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

He made up his mind quickly, realizing the danger he was in, and started back down stream. He must gain shelter soon, or he would be unable to find his way. He was not any too hasty in his decision. In a few minutes the outlines of the stream and its banks were blended into a blurred white mass. Then he could no longer see the shore at any distance, and even the path was being blotted out.

He found, too, it was with difficulty that he could breathe, for the incessant flying of the snow into his nostrils. Estimating, as best he could, where the Half Way House must lie, he struck off from the stream and headed for that. He stumbled on blindly, till his progress was suddenly arrested by his bumping into an object that proved, most fortunately, to be Colonel Witham's flag-pole. Even at that short distance, the inn was now hidden; but he knew where it must be, and presently stood safe upon its piazza.

It was an odd situation for Henry Burns. Once before, had Colonel Witham refused him shelter under this roof, and that, too, in a storm. But he knew there was no help for it now. He had got to enter – and he had got to stay. No human being could go on to-night. He hesitated only for a moment, and then opened the door and stepped within.

The office was vacant, and the air was chilly. The remains of a wood fire smouldered, rather than burned, in the fireplace. There was no lamp lighted, although it was quite dark, with the storm and approaching evening. The place seemed deserted.

Henry Burns stepped to the desk, took a match from a box and lighted the lamp that hung there. It cast a dismal glow, and added little to the cheer of the place, although it enabled him to distinguish objects better. He turned to the hearth, raked the embers together, blew up a tiny blaze and replenished the fire from the wood-box. He threw off his outer garments, and drew a chair toward the blaze.

But now, from an adjoining room, the door of which was slightly ajar, there came unexpectedly a thin, querulous voice that startled him. He recognized, the next moment, the tones of old Granny Thornton.

"Is that you, Dan?" she asked.

Henry Burns opened the door and answered. She seemed afraid, until he had told her who he was, begging him to go away from the place and not harm a poor, lone woman. But she recognized him, when he had spoken again, and had lighted another lamp and held it for her to look at him.

She sat in an arm-chair, in which she had been evidently sleeping, propped up with pillows; and looked ill and feeble.

"I'm cold," she said, and shivered.

Henry Burns dragged her chair out into the office, by the fire, while she clung to the arms of it, as though in terror of tumbling out on to the floor. And, in that brief journey from room to room, it flashed over Henry Burns that the time and opportunity had come for him to know the secret she possessed.

"Dan won't like to find you here," she muttered. "He ought to be here – leaving me all alone. My, how it blows! How'd you get here, anyway? Don't mind what Dan says; you'll have to stay."

"He'll not be here to-night, with this storm keeping up," answered Henry Burns, "Where is he?"

"He went to town with Bess," said she. "Why don't she come? I'm lonesome without her. I'm hungry, too. She ought to make me a cup of tea."

"I'll make it," said Henry Burns; "and I'll get something for myself, too. I'll pay for it, so Witham won't lose by it."

He made his way to the kitchen and the pantry; lighted a fire in the kitchen stove, and made tea for himself and Granny Thornton; and toasted some bread for her. Then he foraged for himself and ate a hearty meal, for he was ravenously hungry. And, all the while, he was thinking what he should do and say to the old woman, nodding in the chair out in the office.

He returned there, and put more wood on the fire, so that it blazed up brightly, and the sparks shot up the flue with a roar. The roar was more than answered by the wind outside. It rattled the glass in the windows, and dashed the snow against them as though it would break them in. It found a hundred cracks and crevices about the old inn, to moan and shriek through, and blew a thin film of snow under the door.

Old Granny Thornton shook and quivered, as some of the sharper blasts cried about the corners of the house. She seemed frightened; and once she spoke up in a half whisper, and asked Henry Burns if he believed there were ever spirits out on such a night as this. He would have laughed away her fears, under ordinary circumstances; but it suited his purpose better now to shake his head, and answer, truthfully enough, that he didn't know.

Presently, the old woman started up in her chair and stared anxiously at one of the snow-covered windows.

"They might be lost!" she cried, hoarsely. "They could be lost to-night in this storm, like folks were in the great blizzard twenty years ago. Oh, Bess" – she uttered the girl's name with a sob – "I hope you're safe. You'd die in this snow. Say, boy, do you suppose they've got shelter? It's not Dan Witham I care for, whether he's dead or not, but Little Bess."

Henry Burns stepped in front of the old woman, and looked into her eyes.

"What do you care whether Bess is lost or not?" he asked. "She don't belong to you. She's not yours. You're not her grandmother."

At the words, so quick and unexpected, Granny Thornton shrank back as though she had received a blow. Her eyes rolled in her head, and she seemed to be trying to reply; but the words would not come. She gasped and choked, and clutched at her throat with her shrunken hands.

Henry Burns spoke again, grasping one of her hands, and compelling her to listen.

"Somebody else wants her home more than you do," he said. "Why don't you give her back? She's too smart and bright to go to the poorhouse, when you die. Why do you keep her here?"

