.dt Billy To-Morrow Stands the Test, by Sarah Pratt Carr—A Project\
Gutenberg eBook
// max line length
.ll 72
.nr psi 1.0em
// footnote
.dm fn-start
.ni
.fs 85%
.fn #
.dm-
.dm fn-end
.fn-
.fs 100%
.pi
.dm-
// centered quote
.dm quote-centered-start
.sp 1
.fs 85%
.nf c
.dm-
.dm quote-centered-end
.nf-
.fs 100%
.sp 1
.dm-
// verse
.dm verse-start
.in +1
.sp 1
.fs 85%
.nf b
.dm-
.dm verse-end
.nf-
.fs 100%
.in -1
.sp 1
.dm-
// letter
.dm letter-start
.sp 1
.fs 85%
.in +4
.dm-
.dm letter-end
.in -4
.fs 100%
.sp 1
.dm-
// Page numbering
.pn off // turn off visible page numbers
// .pn link // turn on page number links
// include a cover image in HTML only
.if h
.il fn=cover.jpg w=572px
.if-
.pn +1
.bn 001.png
.pb
.sp 4
.h1
BILLY TO-MORROW || STANDS THE TEST
.sp 4
.pn +1
.bn 002.png
.pb
.sp 4
.ce
By the Same Author
.hr 10%
.nf b
BILLY TO-MORROW.
First volume of “Billy To-morrow Series.”
Illustrated by Charles M. Relyea.
12mo $1.25
BILLY TO-MORROW IN CAMP.
Illustrated by H. S. DeLay.
12mo $1.25
.nf-
.hr 10%
.nf b
A. C. McCLURG & CO.
PUBLISHERS
.nf-
.pn +1
.bn 003.png
.pn +1
.bn 004.png
.pb
.if h
.il fn=frontis.jpg w=411px id=frontis
.ca
“Oh, Billy, it’s no use!” Erminie sobbed, as the\
boat grew smaller and smaller on the gray water
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.sp 4
[Illustration: “Oh, Billy, it’s no use!” Erminie sobbed, as the\
boat grew smaller and smaller on the gray water]
.sp 4
.if-
.pn +1
.bn 005.png
.pb
.sp 4
.nf c
“BILLY TO-MORROW” SERIES
.nf-
.hr 70%
.sp 2
.nf c
BILLY TO-MORROW STANDS THE TEST
.sp 2
BY
SARAH PRATT CARR
Author of “The Iron Way,” “Billy To-morrow,” etc.
.sp 2
ILLUSTRATED BY H. S. DeLAY
.nf-
.if h
.il fn=i005.jpg w=125px
.if-
.if t
.nf c
[Illustration: Decoration]
