_A DAY OF MYSTERIES_
“Ben,” Mrs. Seymour asked next morning at the breakfast table, “did you
bring home the cheese yesterday when you came back from the village?”
“Yes, mother,” Ben answered. “I left it with the other packages on the
bench outside the kitchen door.”
“You are sure that you didn’t leave it in the store?” Mrs. Seymour
was not questioning Ben’s statement, for she, too, was quite certain
that the cheese had been accounted for when Ben had dropped all his
marketing on the seat by the door and checked each purchase by the list
she had given him.
“I know I brought it with me,” repeated Ben. “This chil’ loves cheese
too well to let himself forget anything as important as that. Didn’t
you find it out there?”
Mrs. Seymour shook her head without answering.
“Probably it dropped behind the bench, or perhaps it is in the
buckboard,” Mr. Seymour suggested. He knew that his wife must be
thinking of Fred Bailey’s warning against leaving any food outside the
door. This was the first time that the advice had been overlooked.
Followed by Ann, he went out to look for the missing cheese. There
might be remnants left to indicate what had happened to it. But there
was not a trace to be found anywhere. He and Ann looked at each other
incredulously. As they stood there, not yet quite ready to put their
questions into words, they saw Mr. Bailey running toward them from the
back field, holding something in his outstretched hand. He was waving
frantically to them in most unusual excitement. As he came closer Ann
could see that what he carried was a package wrapped in torn paper.
Ben, standing in the kitchen doorway, recognized this bundle and hailed
Mr. Bailey. “Hey!” he called. “Where did you find our cheese?”
“So it be yours,” Fred gasped as he stopped before them, very short of
breath. “I thought it would be, but I wanted to make sure of it.”
Ann saw that the man was pale beneath his tan and the laughter had fled
from his blue eyes. Whatever he might have to say now could have no
joke hidden behind it.
“I left that cheese out on the bench and forgot it,” Ben explained.
“I warned you folks not to leave food lyin’ around outdoors; I told you
that you mustn’t leave anything that would tempt spirits to come from
the sea and pester us,” said Mr. Bailey. “I don’t know as we shall
ever be free from them again,” he added despairingly.
“I never heard that spirits were especially fond of cheese,” commented
Mr. Seymour. “Where did you find it, Fred?” he asked quietly.
“Up by the stone wall in the back field,” Mr. Bailey half whispered,
staring at the package that he was holding. “Mr. Seymour, Mrs. Seymour,
marm, something terrible must have been going on this past night.”
Ann was tremendously impressed by his attitude; he was so tense and
earnest. Never had she seen any grown person so moved and anxious. She
looked at Ben and saw that he shared her own feeling, while Helen’s
face was white with excitement.
But the assurance of Mr. Seymour’s calm reply steadied the children and
they turned with relief to watch him while he spoke. “Why are you so
sure it was taken during the night? Why not in the afternoon? Much more
likely then, I think, for if it had been lying on this bench all the
afternoon and evening somebody would have noticed it and taken it into
the pantry.”
Just then Jo came across from the barnyard and stood beside his father,
listening. Ann could tell from his drawn face and wide eyes that he was
as seriously upset as was Mr. Bailey.
“I’ll admit that I’m puzzled,” said Mr. Seymour, “though your theory,
Bailey, is perfect nonsense. Who in the name of reason would have
carried off a great chunk of cheese?”
“Not one of your hens, I suppose?” asked Mrs. Seymour.
At that the children laughed, even Jo; the cheese was nearly as big as
a hen. The Seymours all liked cheese, plain and in rarebits, and as
they went to the village for groceries only twice a week Mrs. Seymour
had ordered what might have seemed an overgenerous supply.
“What have you missed at other times?” asked Mr. Seymour.
“Milk, first of all,” Fred answered. “I put a pail down in the yard and
turned my back on it a minute to go into the house and when I looked
at it again it was lowered a couple of inches. Next time, they tipped
a pail over and spilled the whole of it. And then they took a piece of
meat--walked off with Jo’s and my Sunday dinner.”
“Who could have done it?” exclaimed Mrs. Seymour, and Ann felt a shiver
of excitement running down her spinal cord; her thought flashed back to
that shushing noise on the wreck.
