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

The horse most unwillingly backing and turning, headed once more toward the main road, and then was drawn up short again.

"Well, I must have been dreaming, sure enough," muttered the driver. "I don't hear anything now. Well, we'll keep on, anyway. I'll have a turn around the old place. There's more there than some folks know of. I'll see that all's safe, if it rains pitchforks and barn-shovels. Giddap Billy."

A few moments later, Henry Burns and Harvey, having tucked themselves snugly in among the meal-sacks close by the fire, with the lantern extinguished, roused up, astounded and dismayed, at the sound of carriage wheels just outside, and the click of a key in the lock of the door. They had barely time to spring from their places, and dart up the stairs that led from the middle of the main floor to the one next above, before the door was thrown open and a man stepped within.

They were dressed, most fortunately, for canoeing; and they had gained the security of the upper floor, thanks to feet clad in tennis shoes, without noise. Now they crouched at the head of the stairs, in utter darkness, not knowing whither to move, or whether or not a step might plunge them into some shaft.

"It must be Ellison," whispered Harvey. "What'll we do?"

"Nothing," answered Henry Burns, "and not make any noise about it either. He heard your ship, Jack. Sh-h-h. We don't want to be put out into the rain again."

Farmer Ellison shut the door behind him, and they heard him take a few steps across the floor; then he was apparently fumbling about in the dark for something, for they heard him say, "It isn't there. Confound that boy! He never puts that lantern back on the hook. If he don't catch it, to-morrow. Hello! Well, if I've smashed that glass, there'll be trouble."

Farmer Ellison, stumbling across the floor, had, indeed, kicked the lantern which had been left there by the fleeing canoeists. That it was not broken, however, was evidenced the next moment by the gleam of its light.

By this gleam, the boys, peering down the stairway, could make out the form of a tall, stoop-shouldered man, holding the lantern in one hand and gazing about him. Now he advanced toward the little door that opened into the outer mill, and stood, looking through, while he held the lantern far out ahead of him.

"Queer," he muttered. "I closed that door before I went up, or I'm getting forgetful. But everything's all right. I don't see anything the matter. Ho! ho! I'm getting nervous about things – and who wouldn't? When a man has – "

The rest of his sentence was lost, for he had stepped out on to one of the planks. They heard him, only indistinctly, stepping from one plank to another; but what he sought and what he did they could not imagine.

"He must think a lot of this old rattle-trap, to mouse around here this time of night," muttered Harvey. "What'll we do, Henry?"

"Hide, just as soon as we get a chance," whispered Henry Burns. "He may take a notion to come up. There! Look sharp, Jack. Get your bearings."

Again a sharp flash of lightning gleamed through the upper windows, lighting up the room where they were, for a moment, then leaving it seemingly blacker than before.

"I've got it," whispered Henry Burns. "Follow me, Jack."

The two stole softly across to an end of the room, to where a series of boxes were built in, under some shafting and chutes, evidently constructed to receive the meal when ground. Henry Burns lifted the cover of one of these. It was nearly empty, and they both squeezed in, drawing the cover down over their heads, and leaving an opening barely sufficient to admit air.

They had not been a minute too soon; for presently they heard the sound of footsteps. Farmer Ellison was coming up the stairs. Then the lantern appeared at the top of the stairway, and the bearer came into view.

They saw him go from one corner to another, throwing the lantern rays now overhead among the tangle of belting, now behind some beam. Then he paused for a moment beside one of the huge grinding stones. He put his foot upon it and uttered an exclamation of satisfaction.

"All right – all right," they heard him say. "Ah, the old mill looks poor, but there's some men dress just like it, and have money in their pockets."

Then he passed on and up a flight of stairs leading to the third and highest floor of the mill. He did not remain long, however, but came down, still talking to himself. And when he kept on and descended to the main floor, he was repeating that it was "all right," and "all safe;" and so, finally, they heard him blow out the light, hang the lantern on a hook and pass out through the door. The sound of the wagon wheels told them that he was driving away.

Quickly they scrambled out from their hiding place, descended the stairs and crouched by the fire.

"Well, what now?" asked Harvey. "Guess we'll turn in, eh?"

But Henry Burns was already snuggling in among the meal-bags.

"I'm going to sleep, Jack," he said. "Didn't you hear old Ellison say everything was 'all right'?"

"Yes. I wonder what he meant," said Harvey.

"Oh, he said that just to please us," chuckled Henry Burns. "Good night."

The bright sun of a clearing day awoke them early the next morning, and they lost no time in quitting the mill.

"Jack," said Henry Burns, as he followed his companion across the planking of the flume, "you look like an underdone buckwheat cake. There's enough flour on your back for breakfast."

