Barney Pratt expected this day to be a holiday. Very early in the
morning his father and mother had jolted off in the wagon to attend the
wedding of a cousin, who lived ten miles distant on a neighboring
mountain, and they had left him no harder task than to keep the
children far enough from the fire, and his paralytic grandmother close
enough to it.
This old woman was of benevolent intentions, although she had a stick
with which she usually made her wants known by pointing, and in her
convulsive clutch the stick often whirled around and around like the
sails of a windmill, so that if Barney chanced to come within the circle
it described, he got as hard knocks from her feeble arm as he could have
had in a tussle with big Nick Gregory.
He was used to dodging it, and so were the smaller children. Without any
fear of it they were all sitting on the hearth at the old woman's
feet,--Ben and Melissa popping corn in the ashes, and Tom and Andy
watching Barney's deft fingers as he made a cornstalk fiddle for them.
Suddenly Barney glanced up and saw his grandmother's stick whirling over
his head. Her eyes were fastened eagerly upon the window, and her lips
trembled as she strove to speak.
"What d'ye want, granny?" he asked.
Then at last it came out, quick and sharp, and in a convulsive
gasp,--"Who air all that gang o'folks a-comin' yander down the road?"
Barney jumped up, threw down the fiddle, and ran to the door with the
children at his heels. There was a quiver of curiosity among them, for
it was a strange thing that a "gang o'folks" should be coming down this
lonely mountain road.
They went outside of the log cabin and stood among the red sumach bushes
that clustered about the door, while the old woman tottered after them
to the threshold, and peered at the crowd from under her shaking hand as
she shaded her eyes from the sunlight.
Presently a wagon came up with eight or ten men walking behind it, or
riding in it in the midst of a quantity of miscellaneous articles of
which Barney took no particular notice. As he went forward, smiling in
a frank, fearless way, he recognized a familiar face among the crowd. It
was Nick Gregory's, and Barney's smile broadened into a grin of pleasure
and welcome.
Then it was that Nick's conscience began to wake up, and to lay hold
upon him.
As the sheriff looked at Barney he hesitated. He balanced himself
heavily on the wheel, instead of leaping quickly down as he might have
done easily enough, for he was a spare man and light on his feet. Nick
overheard him speak in a low voice to the constable, who stood just
below.
"_That_ ain't the fellow, is it, Jim?"
"That's him, percisely," responded Jim Dow.
"He don't _look_ like it," said Stebbins, jumping down at last, but
still speaking under his breath.
"Waal, thar ain't no countin' on boys by the _outside_ on 'em," returned
the constable emphatically; he had an unruly son of his own.
The sheriff walked up to Barney.
"You're Barney Pratt, are you? Well, youngster, you'll come along with
us."
There was silence for a moment. Barney stared at him in amaze. Not until
he had caught sight of the constable, whom he knew in his official
character, did he understand the full meaning of what had been said. He
was under arrest!
As he realized it, everything began to whirl before him. The yellow
sunshine, the gorgeously tinted woods, the blue sky, and the silvery
mists hovering about the distant mountains, were all confusedly mingled
in his failing vision.
He looked as if he were about to faint. But in a few minutes he had
partially recovered himself.
"I dunno what this air done ter me fur," he said tremulously, glancing
up at the officer whose hand was on his shoulder.
"Hain't ye been doin' nothin' mean lately?" demanded Jim Dow sternly.
Barney shook his head.
"Let's see ef this won't remind ye," said the constable, producing the
bit of jeans and the button.
As Nick watched Barney turning the piece of cloth in his hand and
examining the button, he felt a terrible pang of remorse. But he was
none the less resolved to keep the freedom from danger which he had
secured at the expense of his friend. To explain would be merely to
exchange places with Barney, and he was silent.
"This hyar looks like a scrap o' my coat," said Barney, utterly unaware
of the significance of his words. As he fitted it into the jagged edges
of the garment, the officers watched the proceeding closely. "'Pears
like ter me ez it war jerked right out thar--yes--kase hyar air the
missin' button, too."
