WHERE IS THE WATCH?
“I’m afraid,” said Mr. Percival at breakfast next morning, “that your
watch will not be recovered, Pet. I sent Ruel over to the pond two
hours ago, and he reports that the Indians are gone, bag and baggage.
They generally stay only a few weeks at a time in any one spot.”
“I thought I saw a queer look in old Moll’s face when we left,” put in
Ruel, joining the conversation with a down-East “hired-man’s” freedom.
“You know she wouldn’t take any money, which, with an Injun, is ’nuff
to make you suspect somethin’s up.”
Tom was sleeping late, and had not come down to breakfast. At The
Pines, one of the comforts was that you could sleep just as long as you
wanted to in the morning.
“They’re growing young things,” aunt Puss would say, “and they have to
get up early all winter to get ready for school. It’s a pity if they
can’t lie abed here, so long’s they’re resting, till afternoon, if they
like.”
The real fact was that ordinarily the days were so filled with good
times that nobody wished to lose an hour in the morning, and so all
hands were up bright and early.
“How much do you think the watch was worth, Pet?” asked her aunt.
“Bessie, let me give you another mug of milk.”
Pet sat next to aunt Puss, looking very pale and quiet this morning. It
was observed that she started nervously every time she was addressed;
but this remnant of yesterday’s fright wore off during the day.
“I don’t know exactly,” she answered, “but I think mamma paid six
hundred francs for it in Geneva last year.”
“That’s about one hundred and twenty dollars,” said Mr. Percival. “It
would be worth at least a hundred and fifty in America, when it was
new.”
“Can’t it have dropped out of her pocket?” suggested Kittie.
“Ruel searched every foot of ground where you went.”
“Why can’t the thieves be pursued?” exclaimed Randolph, starting to his
feet. “I’ll join a party, for one, to overtake them and recover the
property!”
“Sit down and finish your coffee, my boy,” said his uncle, smiling.
“The sheriff and two assistants started on their track half an hour
ago. But I fear it won’t be of much use, as they are too cunning to be
easily caught. Of course they will deny all knowledge of the watch,
probably having hidden it when they heard the officers coming.”
“Will they be arrested?”
“Yes.”
The girls began to look frightened.
“And where will they be brought, sir?”
“Here. I am a Trial Justice in this county,” said Mr. Percival, rising.
Just then Tom entered the room, looking as if he had not slept very
soundly, after all.
“Uncle,” he said in a low voice, glancing at the rest as they left
their places at the table with a clatter of chairs on the kitchen
floor, “uncle, can I see you alone for a moment?”
Mr. Percival patted him on the shoulder. “Better eat your breakfast, my
boy, the first thing you do. I have some matters to look after in the
barn and you can find me there, if you want to. You must forget about
the accident yesterday,” he added kindly, seeing the boy’s pale face.
“Pet’s all right now, and we sha’n’t let her fall in again, you may be
sure.”
“I know, sir, but--”
Here aunt Puss bustled up with a plate of hot flapjacks, and uncle Will
stepped aside with a laugh.
“Eat ’em while they’re hot, Tom,” said Ruel gravely, pausing a minute
at the door, “or Mis’ Percival will have her feelin’s awfully hurt.”
So Tom was fain to put off his interview with his uncle, till some
better season. Ah, Tom, if you had but spoken a moment earlier, or
insisted one whit more strongly! But Mr. Percival went off where his
duties called him, and Tom found no chance to see him alone that day,
nor the next. Whatever the subject was, it did not seem to disturb him
so much after a good breakfast; and he promised himself he would attend
to it a little later.