.nf-
.if-
.nf c
CHICAGO
A. C. McCLURG & CO.
1911
.nf-
.pb
.pn +1
.bn 006.png
.sp 4
.nf c
Copyright
A. C. McCLURG & CO.
1911
.nf-
.hr 10%
.nf c
Published November, 1911
.nf-
.sp 4
.nf c
The Publishers’ Press
Chicago
.nf-
.sp 4
.pn +1
.bn 007.png
.pb
.sp 4
.nf c
To Katherine
.nf-
.sp 4
.pn +1
.bn 008.png
.pn +1
.bn 009.png
.pb
.h2
CONTENTS
.hr 10%
.ta r:12 l:35
Chapter |
I | #Excitement in the Fifth Avenue High:ch01#
II | #Billy Puts Himself on Record:ch02#
III | #“Pop” Streeter’s Proposition:ch03#
IV | #Erminie, The Uncertain:ch04#
V | #Erminie Fumbles the Game:ch05#
VI | #The Revealing Night:ch06#
VII | #Do Your Best and Then—Whistle:ch07#
VIII | #The Potato Roast:ch08#
IX | #Face to the Sky:ch09#
X | #The Scout:ch10#
XI | #“Whose Glory was Redressing Human Wrong:ch11#”
XII | #The Fight:ch12#
XIII | #Erminie Ties Another Knot:ch13#
XIV | #The Black Hand:ch14#
XV | #A Gleam of Light:ch15#
XVI | #A Night of Disaster:ch16#
XVII | #Billy Wins:ch17#
.ta-
.pn +1
.bn 010.png
.bn 011.png
.pb
.sp 4
.h2
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
.hr 10%
.in 8
.ti -4
#“Oh, Billy, it’s no use!” Erminie sobbed, as the\
boat grew smaller and smaller on the gray\
water (Frontispiece):frontis#
.ti -4
#Billy gazed down on her with tender eyes, his heart\
beating faster with a manly, protecting feeling new to him:i049#
.ti -4
#“Weren’t you afraid?” Redtop asked when the\
first, busy part of the meal was over:i195#
.ti -4
#“Stay where you are till I speak”:i209#
.ti -4
#“What do you mean, Billy Boy, by refusing to speak to me?”:i235#
.ti -4
#“Give her to me; I am fresh,” he said, attempting\
to take Mrs. Smith from Billy’s arms:i275#
.in 0
.sp 4
.pn +1
.bn 012.png
.pn +1
.bn 013.png
.pb
.sp 4
.nf c
BILLY TO-MORROW STANDS THE TEST
.nf-
.sp 2
.h2 id=ch01
CHAPTER I || EXCITEMENT IN THE FIFTH AVENUE HIGH
.sp 2
.pi
.dc 0.2 0.7
IT was a gray afternoon, late in April and cold
enough for March, when Billy Bennett,
going out of the building to the school grounds,
detected a new note in the usual hubbub. There
were a hundred or more boys gathered in one
corner and listening to some one who was
speaking.
Feeling in the school was intense. For the
first time in its history there was an attempt
to unite the student body under one head,
thus depriving the class presidents of some
of their power. The project was led by some of
the best spirits, in the hope of gaining a better
.pn +1
.bn 014.png
name for the school, and many of the teachers
were, without precedent, taking a quiet part.
As Billy neared, he could hear above other
angry voices the raucous, high-pitched tones of
the cultus[#] Kid, otherwise Jim Barney. He was
a stickler for the “Jim.” “Just plain Jim; no
handles to my name,” he would say if offered the
courtesy of “Mr. Barney.” He had been for
years the bully of his class, and now he aspired to
be the boss of the school. He was entreating and
menacing by turns, a master of the baser sort of
eloquence.
.pm fn-start
Cultus is a Chinook word, signifying of little worth, bad.
.pm fn-end
“You cheap skates! Call yourselves men, do
you? There’s not one of you with enough backbone
to bolster a twine string! Why, you chew
gum because you dass’n’t touch tobacco; and one
soda pop ’ll make the whole bunch of you
dippy!”
“Oh, cut it out!” mildly objected one of his
own crowd.
“Yes. And trot out your grouch, whatever it
is,” another demanded.
“It’s our grouch! I put it up to you,” the
.pn +1
.bn 015.png
speaker shouted above the noise. “Has a bunch
of teachers, or even the principal or superintendent,
a right to meddle with us, to say who we
shall have for presidents of our classes or of the
whole student body, if this thing of having a
school president goes?”
“Yes! Yes!” “They have!” “They ought
to!” came from different quarters.
“I’d like to know why,” the Kid blustered.
“When students of this school, your own
candidate even, follows girls and women on
stilts—” “Sis” Jones began.
“Girls on stilts!” jeered some loud voice from
the crowd, and the speaker laughed and nodded.
But Reginald Steele’s clear tones rose above
the clamor. “You know what Jones means, Jim
Barney. Last week your man, Buckman, and
two of his fellows followed some ladies and girls
for nearly a block, using language that is a
disgrace to any school.”
