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HIGHACRES
by
JANE D. ABBOTT
Author of "Keineth," "Larkspur" and "Happy House"
With Illustrations by Harriet Roosevelt Richards
Philadelphia and London J. B. Lippincott Company
Copyright, 1920, by J. B. Lippincott Company
Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company
At the Washington Square Press
Philadelphia, U. S. A.
TO
THOSE DEAR CHUMS
"WRITE A STORY ABOUT SCHOOL," YOU ASKED
ME. "WRITE A STORY IN WHICH THE HEROINE
HAS A MOTHER AND A FATHER--WE'RE SO
TIRED OF POOR ORPHANS," YOU BEGGED. I
HAVE TRIED TO DO IT, ASKING YOUR FORGIVENESS
FOR ONE LITTLE STEP-FATHER. TO
YOU I AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATE THE STORY
[Illustration: AMID THE UNFORGETTABLE SHOUTS OF THE BOYS AND GIRLS SHE
SLID EASILY ON DOWN THE TRAIL]
CONTENTS
I. KETTLE MOUNTAIN
II. SUNNYSIDE
III. ON THE ROAD TO COBBLE
IV. THE WESTLEYS
V. JERRY'S WISH COMES TRUE
VI. NEW FACES
VII. HIGHACRES
VIII. SCHOOL
IX. THE SECRET DOOR
X. THE DEBATE
XI. AUNT MARIA
XII. THE PARTY
XIII. HASKIN'S HILL
XIV. THE PRIZE
XV. CUPID AND COMPANY
XVI. FOR THE HONOR OF THE SCHOOL
XVII. DISGRACE
XVIII. THE RAVENS CLEAN THE TOWER
XIX. THE LETTER
XX. THE FAMILY COUNCILS
XXI. POOR ISOBEL
XXII. JERRY WINS HER WAY
XXIII. THE THIRD VIOLINIST
XXIV. PLANS
XXV. THE LINCOLN AWARD
XXVI. COMMENCEMENT
XXVII. CRAIG WINTON
XXVIII. HER MOTHER'S STORY
XXIX. THE WISHING-ROCK
ILLUSTRATIONS
Amid the unforgettable shouts of the boys and girls she slid easily on
down the trail
She pointed down to the winding road
One by one, quite breathless with excitement, they climbed to the tower
room
Gyp, Jerry, Tibby, even Graham, superintended Isobel's preparations for
the dress rehearsal
HIGHACRES
CHAPTER I
KETTLE MOUNTAIN
If John Westley had not deliberately run away from his guide that August
morning and lost himself on Kettle Mountain, he would never have found
the Wishing-rock, nor the Witches' Glade, nor Miss Jerauld Travis.
Even a man whose hair has begun to grow a little gray over his ears can
have moments of wildest rebellion against authority. John Westley had
had such; he had wakened very early that morning, had watched the sun
slant warmly across his very pleasant room at the Wayside Hotel and had
fiercely hated the doctor, back in the city, who had printed on a slip
of office paper definite rules for him, John Westley, aged thirty-five,
to follow; hated the milk and eggs that he knew awaited him in the
dining-room and hated, more than anything else, the smiling guide who
had been spending the evening before, just as he had spent every
evening, thinking out nice easy climbs that wouldn't tire a fellow who
was recuperating from a very long siege of typhoid fever!
It had been so easy that it was a little disappointing to slip out of
the door opening from the big sun room at the back of the hotel while
the guide waited for him at the imposing front entrance. There was a
little path that ran across the hotel golf links on around the lake,
shining like a bright gem in the morning sun, and off toward Kettle
Mountain; feeling very much like a truant schoolboy, John Westley had
followed this path. A sense of adventure stimulated him, a pleasant
little breeze whipping his face urged him on. He stopped at a cottage
nestled in a grove of fir trees and persuaded the housewife there to
wrap him a lunch to take with him up the trail. The good woman had
packed many a lunch for her husband, who was a guide (and a close friend
of the man who was cooling his heels at the hotel entrance), and she
knew just what a person wanted who was going to climb Kettle Mountain.
Three hours after, John Westley, very tired from his climb but not in
the least repentant of his disobedience, enjoyed immensely a long rest
with Mother Tilly's good things spread out on a rock at his elbow.
At three o'clock John Westley realized that the trail he had chosen was
not taking him back to the village; at four he admitted he was lost. All
his boyish exhilaration had quite left him; he would have hugged his
despised guide if he could have met him around one of the many turns of
the trail; he ached in every bone and could not get the thought out of
his head that a man could die on Kettle Mountain and no one would know
it for months!
