The Rival Campers Ashore: or, The Mystery of the Mill

"Why, I'm big enough to do the haying," urged John Ellison. "You've got the mill now. You might give me a job, I think."

Possibly some thought of this kind might have found fleeting lodgment in the colonel's brain; of Jim Ellison, who used to sit at the desk in the corner; of the son that now asked him for work. Then a crafty, suspicious light came into his eyes, and he glanced quickly at John Ellison's companion.

"What do you want here, Henry Burns?" he demanded. "I had you in my hotel at Samoset Bay once, and you brought me bad luck. You get out. I don't want you around here. Get out, I say."

He moved threateningly toward Henry Burns, and the boy, seeing it was useless to try to remain, stepped outside.

"No, I don't want you, either," said Colonel Witham, turning abruptly now to John Ellison. "No boys around this mill. I don't care if your father did own it. You can't work here. I've no place for you."

Despite his blustering and almost threatening manner, however, Colonel Witham did not offer to thrust John Ellison from the mill. He seemed on the point of doing it, but something stopped him. He couldn't have told what. But he merely repeated his refusal, and turned away.

It was only boyish impulse on John Ellison's part, and an innocent purchaser of the mill would have laughed at him; but he stepped nearer to Colonel Witham and said, earnestly, "You'll have to let me in here some day, Colonel Witham. The mill isn't yours, and you know it." And he added, quickly, as the thought occurred to him, "Perhaps the fortune-teller you saw at the circus will tell me more than she told you. Perhaps she'll tell me where the papers are."

For a moment Colonel Witham's heavy face turned deathly pale, and he leaned for support against one of the beams of the mill. Then the colour came back into his face with a rush, and he stamped angrily on the floor.

"Confound you!" he cried. "You clear out, too. I don't know anything about your fortune-tellers, and I don't care. I've got no time to fool away with boys. Now get out."

John Ellison walked slowly to the door, leaving the colonel mopping his face and turning alternately white and red; and as he stepped outside Colonel Witham dropped into a chair.

Then, as the boys went on together up the hill to the Ellison farm, Colonel Witham, recovering in a measure from the shock he had received, arose from his chair, somewhat unsteady on his legs, and began, for the hundredth and more time, a weary, fruitless search of the old mill, from the garret to the very surface of the water flowing under it.

And as Colonel Witham groped here and there, in dusty corners, he muttered, "What on earth did he mean? The fortune-teller – how could he know of that? There's witchcraft at work somewhere. But there aren't any papers in this mill. I know it. I know it. I know it."

And still he kept up his search until it was long past the time for shutting down.

Three days after this, Lawyer Estes was talking to John Ellison at the farmhouse.

"Well, I've run down your witch," he said, smiling; "and there isn't anything to be made out of her. I've been clear to the fair-grounds at Newbury to see her. She's a shrewd one; didn't take her long to see that something was up. Sized me up for a lawyer, I guess, and shut up tighter than a clam. I told her what I knew, but she swore Tim Reardon was mistaken.

"Those people have a fear of getting mixed up with the courts; naturally suspicious, I suppose. She declared she had said that the man she talked with asked about some letters he had lost, himself; and that was all she knew about it. No use in my talking, either. I didn't get anything more out of her. We're right where we were before."

"Well, I'm going to get into that mill and look around, just the same," exclaimed John Ellison. "I'll do it some way."

"Then you'll be committing trespass," said Lawyer Estes, cautiously.

"I don't care," insisted the boy. "I won't be doing any harm. I'm not going to touch anything that isn't ours. But I'm going to look."

"Then don't tell me about it," said the lawyer. "I couldn't be a party to a proceeding like that."

"No, but I know who will," said John Ellison. "It's Henry Burns. He won't be afraid of looking through an old mill at night – and he'll know a way to do it, too."

John Ellison tramped into town, that afternoon, and hunted up his friend.

"Why, of course," responded Henry Burns; "it's easy. Jack and I'll go with you. It won't do any harm, just to walk through a mill." And he added, laughing, "You know we've been in there once before. Remember the night we told you of?"

John Ellison looked serious.

"Yes," he replied, "and there was something queer about that, too, wasn't there? You said father went through the mill, upstairs and down, just the same as Witham does often now."

"He did, sure enough," said Henry Burns, thoughtfully. "I wish I'd known what trouble was coming some day; I'd have tried to follow him. Well, we'll go through all right – but what about Witham?"

"That's just what I've been thinking," said John Ellison.

