When the wagon was rolling along the road in the valley, Barney at first
kept his eyes persistently fastened upon the craggy heights and the red
and gold autumnal woods of Goliath Mountain, as the mighty range
stretched across the plain.
But presently the two men began to talk to him, and he turned around in
order to face them. They were urging him to confess his own guilt and
tell who were the other burglars, and where they were. But Barney had
nothing to tell. He could only protest again and again his innocence.
The men, however, shook their heads incredulously, and after a while
they left him to himself and smoked their pipes in silence.
When Barney looked back at the mountains once more, a startling change
seemed to have been wrought in the landscape. Instead of the frowning
sandstone cliffs he loved so well, and the gloomy recesses of the woods,
there was only a succession of lines of a delicate blue color drawn
along the horizon. This was the way the distant ranges looked from the
crags of his own home; he knew that they were the mountains, but which
was Goliath?
Suddenly he struck his hands together, and broke out with a bitter cry.
"I hev los' G'liath!" he exclaimed. "I dunno whar I live! An' whar _is_
Melissy?"
A difficult undertaking, certainly, to determine where among all those
great spurs and outliers, stretching so far on either hand, was that
little atom of dimpled pink-and-white humanity known as "Melissy."
The constable, being a native of these hills himself, knew something by
experience of the homesickness of an exiled mountaineer,--far more
terrible than the homesickness of low-landers; he took his pipe
promptly from between his lips, and told the boy that the second blue
ridge, counting down from the sky, was "G'liath Mounting," and that
"Melissy war right thar somewhar."
Barney looked back at it with unrecognizing eyes,--this gentle, misty,
blue vagueness was not the solemn, sombre mountain that he knew. He
gazed at it only for a moment longer; then his heart swelled and he
burst into tears.
On and on they went through the flat country. The boy felt that he could
scarcely breathe. Even tourists, coming down from these mountains to the
valley below, struggle with a sense of suffocation and oppression; how
must it have been then with this half-wild creature, born and bred on
those breezy heights!
The stout mules did their duty well, and it was not long before they
were in sight of the cross-roads store that had been robbed. It was a
part of a small frame dwelling-house, set in the midst of the yellow
sunlight that brooded over the plain. All the world around it seemed to
the young backwoodsman to be a big cornfield; but there was a garden
close at hand, and tall sunflowers looked over the fence and seemed to
nod knowingly at Barney, as much as to say they had always suspected
him of being one of the burglars, and were gratified that he had been
caught at last.
Poor fellow! he saw so much suspicion expressed in the faces of a crowd
of men congregating about the store, that it was no wonder he fancied he
detected it too in inanimate objects.
Of all the group only one seemed to doubt his guilt. He overheard
Blenkins, the merchant, say to Jim Dow,--
"It's mighty hard to b'lieve this story on this 'ere boy; he's a manly
looking, straight-for'ard little chap, an' he's got honest eyes in his
head, too."
"He'd a deal better hev an honest heart in his body," drawled Jim Dow,
who was convinced that Barney had aided in the burglary.
When they had gone around to the window with the broken pane, Barney
looked up at it in great anxiety. If only it should prove too small for
him to slip through! Certainly it seemed very small.
He had pulled off his coat and stood ready to jump.
"Up with you!" said Stebbins.
The boy laid both hands on the sill, gave a light spring, and went
through the pane like an eel.
"That settles it!" he heard Stebbins saying outside. And all the idlers
were laughing because it was done so nimbly.
"That boy's right smart of a fool," said one of the lookers-on. "Now, if
that had been me, I'd hev made out to git stuck somehows in that winder;
I'd have scotched my wheel somewhere."
"Ef ye hed, I'd have dragged ye through ennyhow," declared Jim Dow, who
had no toleration of a joke on a serious subject. "This hyar boy air a
deal too peart ter try enny sech fool tricks on _Me_!"
Barney hardly knew how he got back into the wagon; he only knew that
they were presently jolting along once more in the midst of the yellow
glare of sunlight. It had begun to seem that there was no chance for
him. Like Nick, he too had madly believed, in spite of everything, that
something would happen to help him. He could not think that, innocent as
he was, he would be imprisoned. Now, however, this fate evidently was
very close upon him.
Suddenly Jim Dow spoke. "I s'pose ye war powerful disapp'inted kase ye
couldn't git yerself hitched in that thar winder; ye air too well used
to it,--ye hev been through it afore."
"I hev never been through it afore!" cried Barney indignantly.
"Well, well," said Stebbins pacifically, "it wouldn't have done you any
good if you hadn't gone through the pane just now. I'd have only thought
you were one of those who stood on the outside. You see, the _main_
point against you is that scrap of your coat and your button found right
there by the Conscripts' Hollow,--though, of course, your going through
the window-pane so easy makes it more complete."
Barney's tired brain began to fumble at this problem,--how did it
happen?
He had not been on the ledge nor at the Conscripts' Hollow for six
months at least. Yet there was that bit of his coat and his button found
on the bush close at hand only to-day.
Was it possible that he could have exchanged coats by mistake with Nick
the last afternoon that they were on the crag together?
"Did Nick wear _my_ coat down on the ledge, I wonder, an' git it tored?