He chose the trails that went _down_ simply because his weary legs could
not _climb_ one foot more! And he had gone down such steep inclines that
he was positive he had descended twice the height of the mountain and
must surely come into some valley or other--then suddenly his foot
slipped on the needles that cushioned the trail, he fell, just as one
does on the ice--only much more softly--and slid on, down and down,
deftly steering himself around a bend, and came to a stop against a dead
log just in time to escape bumping over a flight of rocky steps, neatly
built by Nature in the side of the mountain and which led to a grassy
terrace, open on one side to the wide sweep of valley and surrounding
mountains and closed in on the other by leaning, whispering birches.
It was not the amazing view off over the valley, nor the impact against
the old log that made his breath catch in his throat with a little
surprised sound--it was the sudden apparition of a slim creature
standing very straight on a huge rock! His first joyful thought was that
it was a boy--a boy who could lead him back to the Wayside Hotel, for
the youth wore soft leather breeches and a blouse, loosely belted at the
waist, woolen golf stockings and soft elkskin shoes, but when the head
turned, like a startled deer's, toward the unexpected sound, he saw,
with more interest than disappointment, that the boy was a girl!
"How do you do?" he said, because her eyes told him very plainly that he
was intruding upon some pleasant occupation. "I'm very glad to see you
because, I must admit, I'm lost."
The girl jumped down from her rock. She had an exceptionally pretty face
that seemed to smile all over.
"Won't you come down?" she said graciously, as though she was the
mistress of Kettle Mountain and all its glades.
Then John Westley did what in all his thirty-five years he had never
done before--he fainted. He made one little effort to rise and walk down
the rocky steps but instead he rolled in an unconscious heap right to
the girl's feet.
He wakened, some moments later, to a consciousness of cool water in his
face and a pair of anxious brown eyes close to his own. He felt very
much ashamed--and really better for having given way!
"Are you all right now?"
"Yes--or I will be in a moment. Just give me a hand."
He marveled at the dexterity with which she lifted him against her slim
shoulder.
"Little-Dad's gone over to Rocky Point, but I knew what to do," she said
proudly. "I s'pose you're from Wayside?"
He looked around. "Where _is_ Wayside?"
She laughed, showing two rows of strong, white teeth. "Well, the way
Little-Dad travels it's hours away so that Silverheels has to rest
between going and coming, and Mr. Toby Chubb gets there in an hour with
his new automobile when it'll _go_, but if you follow the Sunrise trail
and then turn by the Indian Head and turn again at the Kettle's Handle
you'll come into the Sleepy Hollow and the Devil's Pass and----"
John Westley clapped his hands to his head.
"Good gracious, no wonder I got lost! And just where am I now?"
"You're right on the other side of the mountain. Little-Dad says that if
a person could just bore right through Kettle you'd come out on the
sixth hole of the Wayside Golf course--only it'd be an awfully _long_
bore."
John Westley laughed hilariously. He had suddenly thought how carefully
his guide always planned _easy_ hikes for him.
The girl went on. "But it's just a little way down this trail to
Sunnyside--that's where I live. Little-Dad's my father," she explained.
"I'd rather believe that you're a woodland nymph and live in yonder
birch grove, but I suppose--your garments look so very man-made--that
you have a regular given-to-you-in-baptism name?"
"I should say I had!" the girl cried in undisguised disgust. "_Jerauld
Clay Travis._ I _hate_ it. Nearly every girl I know is named something
nice--Rose and Lily and Clementina. It was cruel to name any child
J-e-r-a-u-l-d."
"I think it's--nice! It's so--different." John Westley wanted to add
that it suited her because _she_ was different, but he hesitated; little
Miss Jerauld might misunderstand him. He thought, as he watched from the
corner of his eye, every movement of the slim, strong, boyish form, that
she was unlike any girl he had ever known, and, because he had three
nieces and they had ever so many friends, he really knew quite a bit
about girls.
"Yes, it's--different," she sighed, unconscious of the thoughts that
were running through the man's head. Then she brightened, for even the
discomfiture of having to bear the name Jerauld could not long shadow
her spirit, "only no one ever calls me Jerauld--I'm always just Jerry."
"Well, Miss Jerry, you can't ever know how glad I am that I met you! If
I hadn't, well, I guess I'd have perished on the face of Kettle
Mountain. I am plain John Westley, stopping over at Wayside, and I can
swear I never before did anything so silly as to faint, only I've just
had a rather tough siege of typhoid."
"Oh, you shouldn't have _tried_ to climb so far," she cried. "As soon as
you're rested you must go home with me. And you'll have to stay all
night 'cause Mr. Chubb's not back yet from Deertown and he won't drive
after dark."
If John Westley had not been so utterly fascinated by his surroundings
and his companion, he might have tried immediately to pull himself
together enough to go on to Sunnyside; he was quite content, however, to
lean against a huge rock and "rest."
"I'm trying to guess how old you are. And I thought you were a boy, too.