“Rot! I suppose you think girls ought to run
this high school. And that’s what they’ll do if
Hec Price gets elected.” He glared around on
them, and let his eyes rest on Reginald an instant
before continuing. “I put it up to you fellows,
.pn +1
.bn 016.png
what sort of a president will that grandmother
prig make, that’s in with the girls and mollycoddles,
in with the teachers, in with everybody
that’s for style, and against a square deal for all.
What sort of a fellow is Hec Price for president?”
“A good one!” Billy called cheerily, coming
forward from the rear of the crowd, where he
had been listening.
Billy was good to look at these days. His
freckles were gone; and his skin, free from the
blemish that mars so many growing boys, was
girlishly fair. His cheeks had the red of full
health, and his form was well knit and firm from
plenty of work in the “gym”; and although the
dimple, much to his disgust still adorned his
chin, it had broadened and squared to match
his strong shoulders.
Since entering school he had been allied with
those opposing “the Kid’s crowd,” yet he had
been able through sheer good-nature to avoid a
clash with the bully. But lately that had
seemed inevitable, though Billy himself could
not understand why.
The speaker sighted Billy and challenged him.
.pn +1
.bn 017.png
“You, Billy To-morrow, or Yesterday, or Billy
Next Week, whatever you call yourself, what
have you got to say about the teachers butting
into student affairs?” He looked around over
the boys, an angry gleam in his red-rimmed
eyes. He was stocky, red of hair and skin, red
of hose and tie, blustering, blowsy, yet powerful.
The strong, uncontrolled passions of generations
of ancestors culminated in him in conscious
power, plus a tenacity and stratagem that were
his own. His silent presence in the room would
attract any eye. A reader of men was likely
to turn away with regret, as when one sees a
mighty stream capable of producing wealth
and happiness for mankind, instead tearing
through the smiling valley, leaving destruction
in its way.
He continued. “Have we, or have we not, a
right to run our student business ourselves? to
elect our officers, whether class president or
school president, without interference? Answer
me that. Are we all sissies, to let the girls butt
in, to let the high-brows whip us into knuckling
to the teachers like kindergarten kids? You,
Bill Bennett, what do you say to that?”
.pn +1
.bn 018.png
“What’s the matter with the Kid?” asked
Charley Harper, called “Redtop” because of
his hair. “I thought he rather liked Billy.”
“Don’t you know? Billy’s copped his girl.”
Sis Jones winked knowingly.
“Gee! Not the Fish?”
“Yep. Kid wouldn’t have cared if it had
been Sally or Belle, they’re both dead gone on
him; but Fishie’s different.”
“So that’s—”
“Go on, Billy! Answer him!” cried several
of Jim’s opponents.
Billy stepped in front of the crowd, which
shifted restlessly, and waited a moment looking
them over, trying to arrange his thoughts so that
they might carry weight. He had no liking for
the fight his mates were forcing on him. He
knew the Kid’s “line-up” was against the best
of the school, including the girls; knew that his
methods were, to say the least, unpleasant, and
important enough to cause anxiety to the Principal.
Yet Billy was no shirk. He could think on
foot better than most of the students; and when
his enthusiasm was aroused no one better loved a
“scrap” of wits.
.pn +1
.bn 019.png
He began slowly: “There are several questions
we must each put up squarely to ourselves
before we can rightly answer Mr. Barney. First,
what’s a school for?”
“Come off!” growled Jim. “Stick to—”
“Shut up, you!” shouted Redtop, who had
grown in size and muscle till he was a force Jim
respected. “Billy didn’t interrupt you. Be
game!”
The Kid subsided. He prided himself on
allowing fair play to all.
“Second, why do we hire superintendents and
principals, to say nothing of teachers, if they are
to have no authority over us that we should
respect? And—”
“We don’t hire ’em; our fathers do,” objected
one of Jim’s admirers.
“That brings me to my third question: Who
pays for the schools?” Billy stopped an instant
to think out his argument, and the pause was
more effective than he knew. Some of the boys
were considering a phase of the school question
not often presented to them.
