ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS
When the pony carriage drove into the little clearing about the
squatter's hut, Parloe was pottering about the yard and he stood up
and looked at them with arms akimbo and a growing grin upon his sly
face.
"Well, well, well!" he croaked. "All together, air ye? Havin' a
picnic?"
"We've been down yonder in the glen," said Tom, sternly.
For an instant Jasper Parloe changed color and looked a bit worried.
But it was only for an instant. Then he grinned again and his little
eyes twinkled just as though he were amused. But Tom kept on, bluntly,
saying:
"We found something there, Parloe, and we came up here to see if it
belongs to you."
"What's that?" asked the man, drawing nearer. "I ain't lost nothing."
"Don't say that," said Tom, quickly. "At least, don't say you haven't
hidden something."
But he could not catch Mr. Parloe again. The man shook his head slowly
and looked as though he hadn't the least idea of what Tom was driving
at.
"Look here," continued the boy, and drew forth the japanned box.
"Well! Well!" and Jasper's mean little eyes twinkled more than ever.
"You don't mean to say you found that down yonder?"
"We did," said Tom, tartly.
"Now, where was it?"
"Where it had been hidden," snapped Tom, quite disgusted with the old
man. "Where it was supposed to be very safe, I reckon."
"Like enough, Tom," said Jasper, mildly. "What do you reckon on doing
with it?"
"You don't claim it to be yours, then?" demanded Tom, in some
surprise.
"No-o," said Parloe, slowly.
"It has your initials on it," said Helen, quickly.
"That's odd, ain't it?" returned Parloe, standing where he was and not
offering to touch the box. "But other people have the same initials
that I have." His grin grew to huge proportions, and he looked so sly
that nothing but his high, bony nose kept his two little eyes from
running together and making one eye of it. "Jabe Potter, for
instance."
"Then you think this is likely to be Mr. Potter's?" queried Tom.
"Couldn't say. Jabe will probably claim it. He would take advantage of
the initials, sure enough."
"And why don't you?" asked Helen.
"'Cause me and Jabe are two different men," declared Parloe,
righteously. "Nobody ever could say, with proof, that Jasper Parloe
took what warn't his own."
"This is my uncle's cash-box, I am very sure," interposed Ruth, with
some anger. "It was not swept away the day of the flood. You were
there in his little office at the very moment the waters struck the
mill, and we saw you running from the place as though you were
scared."
"Jefers-pelters!" croaked Jasper. "It was enough to scare anybody!"
"That may be. But you weren't too scared to grab this box when you
ran. And you must have hidden it under your coat as you left the mill.
I am going to tell my uncle all about it--and how we saw you down the
hill yonder, looking at this very box before you thrust it back in its
hiding place."
Jasper Parloe grew enraged rather than frightened by this threat.
"Tell!" he barked. "You tell what ye please. Provin's another thing. I
don't know nothin' about the box. I never opened it. I don't know
what's in it. And you kin tell Jabe that if he tries to make me
trouble over it I'll make him trouble in a certain locality--he knows
where and what about."
"I shall give him the box and tell him how it came into my
possession," repeated Ruth, firmly, and then she and her friends drove
away.
They hurried Tubby back to the Red Mill and Ruth ran in ahead of her
friends with the cash-box in her hands. The moment Uncle Jabez saw it
he started forward with a loud cry. He almost tore the box from her
grasp; but then became gentle again in a moment.
"Gal!" he ejaculated, softly, "how'd ye git this away from Parloe?"
"Oh, Uncle! how did you know he had it?"
"I've been suspicious. He couldn't scarce keep it to hisself. He ain't
opened it, I see."
"I don't think he has."
"We'll see. Tell me about it," urged the miller, staring at Helen and
Tom as they approached.
Ruth told him all about it. She pointed, too, to the fact that Helen
and Tom--and especially Tom's dog--had had more to do with the
recovery of the cash-box than she had. Uncle Jabez listened and nodded
as though he appreciated that fact. Meanwhile, however, he hunted up
the key to the japanned box and unlocked it.
It was plain that the contents of the box were for the most part
securities in the shape of stocks and bonds, with a good deal of
currency in small notes. There was a little coin--gold and silver--
packed into one compartment. Uncle Jabez counted it all with feverish
anxiety.
"Right to a penny!" he gasped, when he had finished, and mopped the
perspiration from his brow. "The rascal didn't touch it. He didn't
dare!"
"But he'll dare something else, Uncle," said Ruth, hastily. "I believe
he's going right to Mr. Cameron to make you trouble."
"Ah-ha!" exclaimed Uncle Jabez, and looked hard at Tom.
