I
It was Woolly Billy who discovered the pile—notes and silver, with a few
stray gold pieces—so snugly hidden under the fish-hawk’s nest.
The fish-hawk’s nest was in the crotch of the old, half-dead rock-maple
on the shore of the desolate little lake which lay basking in the
flat-lands about a mile back, behind Brine’s Rip Mills.
As the fish-hawk is one of the most estimable of all the wilderness
folk, both brave and inoffensive, troubling no one except the fat and
lazy fish that swarmed in the lake below, and as he is protected by a
superstition of the backwoodsmen, who say it brings ill-luck to disturb
the domestic arrangements of a fish-hawk, the big nest, conspicuous for
miles about, was never disturbed by even the most amiable curiosity.
But Woolly Billy, not fully acclimatized to the backwoods tradition and
superstition, and uninformed as to the firmness and decision with which
the fish-hawks are apt to resent any intrusion, had long hankered to
explore the mysteries of that great nest. One morning he made up his
mind to try it.
Tug Blackstock, Deputy Sheriff of Nipsiwaska County, was away for a day
or two, and old Mrs. Amos, his housekeeper, was too deaf and rheumatic
to “fuss herself” greatly about the “goings-on” of so fantastic a child
as Woolly Billy, so long as she knew he had Jim to look after him. This
serves to explain how a small boy like Woolly Billy, his
seven-years-and-nine-months resting lightly on his amazingly fluffy
shock of pale flaxen curls, could be trotting off down the lonely
backwoods trail with no companion or guardian but a big, black dog.
Woolly Billy was familiar with the mossy old trail to the lake, and did
not linger upon it. Reaching the shore, he wasted no time throwing
sticks in for Jim to retrieve, but, in spite of the dog’s eager
invitations to this pastime, made his way along the dry edge between
undergrowth and water till he came to the bluff. Pushing laboriously
through the hot, aromatic-scented tangle of bushes, he climbed to the
foot of the old maple, which looked dwarfed by the burden of the huge
nest carried in its crotch.
Woolly Billy was an expert tree-climber, but this great trunk presented
new problems. Twice he went round it, finding no likely spot to begin.
Then, certain roughnesses tempted him, and he succeeded in drawing
himself up several feet. Serene in the consciousness of his good
intentions, he struggled on. He gained perhaps another foot. Then he
stuck. He pulled hard upon a ragged edge of bark, trying to work his way
further around the trunk. A patch of bark came away suddenly in his grip
and he fell backwards with a startled cry.
He fell plump on Jim, rolled off into the bushes, picked himself up,
shook the hair out of his eyes and stood staring up at a round hole in
the trunk where the patch of bark had been.
A hole in a tree is always interesting. It suggests such possibilities.
Forgetting his scratches, Woolly Billy made haste to climb up again, in
spite of Jim’s protests. He peered eagerly into the hole. But he could
see nothing. And he was cautious—for one could never tell what lived in
a hole like that—or what the occupant, if there happened to be any,
might have to say to an intruder. He would not venture his hand into the
unknown. He slipped down, got a bit of stick and thrust _that_ into the
hole. There was no result, but he learnt that the hole was shallow. He
stirred the stick about. There came a slight jingling sound in return.
Woolly Billy withdrew the stick and thought for a moment. He reasoned
that a thing that jingled was not at all likely to bite. He dropped the
stick and cautiously inserted his hand to the full length of his little
arm. His fingers grasped something which felt more or less familiar, and
he drew forth a bank-note and several silver coins.
Woolly Billy’s eyes grew very round and large as he stared at his
handful. He was sure that money did not grow in hollow trees. Tug
Blackstock kept _his_ money in an old black wallet. Woolly Billy liked
money because it bought peppermints, and molasses candy, and gingerpop.
But this money was plainly not his. He reluctantly put it back into the
hole.
Thoughtfully he climbed down. He knew that money was such a desirable
thing that it led some people—bad people whom Tug Blackstock hated—to
steal what did not belong to them. He picked up the patch of bark and
laboriously fitted it back into its place over the hole, lest some of
these bad people should find the money and appropriate it.
“Not a word, now, not one single word,” he admonished Jim, “till Tug
comes home. We’ll tell him all about it.”