“Nobody’s talking about the cost of schools;
it’s us—ourselves we’re talking about. We
want—”
.pn +1
.bn 020.png
Redtop promptly “chucked” the turbulent
one.
Billy went on. “At least we don’t pay for
them, nor hire the teachers. But they are responsible
to those who do hire them for the good
name of the schools. If students are lazy or
lawless the teachers are called to account.”
“Well, what’s the matter with us? Aren’t
we all right?” Jim loomed formidably in front
of Billy.
“No! We’re not all right, Jim Barney. If
you and your crowd, and the sort of manners
toward women and girls you stand for,—if that’s
to be the standard for this school, I’m ashamed
of it, and ashamed of any principal that will
stand for it,—when he knows it.” Billy’s eyes
flashed and he shook his hand at Jim.
“You’ll be the tell-tale, I suppose.” Barney
lunged forward and reached his long arm for
Billy’s leg; but half a dozen hands pulled him
back; and more hisses than he had believed possible
warned him that he was on the wrong tack.
“It’s because each year Jim Barney has put in
his man for class president, and each year his
class has made a worse name for itself; and now
.pn +1
.bn 021.png
he wants to boss the whole school and run his
man for the new office,—it’s because of this condition
that the teachers think it time to
interfere.” Billy leaned forward and looked
fearlessly into the face of the Kid. “If you’ve
any remarks coming, you can make them later
to me personally.”
“Gee!” Redtop whispered to Sis Jones; “I
wish Hec Price was here to see that! Billy’s
called the Kid’s bluff.”
“As to the last proposition,” Billy continued,
“who does pay for the schools? Do we kids put
up the money or the brains or the anxiety, or—the
any other things it takes to put through a
system? Did we build this great institution of
the city schools? It is mighty easy to knock it,
but I don’t see any school kids offering anything
better. Do you? I think as long as the State,—but
it’s the fathers and mothers really,—as long
as they hand us a chance to get an education it’s
up to us to accept it decently or—” he glared at
Jim defiantly; “or quit!”
A burst of noisy applause warned Barney that
his leadership was imperilled. He looked
angrily around and was about to speak, when
.pn +1
.bn 022.png
Billy, with a power new to his mates and startling
to the bully, launched a threat that electrified
them all. “Kid Barney, your man for
president is a rowdy, and you know it. We are
going to expose him and defeat him.”
“Not on your life, you won’t!” Barney hurled
back with a wicked gesture; and his followers
broke out noisily.
But Billy’s voice rose above the din, the more
impressive for dominating it. “We’re going to
have a man in this new office that represents the
whole school,—a man that’s honest and capable,
and a gentleman besides.”
“A kid-glove sneak—”
“And if by any chance your man gets in, Jim
Barney, all of us who stand for the decent thing
will cut the student body as an organization.”
This threat met an instant’s silence. It was
Billy’s own idea, born that moment; but when
its great import filtered through those surprised
brains, a storm broke that neither Billy nor Jim
could master.
“Rats! What good would that do?” Jim at
last made himself heard.
“It will be blazoned in every paper in the
.pn +1
.bn 023.png
State,” Billy replied quickly. “The names of
the students that follow your man will be published,
as well as the names of those standing
with the teachers for decency. And you’ll find,
Jim Barney, when it comes to a show-down,
there won’t be many fathers and mothers patting
you on the back, even among those who don’t
wear kid gloves.”
A roar drowned Billy, but at last they saw
that he had more to say and subsided into an expectant
hush.
“I propose we form a Good Citizens’ Club
under Mr. Streeter’s system, ask the girls to join,
and help the Playground Progressives carry
their campaign for a clean playground, no improper
language, and a larger respect for the
teachers and law.”
“Well, I’ll be lead-dog to a blind man if that
isn’t a little the rawest dose yet!” Even that bit
of choice English did not relieve the Kid, for he
stared silently around at the boys, evidently
trying to grasp the situation.
“We got fool clubs enough, except for fun.
I’m in for that any time, but not for more
work,” an overgrown, bulgy-looking boy yawned.