"I'm sorry if he makes trouble about that old thing, Mr. Potter," said
Tom, stumblingly. "I've tried to keep his mouth shut--"
"Ah-ha!" said Uncle Jabez, again. Then he added: "And I shouldn't be
at all surprised, young man, if you'd given Jasper money to keep his
mouth shut--eh?"
Tom flushed and nodded "I didn't want any row--especially when Helen
and I think so much of Ruth."
"You wouldn't have bought Jasper off for my sake, I reckon," said
Jabez, sharply. "You wouldn't have done it for my sake?"
"Why should I?" returned Tom, coolly. "You never have been any too
friendly towards me."
"Hah!" said the miller, nodding. "That's true. But let me tell you,
young man, that I saw your father about the time I ran you down. We
don't get along very well, I admit. I ain't got much use for you
Camerons. But I had no intention of doing you harm. You can believe
that, or not. If you will remember, the evening you went over that
embankment on the Wilkins Corners road, I came up behind you. My mules
were young, and your dog jumped out at them and scared them. They
bolted, and I never knew till next day that you had been knocked over
the embankment."
"We'll let bygones be bygones, Mr. Potter," said Tom, good-humoredly.
"I came out of it all right."
"But you had no business to pay Jasper Parloe money for keeping still
about it," said the miller, sourly. "Being bled by a blackmailer is
never the action of a wise man. When he threatened me I went to your
father at once and got ahead of Parloe. We agreed to say nothing about
it--that's about all we did agree on, however," added Mr. Potter,
grimly. "Now you children run along. Ruth, come here. I figger I owe
you something because of the finding of this box. Yes! I know how much
the others had to do with it, too. But they'd never been over there in
Olakah Glen if it hadn't been for you. I'll make this up to you. I
never yet owed a debt that I didn't repay in full. I'll remember this
one, gal."
But so much happened in those next two weeks, following the finding of
the cash-box, that Ruth quite forgot this promise on her uncle's part.
She realized, however, that he seemed really desirous of being kind to
her, and that much of his grimness had disappeared.
Everybody at the Red Mill--and many other people, too--had their
thoughts fixed upon Mercy Curtis at this time. She had been getting
stronger all the while. She had been able to hobble on her two sticks
from her bedroom to the porch. She had been to ride half a dozen times
in the Camerons' automobile. And then, suddenly, without other
warning, Doctor Davison and the strange surgeon who had once examined
Mercy, appeared in a big limousine car, with a couch arranged inside,
and they whisked Mercy off to a sanitarium some miles away, where she
was operated on by the famous surgeon, with Doctor Davison's help, and
from which place the report came back in a few days that the operation
had been successful and that Mercy Curtis would--in time--walk
again!
Meanwhile, Ruth had kept up her recitations to Miss Cramp, often
walking back and forth to town, but sometimes getting "a lift," and
the teacher pronounced her prepared to enter the Cheslow High School.
She had taken the studies that Helen Cameron had taken, and, on
comparing notes, the chums found that they were in much the same
condition of advancement.
"Oh, if you were only going to Briarwood with me, instead of to
Cheslow High!" wailed Helen, one day, as they sat on the porch of the
Red Mill house.
"Ah, dear!" said Ruth, quietly, "don't talk about it. I want to go
with you more than I ever wanted to do anything in my whole life--"
"What's that?" exclaimed Uncle Jabez's gruff voice behind them.
"What's that you want to do, Ruth?"
"To--to go to boarding school, Uncle," stammered his niece.
"Hah!" grunted the miller. "Ain't you calculatin' on going to high
school?"
"Oh, Mr. Potter!" broke in Helen, frightened by her own temerity.
"That isn't the school Ruth wants to go to. I am going to Briarwood
Hall, and she wants to go, too. Do, do let her. It would be--it would
be just heavenly, if she could go there, and we could be together!"
Jabez Potter came out upon the porch and looked down upon his niece.
The grim lines of his face could not relax, it seemed; but his eyes
did seem to twinkle as he said:
"And that's the greatest wish of your life; is it, Ruth?"
"I--I believe it is, Uncle Jabez," she whispered, looking at him in
wonder.
"Well, well!" he said, gruffly, dropping his gaze. "Mebbe I owe it ye.
My savin's of years was in that cash-box, Ruth. I--I--Well, I'll
think it over and see if it can be arranged about this Briarwood
business. I'll--I'll see your Aunt Alvirah."
And that Uncle Jabez Potter "saw about it" to some purpose is proven
by the fact that the reader may meet Ruth and her friends again in the
next volume of this series to be entitled "Ruth Fielding at Briarwood
Hall; Or, Solving the Campus Mystery."
"Perhaps he isn't such an ogre after all," whispered Helen, when she
and Ruth were alone.
"Not after you get to know him," replied the girl of the Red Mill,
with a quiet smile.
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill, by Alice B. Emerson