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

They went along the brook to the road, passed up the road to a point some way above the dam, when Tim Reardon presently disappeared in a clump of bushes; from this he soon emerged, with his bamboo fish-pole. They went down through the field to the shore.

Jointing up the rod and affixing the reel, Tim Reardon ran out his line, tied on the bright spoon-hook and began trolling. The allurement proved enticing, and presently he hooked a fish. Tim gallantly handed the rod to Bess Thornton.

"Pull him in," he said. "I've caught lots of 'em. You can land this one."

The girl seized the rod, with a little cry of delight, and lifted the fish out of water. Then she swung it in on shore, where it lay, with its green body twisting about in the grass, and its great jaws distended, showing its sharp teeth.

"My, isn't he ugly looking!" she exclaimed. "You take the hook out, will you, Tim?"

Tim, grasping the squirming fish tightly behind the gills, disengaged the hook and threw the fish down in the grass again. "That one's yours," he said.

The girl still held the pole.

"Let me try just a minute, will you?" she asked. "If I get another, you can have it."

Tim assented readily, and she swung the pole and cast the hook far out upon the water. She drew it back and forth past a clump of lily pads, and then cast again. She was not as skilful with the long rod as the boy had been, however; and once, as she cast, the line did not have time to straighten out behind her, and the hook fell in the water close by the shore. She jerked it out and tried to cast again.

The hook swung in, almost striking her in the face; and both she and Tim Reardon dodged. The next moment, she made a sweep with the rod, to throw the hook back toward the water. Something caught, and she felt a slight tug at her neck. She dropped the rod and uttered a cry of dismay.

"What's the matter?" cried Little Tim. "Did you get hooked?"

But the girl made no answer. She stood, holding the ends of the broken chain in either hand, anxiously looking all about her.

"The coin!" she gasped. "Tim, I've lost the coin. Oh, won't gran' give it to me if I've lost that again!"

They hunted everywhere about them, parting the tufts of grass carefully and poking about on hands and knees. But the coin was nowhere to be seen.

"I tell you what," suggested Tim, "it's gone into the water. Never mind, though; I can get it. I'll dive for it."

They were at the edge of a little bank, from which the water went off deep at a sharp angle. They gazed down into the water, but there was not light enough within its depths, nor was it sufficiently clear to enable them to see the bottom.

"I'm going in after it, too," exclaimed Bess Thornton; "but I can't in this dress." She glanced at the sailor-suit she wore. "I'm going back to the house and put on the old one. You try for it while I'm gone, won't you, Tim?"

The boy nodded; and Bess Thornton, half in tears, started off on a smart run to the old house. In her dismay, she had forgotten that Granny Thornton had returned from the inn; but she was speedily aware of that fact as she darted in at the kitchen door. There stood Granny Thornton, with mingled anger and alarm depicted on her countenance.

"Oh," she cried, "I'd just like to shake you, good. Give me back that chain and the coin. Don't say you didn't take it. I found it gone. What do you mean by going into that drawer? Don't you ever – "

She stopped abruptly, for Bess Thornton was facing her, the tears standing in her eyes, and she held in her hand the broken chain.

"Oh, gran'," she cried, "don't scold. I didn't mean any harm. I just wanted to wear it a little while. But it's – it's gone."

And she told the story of the loss of the coin.

Granny Thornton stared at the girl in amazement. Then she burst forth in querulous tones, seemingly as though she were addressing the girl and soliloquizing at the same time.

"It's gone!" she gasped. "Gone again – and sure there's a fate in it. Plenty of chains like that to be had, but never another coin of the kind seen about these parts. Oh, but you've gone and done it. Don't you know that coin meant luck for you, girl? You might have gone to the big house to live some day; but you'll never go now. You've lost the luck. You're bad – bad. There's no making you mind. Give me the chain."

Her voice grew more harsh and angry. "Let the coin go," she said. "You've lost it, and you can suffer for it. You'll not go out of this house again to-day."

Puzzled at her strange words, and hurt at the scolding, Bess Thornton sat sullenly. "I'll get it back to-morrow, if I can't to-day," she said. "I'm going to dive for it."

"You keep away from the water, do you hear?" replied Granny Thornton; but, a half-hour later, she seemed to have changed her mind. "Go and get it, if you can," she said, shortly. "Change that dress – and don't get drowned."

But Little Tim, in the mean time, had not been idle. Hastily throwing off his clothing, he dived again and again into the deep pool, swimming to the bottom and groping about there. He brought up handfuls of sticks and small stones, and the debris of the water's bed. A dozen times he was unsuccessful – and then, at last, as he clung to the bank and opened his fist for the water to thin the mud and ooze that he had clutched, there lay the golden coin, bright and shining in his palm.

He scrambled out, had his clothes on in a twinkling, dropped the coin into one of his pockets, and started off on a run down the road.