.pn +1
.bn 024.png
“More work?” jeered Sis Jones; “did you
ever do any work, Lazyleg?”
“Cut it! School’s rotten anyway,” the yawner
returned; “a kid don’t need it like the old folks
let on.”
“Any slob that goes to school after he’s out of
the grades, if he don’t have to, is dippy,”
drawled another.
Mumps stepped forward and faced them.
Someway, when Sydney Bremmer, the ex-newsboy,—called
“Mumps” from his heavy jaw,—when
he said anything, people always listened
in spite of his style of speech.
“I lay you’re mistaken, you wise kids. Thirty
years ago a kid could get along in the world
without much schooling; but now, if a man expects
to do more than dig some other man’s
ditches, he’s got to kick in for things he can’t
learn in any grammar school. The chap that
don’t know enough to go to school to-day is the
one that’s dippy.”
“Hooray for Mumps!” Redtop bellowed with
a grin of contempt at the bulgy one. Then to
Billy, “What’s your scheme, anyway?”
“It’s Mr. Streeter’s idea, a corking good one.
.pn +1
.bn 025.png
He’ll come up and tell us about it if we ask
him.”
“We’ll do it!” shouted several at once.
“No! We don’t want any swells running
things here,” Jim struck in; but even his partial
ear heard fresh warning in the conflicting cries.
Some suspicion of a force beneath the surface
that was growing in strength angered him, but
he did not reckon it at its full strength, and he
displayed an ill temper that he would better
have controlled. “And say, any kid that kicks
in on this frame-up has to cut my crowd from
this on.” He started off, but at the edge of the
crowd turned and called, “Come on, kids!”
There was a breathless moment. The dullest
one there knew that this was a crisis, knew that
the smouldering rebellion against Jim Barney’s
tyranny had at last broken into open war.
None understood the situation better than
Billy. “Fellows, think before you follow Jim
Barney. His game is as cultus as his name; and
this hour starts the open fight between rowdyism
and decency. All that want to line up for things
we shall not be ashamed of, stay!”
For a second no one stirred.
.pn +1
.bn 026.png
“Come on!” Jim shouted, paused a second,
then waved his hand toward Billy. “Or stand
in with lily-necked Bill and his Fish!”
With this parting gibe that set Billy’s face
blazing, he wheeled and walked off the grounds
with no backward glance.
Slowly, one by one at first, then in groups as
their courage rose, about thirty boys followed
him off. Down on the street they sent back one
or two loud shouts, and were soon out of hearing.
“This is better than I thought it would be,”
Billy said to those remaining; “but Jim Barney
can divide the school a good deal nearer even
than some of you think. How many here are
in for an active fight for the good name of the
Fifth Avenue High?”
Nearly every one shouted “I!”
“How many like the idea of a Good Citizens’
Club?”
Again the vote was largely in favor.
“How many will stand for the girls joining?”
Groans and objections warned him he was on
thin ice.
“Well, they can have their clubs separately,
.pn +1
.bn 027.png
then, as they do in the playground campaign.
How many favor a preliminary talk from Mr.
Streeter?”
This carried.
“All right. I’ll put it up to the Principal, set
a day, and post it on the bulletin board.”
“All the committee for the Price campaign
meet at his house to-night,” Redtop yelled.
In the midst of the noise that followed,
Mumps went up and slipped his arm into Billy’s
higher one. “Billy, you’re up against a tough
job, and I’ve got some pointers for you. Any
time for me?”
“Sure! Come up to dinner, can you?”
“All right.”
The two walked off together.
.pn +1
.bn 028.png
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch02
CHAPTER II || BILLY PUTS HIMSELF ON RECORD
.sp 2
.dc 0.3 0.7
NO student of the Fifth Avenue High was
more a credit to it than Sydney Bremmer.
A motherless boy wholly orphaned by the great
fire in San Francisco, he had lived, tramp-like,
as a newsboy, till adventuring into the
newer opportunities of the City of Green Hills.