"Well," replied Henry Burns, after some moments' reflection, "leave it to me. I'll fix that part of it. And supposing the worst should happen and he catch us all in there, what could he do? We'll get Jack and Tom and Bob – yes, and Tim, too; he's got sharp eyes. Witham can't lick us all. If he catches us, we'll just have to get out. He wouldn't make any trouble; he knows what people think about him and the mill."

So John Ellison left it to Henry Burns; and the latter set about his plans in his own peculiar and individual way. The scheme had only to be mentioned to Jack and the others, to meet with their approval. They were ready for anything that Henry Burns might suggest. The idea that a night search, of premises which had already been hunted over scores of times by daylight, did not offer much hope of success, had little weight with them. If Henry Burns led, they would follow.

The night finally selected by Henry Burns and John Ellison would have made a gloomy companion picture to the one when Harvey and Henry Burns first made their entry into the mill, under the guidance of Bess Thornton, except that it did not rain. Henry Burns and John Ellison had noted the favourable signs of the weather all afternoon; how the heavy clouds were gathering; how the gusts whipped the dust into little whirlwinds and blew flaws upon the surface of the stream; how the waning daylight went dim earlier than usual; and they had voted it favourable for the enterprise.

Wherefore, there appeared on the surface of Mill stream, not long after sundown, two canoes that held, respectively, Henry Burns and Harvey and Tim Reardon, and Tom Harris and Bob White. These two canoes, not racing now, but going along side by side in friendly manner, sped quietly and swiftly upstream in the direction of the Ellison dam. Then, arriving within sight of it, they waited on the water silently for a time, until two figures crept along the shore and hailed them. These were John and James Ellison.

"It's all right," said John Ellison, in answer to an inquiry; "Witham's at home, and the place is deserted. And who do you suppose is on watch up near the Half Way House, to let us know if Witham comes out? Bess Thornton. I let her in on the secret, because I knew she'd help. She knows what Old Witham is."

"Have you got it?" inquired Henry Burns, mysteriously.

"Sure," responded John Ellison. "It's up close by the mill. Come on."

They paddled up close to the white foam that ran from the foot of the dam, where the falling water of the stream struck the basin below, and turned the canoes inshore. There, up the bank, John Ellison produced the mysterious object of Henry Burns's inquiry. It proved to be an old wash-boiler.

Harvey and the others eyed it with astonishment.

"What are you going to do with that old thing?" asked Harvey. "This isn't Fourth of July."

"That's my fiddle," replied Henry Burns, coolly. "I've got the string in my pocket."

With which reply, he took hold of one handle of the wash-boiler and John Ellison the other; and they proceeded up the bank. The others followed, grinning.

"Play us a tune," suggested young Tim.

"Not unless I have to," replied Henry Burns. "You may hear it, and perhaps you won't."

All was desolate and deserted, as they made a circuit of the surroundings of the mill. It certainly offered no attractions to visitors, after nightfall. The crazy old structure, unpainted and blackened with age, made a dark, dismal picture against the dull sky. The water fell with a monotonous roar over the dam; the cold dripping of water sounded within the shell of the mill. The wind, by fits and starts, rattled loose boards and set stray shingles tattooing here and there. Dust blew down from the roadway.

"He'll not be out to-night," remarked Harvey, as they looked up the road in the direction of the Half Way House.

"You can't tell," replied John Ellison. "We've seen the light in here some nights that were as bad as this. What say, shall we go in?"

They followed his lead, around by the way Henry Burns and Harvey had once before entered, and, one by one, went in through the window. Then they paused, huddled on a plank, while John Ellison scratched a match and lighted a sputtering lantern, the wick of which had become dampened. Across the planking they picked their way, and entered the main room on the first floor.

Then Henry Burns and John Ellison made another trip and brought in Henry Burns's "fiddle," greatly to the amusement of the others.

"That goes on the top floor," said Henry Burns, and they ascended the two flights of stairs with it, depositing it upside down, in a corner of the garret that was boarded up as a separate room, or large closet. Then Henry Burns, producing from his pocket a piece of closely woven cotton rope, skilfully tossed one end over a beam above his head; seized the end as it fell, quickly tied a running knot and hauled it snug. The rope, made fast thus at one end to the beam, drew taut as he pulled down on it.

"That's the fiddle-string, eh Jack?" laughed Henry Burns. "We've made a horse-fiddle before now, haven't we? that rope's got so much resin on it that it squeaks if you just look at it."

He passed the free end of the resined rope through a hole in the bottom of the upturned wash-boiler, and knotted it so it would not pull out again.

"Now where's the fiddle-bow, John?" he asked.