The forenoon was spent quietly in the barn, in the capacious bays of
which the mounds of fragrant hay had just been stored, still warm
with the midsummer sunshine, and furnishing an occasional sleepy
grasshopper, by no means startled out of his dignity by his sudden
change of residence. The west wind blew softly in at the open doors,
through which one could look, as one lay on the mow, into the sunny
world outside, and catch a few bars of an oriole’s call, or of robin’s
cheery note. The cattle were all out to pasture. Over the floor
walked the hens, in serene meditation, placidly clucking, or uttering
a remonstrative and warning “Wha-a-a-t!” as a swallow careened too
near them in the bars of dusty sunlight. The only other noise was the
occasional bird-twitter from one of the dozen or more nests upon the
rafters overhead, and the tapping of bills on the floor as the sober
fowls now and then gleaned a stray insect or bit of seed-food.
“I don’t see,” said Tom lazily, gazing up toward the ridge-pole, where
a swallow was busily engaged in feeding her clamorous family, “I don’t
see what people ever want to live in the city for!”
“If people could spend their time on hay-mows, half asleep,
or--Ow!--tickling their sisters’ ears with straws!--”
“Well, that’s all girls do, anyway. A feller might just’s well stretch
out here as curl up on a sofa and _crochet_ all day!” Tom delivered
this remark with emphasis, expressive of his manly disgust at all
fancy-work in general, and “crochet” under which head he classed every
home industry connected with worsted--in particular.
“I should like to see a ‘feller’ do Kensington,” remarked Bess calmly.
“Seems to me I remember one who wanted to knit on a spool, one time
when he was sick, and--”
“O let up, Bess; that don’t count?”
“--And after he had knit two inches and dropped thirteen stitches, gave
it up because ‘it made his head tired!’” concluded Bess mercilessly.
When the laugh had subsided, and Bess had emerged from the armful of
dried clover and red-top under which Tom had extinguished her, Kittie
spoke up, more soberly.
“I guess I know what Tom means, and he isn’t so far out of the way
either. We do waste lots of time now, really, don’t we, girls?”
“So do boys,” said Bess, stoutly.
“I know; but boys have something hard and useful to do, ’most every
day,” persisted Kittie, whom the five Justices of the Supreme Bench
couldn’t have diverted from her point. “Boys go to school until they’re
ready to work or enter college. Then they never stop working, till they
die.”
“Yes,” said Tom solemnly, “that’s what uses me up so; it’s just hard
work.”
“You look like it!” exclaimed Randolph, burying Tom in his turn. “I’ll
tell you what it is, girls,” he added, as he gave Tom a final shot,
“there’s a good deal in what Kittie says. But work is good for us,
anyway; and besides, when we do get in a little play, betweenwhiles, we
have a glorious time, I can tell you!”
“But I know lots of boys, and young men too,” put in Pet eagerly, “who
just go to parties and don’t work hard at all.”
“O, I don’t count those things _boys_,” said Kittie. “They’re just
dolls; and if there’s anything I always despised, it’s boy-dolls.”
“What do you think girls could do, Kittie?” asked Bess, “when they
don’t have lessons to get, I mean.”
“I think they could make useful things to give poor people,” answered
Kittie, her gray eyes sparkling with earnestness. “If we put the
same amount of time into making up nice, plain clothes for poor
people--special poor people, I mean, that we could find out about,
ourselves--that we do into ‘crochet,’ as Tom says--what a lot of things
we could make and give away in one winter!”
“I never could bear to sew,” sighed Pet, surveying her pretty, plump
fingers. “It seems just old ladies’ work, pulling over rag-bags and
‘piecing’ together. It’s dreadful, trying to save.”
“It depends on what you do with the rags,” said Randolph. “My
grandmother had one of those bags that she was always using out of, and
yet ’twas always full of rags, just crammed, so you couldn’t pull the
puckers of the bag together at the top.”
“What ever did she make with them?”
“Mats and carpets, mostly. That is, she didn’t make ’em herself, but
used to hire poor people to make ’em, after she’d showed them how.
She’d always arrange it so’s to help two at once. ‘It’s better,’ she
used to say, ‘to feed two birds with one crumb, than kill them with a
stone.’”
“Why, how did she do it?” queried practical Bess, much interested.