He had been Billy’s fellow-traveller on the
steamer that brought them both from California;
and his efforts to make good at each turn of
his fortune’s wheel enlisted every one in his
favor.
It was Mr. Streeter who, after watching the
boy at Camp Going Some the summer before,
advised the lad as to night-school work, helped
him with his studies, and at length found a good
home for him with a woman who lived alone
and wished a boy for errands. Here Sydney
went, studied early and late, and passed the examinations
admitting him to the high school at
the beginning of the winter semester. He was
.pn +1
.bn 029.png
a general favorite with his class, and on account
of his friendship with Billy and Hector, was
well known to the juniors.
As the two boys walked along in the gray
evening, an unusual silence fell between them,
caused on Billy’s part by a rush of plans for the
coming campaign. But Sydney was occupied
with Billy’s personal affairs, and puzzled to
know how to say certain things he feared Billy
would resent.
“Lost your buzzer?” At last Billy waked to
the fact that they had walked many blocks without
speaking.
“No; but you won’t like my buzz.”
“Try it and see. You’ve a right to say what
you please to me, Mumps. Hand it over.”
“It’s about Miss Fisher.”
Billy turned and slapped him on the shoulder.
“Good for you! I’m sick of hearing her called
‘the Fish.’ It’s a positive disgrace, that nickname.”
Sydney’s reply was halting, as if he were feeling
his way. “Did you ever reckon it might be
partly her own fault?”
“No. Why?”
.pn +1
.bn 030.png
“Well, they call Miss Carter ‘the Queen’;
does that make you sick?”
“That’s different. I began that myself. We
always called her that in California,—the Queen
of Sheba. But Fish—” He made a gesture
of disgust.
“Yet, if the boys called Miss Carter ‘the
Cart’ would you feel the same about it?”
“Search me. I don’t get you.”
“It’s this way: Miss Carter is the style of
girl that makes any name you give her—well,
kind of fine and all right. But with Miss
Fisher—”
“Well?”
“It’s up to the girl herself. She’s been in
the school nearly four years. She’s two years
older than you, and—”
“Two years is nothing,” Billy growled. He
was sensitive on that point.
“It’s a lot, Billy. She’s twice as old as you
are in knowing things,—some of ’em it would
be a whole lot better if she didn’t know. And
others she knows—well, she knows ’em just because
she’s a girl; and you—you’re only a kid,
Billy; not as old as I am in some ways.”
.pn +1
.bn 031.png
Billy stopped and wheeled. “Say! You’re
down on her too. Every one has a black eye
for her, it seems.” He walked on, his face
averted.
“No, I’m not; but I don’t want to see her get
you in trouble, Billy; and that’s what she will,
without meaning it, too; because the Kid’s hankering
that way, and mighty mad at you.”
“Oh!” With a rush Billy understood some
things that had before been enigmatic. “She
never cared for Jim,” he said presently.
“Maybe not, but she made him think so.
See?”
“I see that we have no business to be talking
over any girl in this way.” Billy spoke coldly,
and Sydney felt it.
“Billy Bennett, you know I ain’t the kind to
harm any girl kid. I wouldn’t talk this over
with any living kid but you. But you’re the
best friend I got—except Mr. Streeter—and
I’m not going to see you—her too—get stung
if I can help it. My advice is, go slow there;
and you’ll be sorry if you don’t take it.”
They had arrived at the Wright home, where
Billy’s sister and brother-in-law, Hal, as well as
.pn +1
.bn 032.png
Mrs. Bennett, always had a warm welcome for
Sydney.
There was no time for further confidential
speech, for as soon as the new baby, Billy’s
nephew, had been duly exhibited, dinner was
served; and afterwards both boys had appointments.
Billy went out of his way to accompany Sydney,
who was to attend a meeting of his troop
down town, the Chetwoots (black bears), the
newsboys’ troop of the Boy Scouts. Billy did
not wish it known that he was to call on Erminie
Fisher, especially after their conversation concerning
her.
