Kate Hallock had no sooner shut the front door of the brown house in
Pumpkin Delight Lane on that eventful day in June, than Harry Cornwall
remembered the necklace story.
“Call her back,” he cried to Frank, who was rocking away as hard as he
could, and fanning himself furiously with his straw hat, as he sat in
Grandma Dobson’s large rocking chair.
“What for? She’s gone home to dinner; mother said she must,” replied
Frank, rocking a bit farther and faster than before he was requested to
call her.
“Why, I wanted to tell her about the necklace,” and Harry’s face flushed
with his eagerness to get the story off his mind.
“Well, I do declare!” laughed Frank. “Just as though you hadn’t had
three or four mortal hours, this very day, to tell it in! I should like
to know what you two have been talking about all the time?”
“Plenty of things; but I never once thought of the necklace,” sighed
repentant Harry.
“Well! tell _me_—that will do just as well,” urged Frank.
“No, indeed. I’ll tell no one but the owner of that bit of gold, where
I’ve seen it.”
“You’ve never seen _my_ Kate’s gold necklace,” spoke up Frank,
indignant, he knew not why, at Harry’s assurance.
“I have, then; and what’s more, I mean to get it back again for her.”
“Tell me how.” Frank had ceased from rocking, and leaned quite near
Harry, full of interest and eager with curiosity.
“I’ll tell _her_,” was all that Harry would say; and soon after that the
anxiety regarding Kate arose, and the subject was forgotten.
Later in the afternoon, Grandma Dobson having gone on her little
expedition, while Mrs. Hallock sat beside an open window near Harry’s
bed, and Kate, on the low stone step outside the front door, was making
dandelion curls, and thinking how dreadful it would have been if a big
tide had dashed in and surged over the salt meadow and drowned Kate
Hallock, Harry remembered the so-oft-forgotten circlet of gold, and he
started from his pillow, saying: “I want to tell her _now_, this minute,
before I forget it.”
Kate was summoned. She gathered up in her apron the piles of curls that
she had made, and went in haste to hear what proved to be quite a story.
“Maybe,” said Harry, “you’d like to know what became of your pretty
necklace, that you tucked into somebody’s vest-pocket that went out West
once upon a time.”
“How did _you_ know?” cried Kate, stopping in the center of the room,
and getting so surprised and confused and flushed, and everything, that
she let fall her dandelion curls on Grandma Dobson’s lovely rag carpet,
and instantly fell upon her knees to gather them up again.
“O, your brother told me that you put it in the box; but he does not
know how I came to see it after it came out of the box. Jack Flibbit—”
“What a funny name!” cried Kate. “Is he a little boy?”
“Yes, and a fisherman’s boy, too; and he was left all alone after the
fires—for his father and mother, and every one of his folks, were caught
in the house, and hadn’t time to get away; and Jack was staying that
night in a house down by the lake, or he would have been lost, too. So
after it was all over, Jack was taken by a good, kind lady to Port
Huron, and everybody felt so sorry for him that when he got there
somebody gave him out of one of the boxes a very nice suit of clothes,
and I saw Jack when he was carrying it along the street. When he met me,
he wanted me to see it, and wouldn’t let me go until after we had been
in and sat down on the steps of a church, and opened the bundle. Well,
when it was open, and he shook out the little vest, there jingled down
on the stone something that I picked up; it was a necklace, and I ’most
know ’twas yours, ’cause I remember there was something inside it.”
“O, what?” cried Kate. Mrs. Hallock had ceased to sew in her eagerness
to learn more.
“Well,” said Harry, “there was so much to remember about then, that
maybe I’m not right; but it was, I reckon, something like this: ‘Kate;
from Grandmother De—De—Deborah,’ or something like that.”
“That’s just it—my own Grandma Hallock’s right name!” cried Kate; “and I
s’pose I was very wicked to give it away, only everybody was so sorry
then for the poor, burnt-out folks, and I hadn’t anything else that I
thought as much of to give.”
“It is all very wonderful, my boy,” said Mrs. Hallock. “Do you know what
became of Jack Flibbit?”
“Well, no, ma’am,” said Harry, “I do not. He was too small for any
circus company to take along, and there wasn’t anybody belonging to him
that he knew of anywhere; and I don’t quite believe that folks who live
out West care so much about children who are left alone as you do.”
“O, yes, Harry. Kind folks live everywhere, only one does not always
seem able to find them.”
