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

Presently they perceived a landing, with several rowboats tied up. They ran in alongside this, drew their canoe clear up on to the float, turned it over, and walked rapidly up toward the house from which the light shone.

"We're in luck for once," said Harvey. "There's a sign over the door."

The sign, indeed, seemed to offer them some sort of welcome. It bore an enormous hand pointing inward, and the inscription, "Half Way House."

"I wonder what it's half way between," said Henry Burns, as they paused a moment on the threshold of the door. "Half way between the sky and China, I guess. But I don't care, if the roof doesn't leak."

The picture, as they entered, was, in truth, one to cheer the most wretched. Directly in front of them, in line with the door, a fire of hickory logs roared in an old-fashioned brick fireplace, lighting up the hotel office almost as much as did the two kerosene lamps, disposed at either end. An old woman, dozing comfortably in a big rocking chair before the blaze, jumped up at their appearance.

"Land sakes!" she ejaculated, querulously. "What a night to be comin' in upon us! Dear! Dear! Want to stay over night, you say? Well, if that ain't like boys – canooering, you call it, in this mess of a rain. Gracious me, but you're wet to the skin, both er yer. Well, take them wooden chairs, as won't be spoiled with water, and sit up by the fire till I make a new pot of coffee and warm up a bit of stew and fry a bit of bacon. Canooering in this weather! Well, that beats me."

"The proprietor, you say? Well, he's up the road, but he'll be in, soon. You can pay me for the supper, and fix 'bout the stay in' over night with him. I jes' tend to the cookin'. That's all I do."

She called them to supper in the course of a quarter of an hour, and had clearly done her best for them. There was coffee, steaming hot, and biscuit, warmed up to a crisp; bacon, freshly fried, with eggs; a dish of home-made preserves, and a sheet of gingerbread.

"Eat all yer can hold," she chuckled, as they fell to, hungry as panthers. "Canooering's good fer the appertite, ain't it? It's plain vittles, but I reckon the cookin's good as the most of 'em, if I say it, who shouldn't."

She rambled on, somewhat garrulously, as the boys ate. They did full justice to the cooking, stuffed themselves till Henry Burns said he could feel his skin stretch; paid the old woman her price for the meal – "twenty-five cents apiece, an' it couldn't be done for less" – and went and seated themselves comfortably once more by the fire in the office. They settled themselves back comfortably.

"Arms ache?" inquired Harvey of his comrade.

"No," replied Henry Burns, "but I don't mind saying I'm tired. I wouldn't stir out of this place again to-night for sixteen billion dol – "

The door opened, and a bulky, red-faced man entered, stamping, shaking the rain from his clothing like a big Newfoundland dog, and railing ill-naturedly at the weather.

"It's a vile night, gran'," he exclaimed; then espying his two newly-arrived guests, he assumed a more cordial tone.

"Good evening. Good evening, young gentlemen," he said. "Glad you got in out of the storm – hello! what's this? Well, if it don't beat me!"

At the sound of the man's voice, Henry Burns and Jack Harvey had sprung up in amazement. They stood beside their chairs, eying the proprietor of the Half Way House, curiously. He, in turn, glared at them in astonishment, fully equal to theirs, while his red face went from its normal fiery hue to deep purple, and his hands clenched.

"Colonel Witham!" they exclaimed, in the same breath.

"What are you two doing here?" he cried.

"What new monkey-shine of yours is this? Don't you know I won't have any Henry Burnses and Jack Harveys, nor any of the rest of you, around my hotel? Didn't yer get satisfaction enough out of bringing bad luck to me in one place, and now you come bringing it here? Get out, is what I say to you, and get out quick!"

"You keep away, gran'," he cried to the woman, who had stepped forward. "Don't you go interfering. It's my hotel; and I wouldn't care if 'twas raining a bucket a drop and coming forty times as hard. I'd put 'em out er doors, neck and crop. Get out, I say, and don't ever step a foot around here again."

Henry Burns and Jack Harvey stood for a moment, gazing in perplexity at each other.

"Shall we go, or stick it out?" asked Harvey, in a low voice.

"Why, it's a public house, and I don't believe he has a right to throw us out this way," said Henry Burns. "But it means a fight, sure, if we try to stay. I guess we better quit. It's his own place, and he's a rough man when he's angered."

Ruefully pulling on their sweaters – at least dry once more – and taking their paddles, which they had brought with them, from behind the door, they went out into the night, into the driving rain.