Ever since a day in early winter when she
had caught her foot in a car track and fallen,
and Billy that moment passing, had helped her
up and back to her home, his calls had grown
more and more frequent.
Conditions in his own home made these calls
doubly pleasant. The advent of his small
nephew had robbed him largely of both his
mother and his freedom, for he was rather a
noisy boy around the house, and the youngster
resented noise. And in place of his mother’s
.pn +1
.bn 033.png
good-night talks, now rare, Billy found a luring
substitute in the flattering chatter of the
attractive young woman at 745 East Street.
Erminie was beautiful and subtle; beautiful,
because she could not help being so; subtle,
partly by nature and partly because all her life,
by means of wheedling and cajolery, she had adroitly
managed—or evaded—her coarse, drinking,
but clever father. There were times, however,
when no art prevailed against his tyranny.
Still she was not bad, but rather the victim of
her parentage and environment. She was brilliant,
generous, energetic; and when aroused to
its need, sincere and faithful.
Her mother was not wise. Her hopes for Erminie
were all matrimonial; and her oftenest
repeated advice was, “Keep your eye peeled for
the chap in the automobile, Sis. It’s money that
makes the woman go; and your face is your fortune
only when you’re young.”
Into this girl’s sordid life came Billy, clean,
young, with high ambitions. Little he dreamed
that Erminie’s foot, purposely stuck between the
tracks, was as well able as the other to bear her
weight during that limping walk home; and not
.pn +1
.bn 034.png
for any bribe would she have confessed; for if
the acquaintance began merely as an escapade,
it had grown into a friendship which she cherished
as the most beautiful thing in her life.
She was looking for him this evening and saw
him when he entered the block. Before he could
ring she was at the door. “Let’s walk in the
park,” she said breathily, closing the door behind
her. “Dad—dad and ma are quarrelling, and
I can’t bear you to hear them.” She sighed and
walked on rapidly, leaving Billy with no alternative
but to follow.
He noticed a tone of weariness he had never
heard before, for she was the embodiment of
high spirits. Also he thought it strange that she
should not even greet him. “Is it—is it anything
you could tell me about?”
“I ought not, Billy, but I’m going to—I
can’t keep it to myself any longer.” She looked
up at him, and he saw both anger and defiance
in her dark, restless eyes. “My father wants me
to quit school and marry an old fellow—a man
nearly forty, who’s got the goods—money—and
is crazy about me.”
Billy gasped. “Gee!” For a minute he
.pn +1
.bn 035.png
could say no more, and they stood looking at
each other till a passer jostled them into moving
on.
“But you don’t have to! Girls aren’t like—they
aren’t property any more.”
“No; but some fathers think they are.”
“Does your father?”
“Dad wouldn’t put it that way; but you see,
Billy, this man who—who wants to marry me—is
awfully strong with the city ring, and in some
way he has dad cinched. Dad thinks he could
make it square by getting him into the family.”
Her little half-smile was quite without conceit.
Billy looked at her a moment before replying.
Any one seeing her then could have forgiven her
a little vanity. The low sun, piercing the clouds
for a good-night glance, brought out the rusty
reds in her softly waving dark hair, hair that at
the roots melted into her creamy skin through a
lighter shading that was neither red nor brown,
but seemed to have been mixed on Nature’s palette
for no other face than hers. Her eyes, usually
too shallow and brightly brown, were now
deep and misty with an emotion Billy could only
guess; while all the loveliness of her gracious
.pn +1
.bn 036.png
face and figure was enhanced by a womanly dignity
new to Billy, new to herself, and unrealized.
“I guess ’most any man’d like to get into your
family that way.” All the man in him had risen
to her beauty; but he was not thinking of himself—not
seeing himself in that relation to her.
His remark was entirely impersonal.
She smiled, but instantly it changed to a look
of pain. She had no measure but that of personality—herself.
“Billy! Don’t! Don’t!