“She’d find out through the city missionaries generally, some woman
that was awfully poor, and she’d send for her and say, ‘I know a family
down in such a street that are very poor; they earn just enough to live
on--not enough to _walk_ on, for they haven’t any carpets on their bare
floors, this cold weather.’”
“Well?”
“Well, then she’d show the poor woman, the first one, how to ‘pull’ a
rag mat, and would hire her to make one, giving her enough rags from
that bag. When ’twas done, she’d praise it up and say how pretty ’twas,
’specially this row, or that flower, and so on; and then pay her for
the work.”
“And did your grandmother give the first poor woman’s carpet to the
second poor woman?” asked Pet, knitting her brows over the algebraic
difficulty of the problem.
“Not herself. She sent it by the first poor woman so’s to let her have
the pleasure of giving.”
“How lovely!” exclaimed Pet. “I’m going to have a rag-bag of my very
own this winter--with nothing but plush in it!”
“No,” said Bess, “that won’t do; plush catches dust.”
“Who’s up in my hay-mow!” The voice was deep and strong, but entirely
pleasant, and so nearly underneath them that the girls jumped.
“O uncle Will,” they all cried at once, “do come up here--it’s just
perfect--and tell us a story!”
“If it’s ‘just perfect’ already, I don’t think I’d better come!”
Nevertheless the good-natured old man mounted the steep ladder, and was
at once allotted the breeziest and softest seat.
“Well, well,” he said, baring his head to the gentle west wind, “this
is comfortable. How many times I’ve lain on the hay here, when I was a
boy, and dreamed what I would do--sometime!”
“You never dreamed yourself such a dear uncle as you are,” said Bess
softly, stroking his hair.
“Now you are trying to spoil me! What story shall I tell, I wonder?
It must be short, because I may be called away at any moment. Let me
see--how would one of my younger day scrapes do?”
[Illustration: PET.]
“Splendid! splendid!”
“Well, this wasn’t much of an adventure for youngsters like you who
travel about over the country, a hundred miles a day. But to us,
Fred and me, it seemed a good deal at the time. Fred always loved
mountain-climbing. He went to Europe while still a young man, and only
last week he sent me a paper containing an account of his ascent of one
of the loftiest among the Bernese Alps.”
“Is he the stout gentleman that we saw here last summer, uncle, and who
told us so much about Switzerland?”
“The same one, Kittie. ‘Frederic Cruden, Esq., F. R. S.,’ he is now.
But in those days he was just a slim, fun-loving boy, and the only
‘Fellow’ he was, was a very good fellow indeed. Well, while we were
both in our teens, our two families made up a party and visited the
White Mountains.”
“There was no railroad through the Notch then?”
“I should say not! If one wished to see the grandest localities of the
White Mountains, he must either foot it or ride over the rough roads
in the big, jolting stage-coach which often carried more outside than
in, and occasionally tipped its passengers out upon the moss-banks
beside the road. Bears, too, were more abundant than now, and that’s
saying considerable; for in many of the little New Hampshire towns of
Coos County, farmers are to-day prevented from keeping sheep by the
inroads of Bruin, who loves a dainty shoulder of mutton for supper
only too well. I saw by the papers recently that the selectmen of one
township during last year paid bounties on eleven bears and two wolves!”
Here Tom uttered a series of ferocious growls, but was covered with hay
and sat upon by his cousin until he promised to behave himself.
“We were stopping at the fine, new Profile House,” continued Mr.
Percival, “Fred and I, with our fathers and mothers, as I said.
Being of nearly the same age, we were always planning some sort of
excursion together. One day we had begged to be allowed to ascend Mount
Lafayette, a peak about twenty miles southwest of Mount Washington,
and only second to the latter in point of interest. A guide-book which
we had procured told of a fine house on the summit, and we would just
stop there long enough to cool off after our walk, before coming down
by the ‘well-worn bridle-path.’ We were sturdy little fellows, and
though we had never yet accomplished such a feat as the ascent of a
five thousand-foot mountain, felt quite equal to the task.”