“Who done it?” echoed Mr. Bailey. “That grinnin’ sea demon on the prow
o’ that ship is who done it.”
“Rubbish, Fred!” Mr. Seymour came out with his flat denial. But he
looked very grave. “I don’t like to believe there is a sneak thief in
the neighborhood; in fact, I can’t believe it.”
And even gentle Mrs. Seymour was indignant. Her eyes shone with
sympathy as she said, “And these things are too unkind for any one to
have done them with the idea that he was playing a practical joke. Your
Sunday dinner! How mean!”
“Practical jokes? Sneak thieves?” Mr. Bailey repeated scornfully. “I
told you what’s been troubling everything around here. It’s that devil
figurehead.”
“Bailey! I never would have thought you capable of such superstition.
It comes from living alone so much, I suppose, and being so close to
the sea and the sky. Are you going to be frightened by the mischief of
some bold rascal of a woodchuck or stray dog? Put the cheese on the
kitchen table, Ben. Before we throw it away I want to examine it and
see whether there are marks of fingers or claws and teeth, to try to
get some clue to who or what has been handling it.”
“Who or what about says the whole of it,” said Mr. Bailey as he turned
away to go back to his farm work.
Ann thought that he looked very tired and anxious. Why had that ship
ever come to his shore to worry him? She wished more than ever that she
could do something to solve the mystery; she hoped still to accomplish
what she had promised herself to do, but she was so slow about it!
“What are you going to do, Jo?” Ben called after him.
“Goin’ down to the beach to get a load of small pebbles and sand--want
to come?”
“Yes, of course I do,” answered Ben, forgetting that half of his time
lately had been given to painting.
“And I’m coming, too,” called Ann. “Bring three shovels, Ben.”
“Haven’t but two,” Jo called back, laughing. “You can drive.”
So down to the beach they went, joggling over the ruts and rocks in the
two-wheeled cart as sensible Jerry plodded steadily along regardless of
the bumping cart behind his heels.
A great change had come over Ben during these weeks at Pine Ledge.
Instead of the boy who had hardly known whether or not to help carry
the bags at the station that first day, he now took his place beside Jo
and shoveled with him, tossing the shovelfuls of beach sand into the
high cart and keeping pace with Jo. This pleased Ben very much, for
though he could not lift as heavy a load it was only because he was
younger and shorter than Jo; proportionally he was doing exactly the
same amount of work. He did not say anything about it, but Ann noticed,
and so did Jo,
“Pretty good work,” he said approvingly. “You’re getting up a fine
muscle.”
In the afternoon great thunderheads of clouds began to climb up
toward the sun and blacken the sky. The Seymours were up in a field
watching Mr. Bailey and Jo as they laid a platform of cement in the
milk house for which the beach gravel had been carried that morning.
Already squalls were sweeping in from the sea in dark and menacing
blots, and to the Baileys this did not promise to be merely a passing
thundershower but an all-night deluge.
“See the gulls coming in,” said Jo. “They are beginning to notice the
storm, just like I said they would, even before the blow begins.”
Ben and Ann looked to where Jo was pointing, and sure enough, a
scattering of gulls showed white as they clustered about the mouth of
the river, rising up on spread wings and crying spasmodically with a
plaintive note that sounded almost human.
“They will ride with the wind that way until they get fed up,” Jo
explained, “and then shift back to the shelter of the swamp pond.” He
looked at the clouds with a speculative eye. “Along about sunset they
should be taking to the pond. We’ll watch carefully and see how they
act, for that will show us, very likely, how heavy the wind will blow
before morning.”
To Ann and Ben the sky looked as though the storm would break in a
few minutes, for the clouds were black and massed, with a white misty
foam along their edges. But Jo’s prophecy was right. The clouds hung
steadfastly just over the top of the pine forest, as though fixed in
that one spot, moiling and running in layers over themselves but not
advancing. The Seymours kept glancing at the sky, for it made the
afternoon seem very strange and threatening.
But Mr. Bailey’s thoughts could not have been on the approaching storm,
for suddenly he looked up at Ann, who was standing near by, watching
him as he smoothed the cement with gentle unhurried strokes of his
trowel.