Did Nick see the plunder in the Conscripts' Hollow, an' git skeered, an'
then sot out ter lyin' ter git shet o' the blame?"
As he asked himself these questions, he began to remember, vaguely,
having seen, just as he was falling asleep, his friend's head slowly
disappearing beneath the verge of the crag.
"Nick started down ter the ledge, anyhow," he argued.
Did he dream it, or was it true, that when Nick came back he seemed at
first strangely agitated?
All at once Barney exclaimed aloud,--
"This hyar air a powerful cur'ous thing 'bout'n that thar piece what war
tored out'n my coat!"
"What's curious about it?" asked Stebbins quickly.
Jim Dow took his pipe from his mouth, and looked sharply at the boy.
Barney struggled for a moment with a strong temptation. Then a nobler
impulse asserted itself. He would not even attempt to shield himself
behind the friend who had done him so grievous an injury.
He _knew_ nothing positively; he must not put his suspicions and his
vague, half-sleeping impressions into words, and thus possibly criminate
Nick.
He himself felt certain now how the matter really stood,--that Nick had
no connection whatever with the robbery, but having accidentally
stumbled upon the stolen goods, he had become panic-stricken, had lied
about it, and finally had saved himself at the expense of an innocent
friend.
Still, Barney had no _proof_ of this, and he felt he would rather suffer
unjustly himself than unjustly throw blame on another.
"Nothin', nothin'," he said absently. "I war jes' a-studyin' 'bout'n it
all."
"Well, I wouldn't think about it any more just now," said good-natured
Stebbins. "You look like you had been dragged through a keyhole instead
of a window-pane. This town we're coming to is the biggest town you ever
saw."
Barney could not respond to this attempt to divert his attention. He
could only brood upon the fact that he was innocent, and would be
punished as if he were guilty, and that it was Nick Gregory, his chosen
friend, who had brought him to this pass.
He would not be unmanly, and injure Nick with a possibly unfounded
suspicion, but his heart burned with indignation and contempt when he
thought of him. He felt that he would go through fire and water to be
justly revenged upon him.
He determined that, if ever he should see Nick again, even though years
might intervene, he would tax him with the injury he had wrought, and
make him answer for it.
Barney clenched his fists as he looked back at the ethereal blue shadows
that they said were the solid old hills.
Perhaps, however, if he had known where, in the misty uncertainty that
enveloped Goliath Mountain, Nick Gregory was at this moment,--far away
in the lonely woods, helpless with his broken arm, perched high up on
the "Old Man's Chimney,"--Barney might have thought himself the more
fortunately placed of the two.
Before he was well aware of it, the wagon was jolting into the town. He
took no notice of how much larger the little village was than any he had
ever seen before. His attention was riveted by the faces of the people
who ran to the doors and windows, upon recognizing the officers, to
stare at him as one of the burglars.
When the wagon reached the public square, a number of men came up and
stopped it.
Barney was surprised that they took so little notice of him. They were
talking loudly and excitedly to the officers, who grew at once loud and
excited, too.
The boy roused himself, and began to listen to the conversation. The
burglars had been captured!--yes, that was what they were saying. The
deputy-sheriff had nabbed the whole gang in a western district of the
county this morning early, and they were lodged at this moment in jail.
Barney's heart sank. Would he be put among the guilty creatures? He
flinched from the very idea.
Suddenly, here was the deputy-sheriff himself, a young man, dusty and
tired with his long, hard ride, but with an air of great satisfaction in
his success. He talked with many quick gestures that were very
expressive. Sometimes he would leave a sentence unfinished except by a
brisk nod, but all the crowd caught its meaning instantly. This
peculiarity gave him a very animated manner, and he seemed to Barney to
enjoy being in a position of authority.
He pressed his foaming horse close to the wagon, and leaning over,
looked searchingly into Barney's face.
The poor boy looked up deprecatingly from under his limp and drooping
hat-brim.
All the crowd stood in silence, watching them. After a moment of this
keen scrutiny, the deputy turned to the constable with an interrogative
wave of the hand.
"This hyar's the boy what war put through the winder-pane ter thieve
from Blenkins," said Jim Dow. "Thar's consider'ble fac's agin him."
"You mean well, Jim," said the deputy, with a short, scornful laugh.
"But your performance ain't always equal to your intentions."
He lifted his eyebrows and nodded in a significant way that the crowd
understood, for there was a stir of excitement in its midst; but poor
Barney failed to catch his meaning. He hung upon every tone and gesture
with the intensest interest. All the talk was about him, and he could
comprehend no more than if the man spoke in a foreign language.
Still, he gathered something of the drift of the speech from the
constable's reply.
"That thar boy's looks hev bamboozled more'n one man ter-day, jes' at
fust," Jim Dow drawled. "_Looks_ ain't nothin'."
"I'd believe 'most anything a boy with a face on him like that would
tell me," said the deputy. "And besides, you see, one of those scamps,"
with a quick nod toward the jail, "has turned State's evidence."
Barney's heart was in a great tumult. It seemed bursting. There was a
hot rush of blood to his head. He was dizzy--and he could not
understand!
State's evidence,--what was that? and what would that do to him?