“How old did you say you were, uncle?” asked Randolph.
“About fourteen, but large of our age. We started off at about two
o’clock in the afternoon, with many injunctions to be back by tea-time,
and on no account to linger by the way.
“It was in the highest of spirits that we strode away on the level
road, up the valley, toward the peak that lay so softly brown against
the blue sky just beyond. Before long we struck into the bridle-path,
which was exceedingly muddy near the base, and became constantly more
steep and slippery as we ascended. Boy-like, we were quite heedless
of the lapse of time, and often stopped to gather birch bark, climb
after squirrels’ nests, or take a bite of the sandwiches we had stuffed
into our pockets at the last moment. The forest, I remember, was
singularly silent, no breeze among the stiff tops of the hemlocks, no
merry singing of birds; only now and then the muffled gurgle of a
brook among the mossy stones beside the path, or the single, plaintive
whistle of a thrush, far away on the mountain-side.
“When we had stopped for breath, about half-way up, a descending
horseback-party passed us. We asked them about the house on the summit,
but they only laughed, and said it had good walls and a high roof.
This disturbed us a little, but we soon forgot our apprehensions,
and pressed forward. Half a mile beyond this point, we came to that
strange, nameless pool of water, seeming half cloud, half dream,
hanging like a dew-drop on the slope of the mountain. As we stamped our
feet on the moss which composed its banks, the whole surface of the
ground, for rods away, trembled as if with an earthquake, and made us
feel as if we were walking in a nightmare. It occurred to us that it
would add to the glory of our exploit if we could catch some dream-fish
out of this strange, unreal pond among the clouds; so we spent an hour
or more in useless angling in its clear depths.
“Then Fred looked up at the sky, and uttered an exclamation. I followed
his glance--and dropped my pole. The sun was almost resting on the
edge of the mountains in the west, and it was plain that it would be
dark in less than an hour.”
“And all those bears!” murmured Pet, gazing at the narrator with round
eyes. “O, I should think you _would_ have been scared!”
Mr. Percival smiled. “If I had been as old as I am now, I should have
said ‘Fred, we’re caught this time by our own thoughtlessness. We can
go down in half or quarter of the time it took us to climb up; and
once on the main road in the valley, we shall be all right.’ But a boy
of fourteen doesn’t reason in that way. We were tired and hungry. We
thought of the welcome we should receive from the people on the summit,
and of the good things they would doubtless have for supper.”
“‘Besides,’ said Fred, ‘we must be nearly up now. The trees don’t last
much longer--they aren’t higher than our heads here. It’ll be all rocks
pretty soon, and then we shall be right at the top, just like Mt.
Washington.’
“So we started up again, with, we afterward confessed to each other,
uncomfortable misgivings in our breasts. It was really my fault,
though, for I was the older of the two, and ought to have known better.
“Well, in ten minutes the sun was out of sight behind the hills, and
I tell you, boys, the shadows felt cold. It was like walking into a
running brook in the middle of a hot day, and we shivered and buttoned
our jackets tight around our throats as we clambered along over the
rocks, panting in the thin air, and stopping for breath every few rods.
“It was tough work, especially as the wind began to rise and dodge at
us from behind great bowlders, cutting like knives with its chilling
breath. Darker and darker it grew, so that we could hardly distinguish
the path, that was now a mere series of scratches over the rocks. In
vain we strained our eyes for a friendly twinkle of light from the
windows ahead. All was still, silent, dark. I confess, Pet, I thought
of the bears, and halted half a dozen times, with beating heart, at
sight of some dark rock that crouched behind the path. We were just
thinking, Fred and I, of curling up for shelter under some overhanging
ledge, and so spending the night, when a queer object caught our eyes.