Perhaps old Granny Thornton had been right, however, when she exclaimed that there was a fate in the mysterious foreign piece; for when Tim Reardon reached his hand into his pocket presently, to see that the coin was safe – lo, it had once more disappeared. Little Tim, with a look of chagrin, turned his pocket inside out. A tell-tale hole in one corner accounted for the disappearance. Tim, muttering his disgust, slowly retraced his steps, kicking away the dust with his bare feet.

He was still searching for the coin when Bess Thornton returned. They were both searching for it an hour later. But the coin was lost.

"I'm awful sorry," said Tim, as they finally relinquished the search. "I'll tell you what, though. It's my fault, and I've got a dollar and sixty cents left at home, and I'll give you that."

The girl shook her head sadly. "I wouldn't take it," she replied.

Two hours later, Benny Ellison, strolling homeward, with gun over shoulder, and two pickerel dangling from a crotched stick, espied something gleaming in the grass by the roadside. He stooped and picked up a golden coin.

"What luck!" he exclaimed. He put the coin in his pocket and carried it home. He had a collection of curiosities there, in an old cabinet, that he valued highly: coins, stamps, birds' nests, queer bits of stone and odds and ends of stuff. Seeing that the coin was punched, and foreign, and not available for spending money, he placed it among his treasures. He was a curiously unsocial youth; had few pleasures that he shared with his cousins, but gloated over his own acquisitions quietly like a miser. He rejoiced silently in this new addition to his hoard, and said nothing about it.

CHAPTER XVII

A STRANGE ADMISSION

The days went by, and summer was near its end. Then, with the vacation drawing to a close, there came a surprise for Henry Burns, in the form of a letter from his aunt. It was she with whom he lived, in a Massachusetts town; but now she wrote that she had decided to spend the winter in Benton, and that he must enter school there at the fall term, along with Tom Harris and Bob White. "Then I stay, too," exclaimed Jack Harvey, when he had read the important news – and he did. The elder Harvey, communicated with, had no objection; and, indeed, there was a most satisfactory arrangement made, later, that Jack Harvey should board with Henry Burns and his aunt; an arrangement highly pleasing to the two boys, if it added later to the concern and worry of the worthy Miss Matilda Burns.

The days grew shorter and the nights cool; and, by and by, with much reluctance, the canoes were hauled ashore for the last time, of an afternoon, and stored away in a corner of the barn back of the camp; and fishing tackle for summer use was put carefully aside, also. There were lessons to be learned, and fewer half-days to be devoted to the sport for which they cared most.

The pickerel in the stream and the trout in the brook sought deeper waters, in anticipation of winter. The boys spent less and less of their time in the vicinity of the old Ellison farm.

Tim and Young Joe Warren stuck mostly by the camp, and drew the others there on certain select occasions. For Little Tim, by reason of long roving, had a wonderful knowledge of the resources of the country around the old stream. He had a beechnut grove that he had discovered, three miles back from the water, on the farther shore; likewise a place where the hazel bushes were loaded with nuts, and where a few butternut trees yielded a rich harvest. Young Joe and he gathered a great store of these, as the nights of early frost came on; and they spread a feast for the others now and then, with late corn, roasted in questionable fashion over a smoky box-stove that heated the camp stifling hot.

October came in, with the leaves growing scarlet in the woods and sharp winds whistling through the corn and bean stacks. Henry Burns and his friends had seen but little of the Ellisons, who were out of school for the winter, caring for the farm; but now the night of the 31st of October found Henry Burns and Jack Harvey, George Warren, Bob White and Tom Harris seated in the big kitchen of the Ellison farmhouse.

It was plainly to be seen that, although the Ellisons had been reduced in circumstances through the loss of the mill, there was still an abundance of its kind yielded by the farm. On a table were dishes of apples and fall pears; two pumpkin pies of vast circumference squatted near by, close to a platter of honey and a huge pitcher of milk.

It was dark already, though only half-past seven o'clock, and the lights of two kerosene lamps gleamed through the kitchen windows.

As hosts on this occasion, John and James Ellison presently proceeded to introduce their city friends to the delights of milk and honey; a dish composed of the dripping sweet submerged in a bowl of creamy milk, and eaten therewith, comb and all.

"Never hurt anybody eaten that way," explained John Ellison, "and this is the real thing. The milk is from the Jersey cows in the barn, and the honey's from the garret, where there's five swarms of bees been working all summer."

They need no urging, however.

"Poor Joe! He'll die of grief when I tell him about this," remarked George Warren, smacking his lips over a mouthful.

"Why didn't you bring him along?" asked John Ellison. "I wanted you all to come."

"Arthur's off down town, and Joe's gone to the camp with Tim Reardon," explained the eldest of the Warren brothers. "Tim and Joe'll be sky-larking around somewhere later. They're great on Hallowe'en night, you know. They've got a supply of cabbage-stumps to deliver at the doors."