all. From the midst of it the figure of a man, badly
shaken but unhurt, arose and straightened itself out.
Both girls gave a shriek in unison. Emily recognized, to her
astonishment and dismay, the face of her train companion, the supposed
Bill Dobbs. But Bertha's surprise was quickly converted into merriment.
"Why, Mr. McCausland, what a tumble!" she laughed, just as Farmer Griggs
arrived.