It was like a tree, stripped of every branch, and standing grimly
alone there in the rocky desert, like a solitary Arab. A few steps
more showed us what it was, and, at the same time, the tremendous
mistake we had made, from the very outset of our plan, flashed upon
us. It was clear that we were at last standing upon the very tip-top
of Mount Lafayette, lifted in the air nearly a mile straight up, above
the level of our home by the sea-shore. But alas, where was the inn,
with its longed-for fires, its well-spread table, its comfortable beds
and friendly hosts? The little weather-beaten flag-pole (for such was
our naked tree), stood stiffly erect beside a blackened and crumbling
stone wall, which enclosed a small space partially floored with charred
boards, partially choked with rubbish that had fallen in long ago.
“‘Seems to me I remember something about its being burned up once,’
said Fred, faintly. ‘I s’posed of course they built it again!’
“Yes, there were the openings, where windows and door had been set, and
which now looked out into the dreary night like eyeless sockets.
“There was no time to be lost. The air was growing colder every moment,
and the bitter wind was driving up a huge bank of clouds from the east.
Although it was early in September, we afterward learned that ice
formed in many places through the mountains that night. Such cases are
by no means rare, and, indeed, in some of the ravines and gorges of the
White Mountain group, snow and ice may be found the whole year round.
“Entering the roofless walls, and placing our sandwiches in a small
niche which probably had once served for a cupboard, we set vigorously
to work, ripping up the pieces of boards that still remained, and
piling them in one corner where the wall was highest. In five minutes
we had a roaring fire, by the light and warmth of which we constructed
a rude shelter in the form of a ‘lean-to,’ against the rocks, and crept
under it to sup off our scanty provisions, and reflect.”
“Were you frightened, sir?” asked Tom slyly.
“Well, I suppose there was no great danger, Tom, but to boys who had
spent their lives in comfortable homes, surrounded by care, and gentle,
watchful attentions from those they loved most, it was a thrilling
experience. There, alone on the mountain-top, high in air, far above
any trace of vegetation save a few frightened Alpine flowers that
huddle together under the rocks for a few weeks in summer, the darkness
about them like a shroud, the wind rising and moaning over the bare
ledges, and a storm creeping up through the valleys to assault their
fortress at any moment. At last it came. Like a tornado, an icy blast
rushed upon us with a howl and a roar, blowing our fire out in a moment
while the red flames leaped back to the glowing brands only to be
hurled off into the darkness again and again.
“And the rain! In less time than it takes to tell it, we were drenched
to the skin, and pinched and pulled by the fingers of the storm that
were thrust in through a hundred little crannies in our almost useless
shelter. The thunder crashed, the rain rattled on the loose boards, the
fire hissed feebly and turned black in the face, and the night closed
in about us colder and drearier than ever. All we could do was to lie
still, and shiver, and hope for morning.
“A little after midnight the tempest abated, and, tired, healthy boys
as we were, we dropped into a troubled sleep. At the first glimmer of
daylight, however, we stretched ourselves with groans and moans, and
crawled stiffly out into the open air. It was bitter, bitter cold; so
that I remember it was a long while before I could manage my fingers
well enough to light a match.
“What did we do for kindling? Why, I forgot to say that when it first
began to rain, I took out all the birch bark I had gathered on my way
up, and tucked it under my shoulder; so that for the most part the
inner strips were pretty dry, and sputtered cheerily when I touched
them off. I believe nothing ever did me so much good as that fire.
Under its influence, we were so much cheered that we actually walked
out to see the sunrise, which was glorious.
“It didn’t take us long to descend that mountain, I can tell you; and
we reached the Profile House in season to tell the whole story to
the family (who, in truth, had slept little more than we) over the
breakfast-table.”
Just as the story was completed, a rattle of wheels was heard in
the driveway leading to the house. Presently a wagon drove up,
containing--besides a short, thick-set man whom Randolph recognized
as the sheriff, and the two young fellows who served as deputies--an
Indian half covered in a blanket, a squaw, and two dignified brown
pappooses. It was easy to recognize them as the Loon Pond campers.