“I’ve been thinkin’ about what your father said this mornin’, kinder
turnin’ it over in my mind. And I don’t know but what he’s right about
that cheese; he was talkin’ to me after dinner an’ he says--an’ he
showed ’em to me--that there’s marks of dog teeth on the cheese. But
there ain’t any stray dog around here; there couldn’t be, without Jo or
me catchin’ sight of it now and then. Maybe it’s a wolf. They’ve been
known to come down from the backwoods, now and again. But that old sea
demon, I don’t like him at all. Ain’t got no use for him. We would all
be better off without him.”
“I don’t like him,” Ann agreed most readily. “But what can you ever do
to get rid of him before the wreck breaks up?”
“I’ve made up my mind to fix him,” Fred answered grimly. “I’ll chop him
off the boat and burn him up on the beach.”
“Oh!” Ann danced gayly in anticipation. “Won’t that be fun! We’ll have
a bonfire and bake potatoes in it. And that will be the end of the old
grinning demon.”
“And we’ll roast some of our own corn,” Ben chimed in. “Don’t you
suppose, Jo, that we could find a few ears that would be ripe enough?”
“Shouldn’t wonder,” Jo answered. “Lobsters are mighty good cooked in
the open, too. After the rocks get hot you put the lobsters under a
pile of wet seaweed and steam them. We’d do it to-night only the storm
would open right on top of us.”
Mr. Bailey squinted up at the western sky. The clouds were weaving in
and out above the tops of the pines. The dropping sun had now tinged
their white edges with a line of yellow fire. The squalls out at sea
had melted together into one great blot of dark shadow relieved here
and there by a bit of foam that showed startlingly white against the
somber blackness.
“You two had better skite for the house now,” he said. “Jo and I will
hurry and finish this work before the rain comes, and get the critters
under cover. The thunder makes them run the pasture.”
“The critters” were Jerry, the horse, waiting with the empty cart, and
Maude, the cow, feeding placidly in the pasture near by although she
had more than once looked up at the sky as though she understood what
was coming.
“Let us take Maude and Jerry,” begged Ann. “We’ll get them into the
shed.”
“All right,” Mr. Bailey consented. “Only get a move on you. After this
long dry spell the storm will be some blow, and don’t you forgit it.”
Ben chose to bring in Maude, for he loved the slow-moving gentle
creature with her soft brown eyes that always seemed so interested in
him every time he appeared.
Ann’s job was Jerry. He was as eager as she to get within the four
walls of his shelter. He went briskly down the cart path and into the
barnyard and stopped on the spot where the cart belonged, all without
the need of much guiding from Ann. It was there that Ann’s trouble
began. She didn’t know how to unharness him. She could not discover
which of the big buckles distributed about the harness would free him.
Even after she had unfastened the traces, as she had seen Jo do, Jerry
still stayed firmly fixed between the shafts. He turned his head and
looked at her with patient wonder as if he wanted to know why he was
being kept there.
Ben, coming in with Maude walking sedately before him, proved to be of
little help. “Jerry sticks there because he is so fat,” he suggested.
“See, the shafts bulge out over his sides. We’ll have to pull him out.”
But though Ben held the shafts while Ann pulled at Jerry’s head they
had no better success. Whenever Jerry moved forward an inch the cart
came, too.
Ann knew how Mr. Bailey would laugh if he and Jo reached the barnyard
and found that she had been beaten by a buckle. Besides, she had
promised to get Jerry under cover, and into his stall he should go if
it were a possible thing; she was determined to get him there. She
would unbuckle every strap in his harness until she came to the ones
that held him to the cart. So she and Ben began with those nearest,
and some of them were so stiff that they couldn’t have been unfastened
since the harness was bought, goodness knew how many years ago.
At last Jerry was free. He seemed to know when the right buckle came
undone. He stepped forward and looked at Ann and Ben with an expression
of mild disgust, then he braced himself and had one fine shake, the
harness showering down in dozens of little straps. Again he looked at
the children, as if to say, “Now see what you have done!”
Without waiting he stalked away to his stall.
Ann and Ben began to pick up the miscellaneous bits of harness as
fast as they could, but Jo came and caught them before they had quite
finished. He laughed until he was weak as he watched them on their
hands and knees picking up the little pieces. Even Jerry turned around
in his corner and stared with astonished eyes.