I'm glad you're not."
"I'm 'most fourteen." Miss Jerry squared her shoulders proudly. "I guess
I do look like a boy. I wear this sort of clothes most of the time,
'cept when I dress up or go to school. You see I've always gone with
Little-Dad on Silverheels when he went to see sick people until I grew
too heavy and--and Silverheels got too old." She said it with deep
regret. "But I live--like this!"
"And do you wander alone all over the mountain?"
"Oh, no--just on this side of Kettle. Once a guide and a man from the
Wayside disappeared there beyond Sleepy Hollow and that's why they call
it Devil's Hole. Little-Dad made me promise never to go beyond the turn
from Sunrise trail. I'd like to, too. But there are lots of jolly tramps
this side. This"--waving her hand--"is the Witches' Glade and
that"--nodding at the rock against which the man leaned--"is the
Wishing-rock."
John Westley, who back home manufactured cement-mixers, suddenly felt
that he had wakened into a world of make-believe.
He turned and looked at the rock--it was very much like a great many
other rocks all over the mountainside and yet--there _was_ something
different!
Jerry giggled and clasped her very brown hands around her leather-clad
knees.
"I name everything on this side--no one from Wayside ever comes
this way, you see. I've played here since I was ever so little. I've
always pretended that fairies lived in the mountains." She leveled
serious eyes upon him. "They _must_! You know it's _magic_ the way
things--_are_--here!"
John Westley nodded. "I understand--you climb and you think you're on
top and then there's lots higher up and you slide down and you think
you're in the valley and you come out on a spot--like this--with all the
world below you still."
"Mustn't it have been _fun_ to make it all?" Jerry's eyes gleamed. "And
such beautiful things grow everywhere and the colors are _so_ different!
And the woodsy glens and ravines--they're so mysterious. I've heard the
trees talk! And the brooks--why, they _can't_ be just nothing but
brooks, they're so--so--_alive_!"
"Oh, yes," John Westley was plainly convinced. "Fairies _must_ live in
the mountains!"
"Of course I know now--I'm fourteen--that there are no such things as
fairies but it's fun to pretend. But I still call this my Wishing-rock
and I come here and stand on it and wish--only there aren't so awfully
many things to wish for that you don't just ask Little-Dad for--big
things, you know."
"Miss Jerry, you were wishing when I--arrived!"
She colored. "I was. Little-Dad says I ought to be a very happy girl and
I am, but I guess everybody always has something real _big_ that they
think they want more than anything else."
John Westley inclined his head gravely. "I guess everybody does, Jerry.
I think that's what keeps us going on in the race. Does it spoil your
wish--to tell about it?"
"Oh, my, yes!" Then she laughed. "Only I suppose it couldn't because
there aren't really fairies."
"What _were_ you wishing?" He asked it coaxingly, in his eyes a deep
interest.
She hesitated, her dark eyes dreaming. "That I could just go on
along that shining white road--down there--around and around to--the
other side of the mountain!" She rose up on her knees and stretched
a bare arm down toward the valley. "I've always wished it since
the days when Little-Dad used to ride that way and leave me home
because it was too far. I know that everything that's the other
side of the mountain is--oh, lots _different_ from Miller's Notch
and--school--and--Sunnyside--and Kettle." Her voice was plaintively
wistful, her eyes shining. "I _know_ it's different. From up here I can
watch the automobiles come along and they always turn off and go around
the mountain and never come to Miller's Notch unless they get lost. And
the trains all go that way and--and it _must_ be different! It's like
the books I read. It's the _world_----" She sank back on her knees.
"Once I tried to walk and once I rode Silverheels, but I never seemed to
get to the real turn, it was so far and I was afraid. At sunset I look
at the colors and the little clouds in the sky and they look like
castles and I think it's the reflection of what's on the other side.
_That's_ what I was wishing." She turned serious eyes toward Westley.
"Is it dreadfully wicked? Little-Dad said I was discontented and
Sweetheart--that's mother--cried and hugged me as though she was
frightened. But some day I've just _got_ to go along that road."
[Illustration: SHE POINTED DOWN TO THE WINDING ROAD]
For some reason that was beyond even the analytical power of his trained
mind, John Westley was deeply stirred. Little Jerry, child of the
woods--he felt as her mother must have felt! There was a mystery about
the girl that held his curiosity; she could be no child of simple
mountain people. He rose from his position against the rock with
surprising agility.
"If you'll give me a hand I'll stand on your rock and wish that your
wish may come true, if you want it so very much! But, maybe, child,
you'll find that what you have right here is far better than anything on
the other side of the mountain. Now, suppose you lead the way to
Sunnyside."
Jerry sprang ahead eagerly. "And then you'll meet Sweetheart and
Little-Dad and Bigboy and Pepperpot!"