CHAPTER III

THE OLD MILL

The two boys, thus most unexpectedly evicted, stood disconsolately on the porch of the Half Way House, peering out into the storm. The character of it had changed somewhat, the rain driving fiercely now and then, with an occasional quick flaw of wind, instead of falling monotonously. And now there came a few rumblings of thunder, with faint flashes of lightning low in the sky.

"Well, Jack," said Henry Burns, at length, speaking with more than his customary deliberation, "wet night luck seems to be worse even than wet day luck. But who'd ever thought we'd have such tough luck as to run across Col. Witham up here, and a night like this? The boys never said anything about his being here."

"No – and he's got no right to put us out!" cried Harvey. "If you'll stand by, I'll go back into that office and tell him what I think of him."

"He knows that already," replied Henry Burns, coolly. "Wouldn't be any news to him. Say, I see a light way up on the hill to the left. Suppose we try them there. I wish we could see the road and the paths better, so as to know where we are."

As though almost in answer to this wish, a brilliant flash of lightning illumined the whole sky; and, for a brief moment, there stood clearly outlined before them, like a huge magic-lantern picture, the prominent features of the landscape.

Past the hotel where they stood, the highway ran, gleaming now with pools of water. Some way down the road, the land descended to a narrow intervale through which a brook flowed, with a rude wooden bridge thrown across in line with the road. Farther still down the road, and a little off from it, beside the larger stream which they had travelled all day, an old mill squatted close to the water, hard by the brink of a dam. Away up on the hillside, some three quarters of a mile off, a farmhouse gave them a fleeting glimpse of its gables and chimneys. Then the picture vanished and the black curtain of the night fell again.

"All right," assented Harvey, to the reply of his comrade, "I suppose we better go without a fuss. It isn't getting out in the rain here that makes me maddest. It's to think of Col. Witham chuckling over it in there, snug and dry."

"He isn't," said Henry Burns. "He never chuckles over anything. He's madder than we are, because we got our suppers and a drying out. Come on, dive in. It's always the first plunge that's worst."

They stepped forth into the rain and began walking briskly down the road. They had gone scarcely more than a rod, however, when something brushed against Jack Harvey, and a hand was laid lightly on his arm. He jumped back in some alarm, for they had heard no footsteps, nor dreamed of anybody being near.

To their relief, a girl's merry peal of laughter – coming oddly enough from out the storm – sounded in their ears; and a slight, quaint little figure stood in the road before them.

"Oh, how you did jump!" she exclaimed, and laughed again, like some weird mite of a water-sprite, pleased to have frightened so sturdy a chap as Jack Harvey. "I won't hurt you," she continued, half-mockingly. "I'm Bess Thornton. Gran' got the supper for you. Oh, but I'm just furious at Witham for being so mean."

Henry Burns and Harvey, taken all by surprise, stood staring in amazement. A faint glimmering in the sky came to their aid and they discerned, indistinctly, a girl, barefoot and hatless, of age perhaps twelve, poorly dressed in a gingham frock, apparently as unmindful of the rain as though she were, indeed, a water-sprite.

"Well, what is it?" asked Henry Burns. "Witham doesn't say come back, does he?"

"Not he!" cried the little creature, impetuously, "Oh, the old bogey-man! He's worse than the wicked giant in the book. I wish I was a Jack-the-giant-killer. I'd – "

Words apparently failing her to express a punishment fitting for Col. Witham, the child shook a not very formidable fist in the direction of the tavern, then added, sharply, "Where are you going?"

"Up to that house on the hill," said Harvey. "They'll take us in there, won't they?"

The answer was not encouraging.

"No-o-o, not much he won't," cried the girl. "Oh, don't you know old Farmer Ellison? He's worse than Witham. He hates you."

"Guess not," said Henry Burns. "We never saw him."

"No, but you're from the city," said the child. "He hates all of you. Haven't I heard him say so, and shake his old cane at Benton? He'll cane you. He'll set the collies on you – "

"I'd like to meet anything that I could kick!" cried Harvey, clenching his fist. "What kind of a place is this we've got into? That's what I'd like to know. Henry, where in this old mud-hole shall we go? Think of it! Three miles to Benton on this road."

"That's what I've come to tell you," said the child, "though I'd catch it from Witham if he knew – and old Ellison, wouldn't he be mad?"

The very idea seemed to afford her merriment, and she laughed again. "Come, hurry along with me," she continued. "It's the old mill. I know the way in, and there's a warm fire there. You'll have to run, though, for I'm getting soaked through." And she started off ahead of them, like a will-o'-the-wisp.

"Here, hold on a minute," called Henry Burns, who had gallantly divested himself of his sweater, while the rain drops splashed coldly on his bare arms. "Put this on. I don't need it."