“I’ll give you a good lesson to-morrow,” said Jo, “show you how to put
a set of harness together. The big buckle under his forelegs and the
two straps on the sides wrapped about the shafts were all that you
should have opened.”
[Illustration: _The harness showered down in dozens of little straps._]
“I didn’t know there were so many straps in the world!” exclaimed Ben.
“And look at Jerry over there. He is laughing at us, too.”
“We don’t get many city hicks out here, do we, Jerry?” Jo took a sly
nudge as he rubbed the soft nose of the old horse, and Jerry opened his
mouth in a wide bored yawn. “That’s the way to treat ’em,” said Jo.
“Yawn again, a bigger one this time.”
The Seymours rushed through their supper, for they were eager to see
the first real storm of the season beat against the cliffs. Fred had
promised that there would be gorgeous sights, to-night and all day
to-morrow, and they did not wish to miss a bit more than necessary.
Mr. Seymour was eager to see the color of sea and sky and rocks and the
struggle of the wind against the water. Ben found the curling, twisting
sea fascinating to watch as the wind closed down beyond the pond rocks.
The gale seemed to have shut them into a wide semicircle, for the tops
of the tallest pines far against the sunset were swaying and bending
gently, while the house and the meadow still stood in the first soft
yellow twilight where not a breath of air moved. It was early yet, for
the Seymours had fallen into country ways and it was hardly six o’clock.
Jo joined the group as they stood watching the sea. He touched Ann
lightly on the shoulder. “Come over here if you want to see the gulls
now,” he said, and Ann went with him to the corner on the kitchen side
of the house.
Ben followed, for he wished to see the birds. Anything that had
movement interested him enormously, the flight of the gulls as well as
the sweeping onward of the crested waves.
“How strangely the gulls act!” said Ann.
Dozens of the great gray birds were poised over the spot where the
children knew that the swamp pond lay circled with great pines. Their
wings were outstretched as they rode the still air and they were
calling in a confused jumble of high-pitched chuckling cries.
“They ought to light.” Jo’s face was puzzled. “Strange the way they
hang up there. Usually it looks as if they dropped straight down, out
of sight.”
“Why do they come inland?” asked Ben. “To get out of the wind?”
“Partly. But they know, same as I do, that the storm will blow the fish
up the river to seek quiet water.”
“I don’t believe that they mean to settle on the pond to-night,” Ann
ventured after a while.
“Strange,” said Jo again. “It would almost seem as though something
down there on the pond was keeping them off, but gulls don’t fret about
muskrats. I never have heard of a bobcat around these parts, but it
looks suspicious to see them act in that jumpy way.”
“Perhaps it’s the same animal that took our cheese,” suggested Ann.
“Perhaps,” agreed Jo. He dropped his eyes from the poised birds and ran
them thoughtfully along the fringe of the woods where the trees cut
sharply into the growing twilight. Suddenly he caught hold of Ben’s arm.
“Look! See there!”
“What?” Ben asked. “I don’t see anything. What do you mean?”
“Right there alongside of that big pine. Don’t you see the smoke? Some
one has lighted that fire again. It must be just where we found the
embers.”
As he spoke he began to run down over the meadow in the direction of
the spot from which the smoke rose. Ben and Ann could see it plainly,
now that their attention had been called to it, a thin wisp of smoke
curling above the top of one of the tallest pines.
“Come on,” said Ann. “I’m going, too.”
“Sure,” said Ben, and they started to run after Jo.
“Where are you going?” called Mr. Seymour. “The rain will be here soon.”
“Jo thinks there is a fire down in the swamp,” Ben answered, “and we
are going to help him put it out.”
“Well, don’t stay too long. Remember that the rain will be of more use
than you are.”
“I want to go with them,” said Helen. “Mayn’t I, father?”
“Take care of her, Ann,” cautioned Mr. Seymour.
And then the three Seymours ran down the hill to where Jo was waiting
for them in the shadow of the woods, for he had turned to see whether
they were following. He was standing in a spot that was hidden from the
entrance to the path into the woods.
Vaguely Ann wished that Helen had not come; she was such a little girl.
[Illustration]