His air of unconsciousness puzzled the sheriff. "Do you know where you
lost this scrap?" he asked.
"Somewhars 'mongst the briers in the woods, I reckon," replied Barney.
"No; you tore it on a blackberry bush on the ledge of a bluff; it was
close to the Conscripts' Hollow, where some burglars have hidden stolen
plunder. I found the scrap and the button there myself."
Barney felt as if he were dreaming. How should his coat be torn on that
ledge, where he had not been since the cloth was woven!
The next words almost stunned him.
"Ye see, sonny," said the constable, "we believes ye're the boy what
holped to rob Blenkins's store by gittin' through a winder-pane an'
handin' out the stole truck ter the t'other burglars. Ye hev holped
about that thar plunder somehows,--else this hyar thing air a liar!" and
he shook the bit of cloth significantly.
"We'd better set out, Jim," said Stebbins, turning toward the wagon.
"We'll pass Blenkins's on the way, and we'll stop and see if this chap
can slip through the window-pane. If he can't, it's a point in his
favor, and if he can, it's a point against him. As we go, we can try to
get him to tell who the other burglars are."
"Kem on, bubby; we can't stand hyar no longer, a-wastin' the time an'
a-burnin' of daylight," said the constable.
Barney seemed to have lost control of his rigid limbs, and he was
half-dragged, half-lifted into the wagon by the two officers. The crowd
began to fall back and disperse, and he could see the group of
"home-folks" at the door. But he gave only one glance at the little log
cabin, and then turned his head away. It was a poor home, but if it had
been a palace, the pang he felt as he was torn from it could not have
been sharper.
In that instant he saw granny as she stood in the doorway, her head
shaking nervously and her stick whirling in her uncertain grasp. He knew
that she was struggling to say something for his comfort, and he had a
terrible moment of fear lest the wagon should begin to move and her
feeble voice be lost in the clatter of the wheels. But presently her
shrill tones rang out, "No harm kin kem, sonny, ter them ez hev done no
harm. All that happens works tergether fur good, an' the will o' God."
Little breath as she had left, it had done good service to-day,--it had
brought a drop of balm to the poor boy's heart. He did not look at her
again, but he knew that she was still standing in the doorway among the
clustering red leaves, whirling her stick, and shaking with the palsy,
but determined to see the last of him.
And now the wagon was rolling off, and a piteous wail went up from the
children, who understood nothing except that Barney was being carried
away against his will. Little four-year-old Melissa--she always seemed a
beauty to Barney, with her yellow hair, and her blue-checked cotton
dress, and her dimpled white bare feet--ran after the wagon until the
tears blinded her, and she fell in the road, and lay there in the dust,
sobbing.
Then Barney found his voice. His father and mother would not return
until to-morrow, and the thought of what might happen at home, with
nobody there but the helpless old grandmother and the little children,
made him forget his own troubles for the time.
"Take good keer o' the t'other chillen, Andy!" he shouted out to the
next oldest boy, thus making him a deputy-guardian of the family, "an'
pick Melissy up out'n the dust, an' be sure ye keeps granny's cheer
close enough ter the fire!"
Then he turned back again. He could still hear Melissa sobbing. He
wondered why the two men in the wagon looked persistently in the
opposite direction, and why they were both so silent.
The children stood in the road, watching the wagon as long as they could
see it, but Nick had slunk away into the woods. He could not bear the
sight of their grief. He walked on, hardly knowing where he went. He
felt as if he were trying to get rid of himself. He appreciated fully
now the consequences of what he had done. Barney, innocent Barney, would
be thrust into jail.
He began to see that the most terrible phase of moral cowardice is its
capacity to injure others, and he could not endure the thought of what
he had brought upon his friend. Soon he was saying to himself that
something was sure to happen to prevent them from putting Barney in
prison,--he shouldn't be surprised if it were to happen before the wagon
could reach the foot of the mountain.