He spoke at random, knowing not whether he was near the secret or not, but determined that he would make her speak out.

But she sank down in her chair, huddled into an almost shapeless, half-lifeless heap. Her head was buried in her hands. She rocked feebly to and fro. Once she roused herself a bit, and strove to ask a question, but seemed to be overcome with weakness. Henry Burns thought he divined what she would ask, and answered.

"I know it's so," he said. "You can't hide it any longer. I've found it out."

It seemed as though she would not speak again. The minutes went by, ticked off in clamorous sound, by a big clock on the wall. Granny Thornton still crouched all in a heap in her chair, moaning to herself. Henry Burns remained silent and waited.

Then when, all at once, the old woman brought herself upright, with a jerk, and spoke to him, the sound of her voice amazed him. It was not unlike the tone in which she had answered Colonel Witham, the night Henry Burns overheard her. It was shrill and sharp, though with a whining intonation. What she said was most unexpected.

"Have you been to school?" she queried.

Henry Burns stared hard. He thought her mind wandering. But she continued.

"Don't stare that way – haven't you any wit? Can you write? Hurry – I'm afeared Dan will be here."

Henry Burns understood, in a flash. He sprang to the desk, got the pen and ink there and a block of coarse paper, the top sheet of which had some figuring on it. He returned to the old woman's side and sat down, with the paper on his knees. She stared at him blankly for a few moments – then said abruptly:

"Write it down just as I tell you. I'm going to die soon – Don't stare like that – write it down. Dan Witham can't harm me then, and I'm going to tell. Her name isn't Bess Thornton – it's Bess Ellison."

Henry Burns's hand almost refused to write. But he controlled himself, and followed her.

"Dan shan't have her," she continued. "I'll give her up, first. Twelve years ago last June she was born. And she weren't as pretty as my girl's baby, that was born the same day – though they looked alike, too.

"My girl's name was Elizabeth, but she's dead. She was a sight prettier than Lizzie Anderson that married Jim Ellison. But my girl married Tom Howland, and he ran away and left her, and that just before the baby was born. And her baby, Elizabeth Howland, was born the same day, I tell you, as Lizzie Ellison's baby. That one was named Elizabeth, too – Elizabeth Ellison. That's Bess.

"And when the two babies were born, why we were poor and Jim Ellison was well-to-do. The Thorntons got in debt, and he bought up the mortgages. And when Bess Ellison was born, her mother was so ill she didn't see the baby for many weeks; and my girl went up to the house in about three weeks to nurse both babies, we being poor. And I went up, too, to look after things.

"I guess my girl was wild, too, though I won't blame her now. One day she went to town and didn't come back; and she left me a note, saying she wouldn't ever come back, anyway. And I could bring up the baby – which I didn't like to do, because I'd brought up one, and now she'd run away.

"So I was getting ready to go back to the house and take the baby with me; and I took care of both babies for a day or two. And just as I was planning to go back, there lay the two, side by side in the bed; and I could hardly tell which was which – they looked so much alike.

"Then what put it into my head, I don't know. But I thought that, if I changed the two, nobody'd know, because Bess Ellison's mother hadn't seen her. And I thought of how the property would come back to the Thorntons that way, if I put my girl's Bess in the other's place. And I up and did it, quick.

"Then, when I got home with Lizzie Ellison's baby, why I found I'd been so hasty I'd brought away a chain and bit of money, that they'd put about her neck. It was an old coin that had been in the family for years, and was thought to carry good luck – so I learned afterwards. I meant to take it back, but I couldn't, right away, and then I lost the coin. Oh, how I hunted for it! But I never could find it.

"Now are you putting it all down? Be quick, or Dan might come in. It was all for nothing – what I did – for my girl's baby died two years later. Let me look what you've got there. I know school-writing. I went to school once. Give me the pen. I'll put my name down to that. Hold my hand, so it won't shake. That's my name. It don't look like much, I guess. But that's it."

Tremblingly, the old woman took the pen and, guided by Henry Burns, subscribed her name to what he had written. Then she spoke again:

"Go into that bed-room and look in the top drawer. There's a key there. That's the key to the old house."

Henry Burns followed her instructions, and brought forth the key. She bade him keep it, and go the next day and get the stuff in the attic: the chain, minus its locket; the little dress, and a pair of shoes. She mourned the loss of the coin, lest her strange story might not be believed by Mrs. Ellison, without that evidence – not knowing that the coin had even now come into Mrs. Ellison's own hands.

She sank into a doze not long after; and Henry Burns also slept, on a couch in the office, with a buffalo robe over him. He woke early next day, waded through the drifts to the old house, and got the things from the drawer. Then he went down the road.

Below the old mill, near the road that ran up to the Ellison farm, a horse and sledge came in sight, travelling slowly. Henry Burns's pulse beat quicker as he recognized Colonel Witham and Bess coming up from Benton, where they had passed the night. Colonel Witham scowled upon him, but the girl smiled.

"Hello," she said. "Isn't everything pretty, all covered with snow? Where'd you come from so early?"