"I'd like to eat it," exclaimed Harvey. "I'm hungry enough. Let's get the canoe and streak it for Benton."

They were drawing their canoe up the bank, a few moments later, to carry it around the dam, when something away up along shore attracted their notice. There, perched in a birch tree, in the topmost branches, with her weight bending it over till it nearly touched the water, they espied a girl, swinging. Then, as they looked, she waved a hand to them.

"Hello," exclaimed Henry Burns. "It's Bess What's-her-name. She's not afraid of getting drowned. That's sure."

The boys swung their caps to her, and she stood upright amid the branches and waved farewell to them, as they started for Benton.

CHAPTER IV

THE TROUT POOL

The brook that flowed into Mill Stream, just above the old mill, itself, came down from some heavily wooded hills a few miles to the northeast, and its waters were ever cold, even in hottest summer, save in one or two open places in the intervening meadows. It was called "Cold Brook" by some of the farmers. Henry Burns and Harvey and Bess Thornton had crossed this brook, by way of the bridge on their flight to the mill.

A wayfarer, standing on the little bridge, of an afternoon, keeping motionless and in the shadow, might sometimes see, far down in the clear water, vague objects that looked like shadows cast by sticks. He might gaze for many minutes and see no sign of life or motion to them. Then, perchance, one of these same grey shadows might disappear in the twinkling of an eye; the observer would see the surface of the water break in a tiny whirl; the momentary flash of a silvery side, spotted with red, appear – and the trout would vanish back into the deep water once more.

Let the traveller try as he might, he seldom got one of these fish. They were too wary; "educated," the farmers called them. They certainly knew enough not to bite.

Tim Reardon occasionally came back to Benton with two or three of the trout tucked inside his blouse; but he wouldn't tell how he got 'em – not even to Jack Harvey, to whom he was loyal in all else. Most folks came back empty-handed.

To be sure, there was one part of the brook where the least experienced fisherman might cast a line and draw out a fish. But that was just the very part of all the brook where nobody was allowed. It was the pool belonging to Farmer Ellison.

A little more than a mile up the brook from the bridge the water came tumbling down a series of short, abrupt cascades, into a pool, formed by a small dam thrown across the brook between banks that were quite steep. This pool broadened out in its widest part to a width of several rods, bordered by thick alders, swampy land in places, and in part by a grove of beech trees.

Come upon this pool at twilight and you would see the trout playing there as though they had just been let out of school. Try to catch one – and if Farmer Ellison wasn't down upon you in a hurry, it was because he was napping.

You might have bought Farmer Ellison's pet cow, but not a chance to fish in this pool. Indeed, he seldom fished it himself, but he prized the trout like precious jewels. John and James Ellison, Farmer Ellison's sons, and Benjamin, their cousin, fished the pool once in a great while – and got soundly trounced if caught. It was Farmer Ellison's hobby, this pool and its fish. He gloated over them like a miser. He watched them leap, and counted them when they did, as a miser would money.

The dam held the trout in the pool downstream, and the cascades – or the upper cascade – held them from escaping upstream. There were three smaller cascades which a lusty trout could ascend by a fine series of rushes and leapings. The upper water-fall was too steep to be scaled. When the water in the brook was high there was an outlet in the dam for it to pass through, to which a gate opened, and protected at all times by heavy wire netting.

Farmer Ellison's house was situated on a hill overlooking this part of the brook, less than a half mile away.

Some way up the brook, if one followed a path through mowing-fields from Farmer Ellison's, and crossed a little foot-bridge over the brook, he would come eventually upon a house, weather-beaten and unpainted, small and showing every sign of neglect. The grass grew long in the dooryard. A few hens scratched the weeds in what once might have been flower-beds. The roof was sagging, and the chimney threatened to topple in the first high wind.

The sun was shining in at the windows of this house, at the close of an afternoon, a few days following the adventure of Henry Burns and Harvey in the mill. It revealed a girl, little, sturdy and of well-knit figure, though in whose childish face there was an underlying trace of shrewdness unusual in one so young; like a little wild creature, or a kitten that has found itself more often chased than petted.

The girl was busily engaged, over a kitchen fire, stirring some sort of porridge in a dish. Clearly, hers were spirits not easily depressed by her surroundings, for she whistled at her task, – as good as any boy could have whistled, – and now and again, from sheer excess of animation, she whisked away from the stove and danced about the old kitchen, all alone by herself.

"Isn't that oatmeal most ready, Bess?" came a querulous voice presently, from an adjoining room. "What makes you so long?"

"Coming, gran', right away now," replied the child. "The coffee's hot, too. Don't it smell go-o-od? But there's only one – "

"What?" queried the voice.