“No!” said Harry. “I went a long ways and waited a good while, and now
as soon as I get well, won’t you please find some work for me to do, so
that I can pay back Mrs. Dobson?—for she isn’t very rich, I don’t
think.”
“Why, Harry Cornwall!” exclaimed Kate. “There’s plenty of work for you
to do. There’s your cornfield to take care of, for one thing.”
“My cornfield!” laughed Harry, thinking that Kate was making fun of him,
and quite ready to join in her merriment, but Mrs. Hallock quickly bade
Kate to be quiet; and immediately she asked Harry to tell how he escaped
from the fire.
“My father’s house,” said Harry, “was not very far from Rock Falls, on
the shore of the lake—Lake Huron, I mean—and the Saturday before the
great fire burned Rock Falls, my father went into the village and took
me with him. After we started for home—it was almost night then—the
smoke grew thick away off in the distance, and some men we met told
father that they wanted him to go with them and help fight the fire
down, for fear ’twould get to the houses. He didn’t know what to do with
me, but I told him I could run right back and find a place to stay.
“‘Go to my house! go to my house,’ said three or four of the men, and so
my father told me to jump out and take good care of myself, and I called
back to him to take care of mother, and then I went back. On the way, I
met some little children, and they asked me where I was going—so I told
them what father had gone to do, and that I was going to somebody’s
house, somewhere, to stay all night, and they said: ‘You can come to our
house and stay.’ So I went home with them and the next day was Sunday.
Sunday night it looked awful when it grew dark to see the fires burning
all around, except on the side where the lake was, but we were told to
go to bed and if the fire came any nearer we should be called. We were
called and shaken and pulled from our beds and bidden, with blankets in
our arms, to run for Mr. Huxtable’s house on the shore of the lake. When
we got there we pounded and screamed at every door and window. Presently
a door opened and out rushed the entire family, eight in all, and in
their night clothes. The fire was so hot as it came down, like—I don’t
know what it was like—only it was so _awful_ that _nobody_ could tell
about it. It burned us as we ran, Mr. Huxtable crying out, ‘Come! Come
to the lake! the boat lies there.’ We all got into it, but the men had
to push it out into the water, for we could not endure the heat. Then
the smoke grew so thick that we could not tell where we were going and
there was not a thing in the boat to guide it by, but the wind carried
us swiftly where it was so cold that we shook and shivered. Mrs.
Huxtable kept a single blanket and the others were given to the men, who
were in their night clothes. She gathered the little ones within the
blanket and hugged them until they fell asleep. For nearly two days the
waves were all about us and we had only water from the lake to drink,
but at last we were picked up and taken into Port Huron.”
“But what about yourself? Tell us what you did after that,” urged Kate.
“I—why I—went back to Rock Falls. What else could I do?”
“And then?” urged Kate.
“Do not ask Harry unless he chooses to tell,” said Mrs. Hallock, wiping
her eyes.
“But I do; I must,” said Harry. “I shall feel better when I have told it
all. And it is only that when I got back to Rock Falls, and went to the
place where my father’s house had been, there was nothing there but
burned beams and dry ashes; and when I asked for my father and mother, a
man told me to go with him, and he showed me ever so many new graves,
and told me where my father and mother lay. Folks tried to be good to
me, but I walked a long way—ever so many days. I wanted to get just as
far away from there as ever I could.”
“But, my boy, had you no uncles nor aunts?” asked Mrs. Hallock.
“Why, yes. There was Uncle Horace—he lived in Maine, I believe; and
mother had a good many letters from him.”
“What is his other name?” questioned Kate. “Won’t it be splendid, mamma,
to find Harry’s uncle for him; and maybe he will be rich and capital and
everything,” cried Kate, full of glee in an instant, and she evinced it
by clapping her hands and jumping in true girl fashion.
Harry’s face flushed as he answered, “I don’t know his other name.”
“Don’t know!” uttered Mrs. Hallock in a voice that betrayed more
astonishment than she intended to evince.
“But what was your mother’s name?” she added, being quite certain that
some clue might be obtained.
“Bessie, Bessie Blake,” said Harry.
The same evening Mrs. Hallock addressed a letter to Mr. Horace Blake,
Solon, Maine, hoping that by the time Harry was able to be about again,
that she should have found an uncle for him. She waited patiently until
it was July, and yet no letter came from Mr. Horace Blake.
For many days Frank and Kate had made daily, and semi-daily, and
still-more-daily visits to the brown house in the lane; and at last the
very day was come for Harry’s first visit to Hallock Point.