In his despair, he had flung himself at length upon the rugged, stony
ground at the base of a great crag. When this comforting thought of
Barney's release came upon him, he took his hands from his face, and
looked about him. From certain ledges of the cliff above, the road which
led down the valley was visible at intervals for some distance. There he
could watch the progress of the wagon, and see for a time longer what
was happening to Barney.
There was a broad gulf between the wall of the mountain and the crag,
which, from its detached position and its shape, was known far and wide
as the "Old Man's Chimney."
It loomed up like a great stone column, a hundred feet above the wooded
slope where Nick stood, and its height could only be ascended by
dexterous climbing.
He went at it like a cat. Sometimes he helped himself up by sharp
projections of the rock, sometimes by slipping his feet and hands into
crevices, and sometimes he caught hold of a strong bush here and there,
and gave himself a lift. When he was about forty feet from the base, he
sat down on one of the ledges, and turning, looked anxiously along the
red clay road which he could see winding among the trees down the
mountain's side.
No wagon was there.
His eyes followed the road further and further toward the foot of the
range, and then along the valley beyond. There, at least two miles
distant, was a small moving black object, plainly defined upon the red
clay of the road.
Barney was gone! There was no mistake about it. They had taken him away
from Goliath Mountain! He was innocent, and Nick knew it, and Nick had
made him seem guilty. There was no one near him now to speak a good word
for him, not even his palsied old grandmother.
It all came back upon Nick with a rush. His eyes were blurred with
rising tears. Unconsciously, in his grief, he made a movement forward,
and suddenly clutched convulsively at the ledge.
He had lost his balance. There was a swift, fantastic whirl of vague
objects before him, then a great light seemed flashing through his very
brain, and he knew that he was falling.
He knew nothing else for some time. He wondered where he was when he
first opened his eyes and saw the great stone shaft towering high above,
and the tops of the sun-gilded maples waving about him.
Then he remembered and understood. He had fallen from that narrow ledge,
hardly ten feet above his head, and had been caught in his descent by
the far broader one upon which he lay.
"It knocked the senses out'n me fur a while, I reckon," he said to
himself. "But I hev toler'ble luck now, sure ez shootin', kase I mought
hev drapped over this ledge, an' then I'd hev been gone fur sartain
sure!"
His exultation was short-lived. What was this limp thing hanging to his
shoulder? and what was this thrill of pain darting through it?
He looked at it in amazement. It was his strong right
arm--broken--helpless.
And here he was, perched thirty feet above the earth, weakened by his
long faint, sore and bruised and unnerved by his fall, and with only his
left arm to aid him in making that perilous descent.
It was impossible. He glanced down at the sheer walls of the column
below, shook his head, and lay back on the ledge. Reckless as he was, he
realized that the attempt would be fatal.
Then came a thought that filled him with dismay,--how long was this to
last?--who would rescue him?
He knew that a prolonged absence from home would create no surprise. His
mother would only fancy that he had slipped off, as he had often done,
to go on a camp-hunt with some other boys. She would not grow uneasy for
a week, at least.
He was deep in the heart of the forest, distant from any dwelling. No
one, as far as he knew, came to this spot, except himself and Barney,
and their errand here was for the sake of the exhilaration and the
hazard of climbing the crag. It was so lonely that on the Old Man's
Chimney the eagles built instead of the swallows. His hope--his only
hope--was that some hunter might chance to pass before he should die of
hunger.
The shadow of the great obelisk shifted as the day wore on, and left him
in the broad, hot glare of the sun. His broken arm was fevered and gave
him great pain. Now and then he raised himself on the other, and looked
down wistfully at the cool, dusky depths of the woods. He heard
continually the impetuous rushing of a mountain torrent near at hand;
sometimes, when the wind stirred the foliage, he caught a glimpse of the
water, rioting from rock to rock, and he was oppressed by an intolerable
thirst.
Thus the hours lagged wearily on.