That’s the sort of thing they all say, and they
don’t mean it. I’ve—I’ve liked you awfully
just because you never handed out that stuff.
If I can’t trust you, there’s—there’s nobody.”
There was a little catch in her voice, and she
hastened on.
Billy was astonished, puzzled. In their early
acquaintance he had felt and resented her coquetry,
and very soon interested her in other
ways; had established the same sort of comradeship
that existed in his earlier boy and girl
friendships; but as their acquaintance progressed
he found it rich with new experiences.
This girl was no frank child, but a woman,
full-grown, delightfully attractive in her wonderful
.pn +1
.bn 037.png
knowledge of things he had not even considered;
and alluring in her teasing, half tender,
half patronizing manner toward him.
Billy’s own feeling was as perplexing to him.
His mother had warned him against the usual
“puppy love,” so frank, so ludicrous, that, did
not most fathers and mothers have a blushing yet
happy remembrance of first-love affairs, they
would promptly lock up the younger culprits
till the spell wore off.
But Billy’s case was different. Erminie, preeminently
the beauty of the school, knew well
how to steer an affair safely and in propriety, as
when she chose she knew how to make a fellow
look “the silliest sort,” in this last art making
her largest success with the Kid.
In the park they chose a seat slightly back
from the main paths that they might talk freely.
Billy had intended to heed Sydney’s warning so
far as not to be seen out with Erminie for a few
weeks. He knew that turbulent days were coming,
and if Jim really cared for her, Billy had no
desire to inflame him unnecessarily.
Yet here and now that very thing happened.
They were barely seated when he passed them,
.pn +1
.bn 038.png
halted a second, lifted his hat, but was not recognized
by Erminie, and passed on with a scowl
that Billy understood.
“How was it you didn’t bow to him?”
“I never will, after what he said about you.
I heard what happened this afternoon.”
Billy was uneasy. “It doesn’t matter about
me, but he’ll get back at you some way. I wish
you’d speak to him next time, square it with
him.”
“No, I won’t. He can’t speak falsely of my
best—of my friends and expect to keep in with
me.”
“But—”
“Billy, don’t waste time on him. I’m up
against the worst ever, and I want your advice.”
“My advice!” He laughed. Yet what boy
is not flattered by such a request from a lovely
girl older than himself? “Are you banking on
my wisdom? Yours is much greater.”
“Not for what I wish to know, Billy. Tell
me about Mr. Alvin Short.”
He faced her quickly. “Alvin Short! I don’t
know anything exactly, except that his reputation
is as bad as a man’s can be. I get it from
my brother Hal.”
.pn +1
.bn 039.png
“A grafter?”
“Yes, and worse.”
“Worse?”
“Yes. For one thing, he grafts within the
law; but those he cinches get it—” Billy lifted
an eloquent finger to his neck.
“I was afraid so. That’s where he’s got dad,
I’m afraid.”
“Gee! Then he’s—” Billy paused, a great
disgust for the man rising, but to be routed by
a hot sympathy for the girl. “By gracious!
You won’t have anything to do with him, will
you?”
“No.” She looked at him earnestly for a
moment. “No,” she said again with a hint of
fatality in her voice; “but that means that I must
run away from home.”
“Run—away—from home?”
“Yes.” She was touched to wistfulness by the
thought of what his home must be if no such
possible contingent had occurred in his life. “If
I don’t, I’ll have to marry Alvin Short; daddy
will make me.”
“How can he?”
“Oh, Billy, don’t ask me. Fathers have ways.
If Cousin Will were here he could help me.”
.pn +1
.bn 040.png
“You never told me about him. Did I ever
see him?”
“No. He’s not a cousin really. Uncle
Henry’s wife was married before, and Will is
her son. We were great chums till they moved
to Oregon a few years ago.”
Billy looked at her, speculating on the reminiscent
light that came into her eyes as she
gazed absently off into the west.
“Will was as good as a brother,—better,—he
didn’t tease. If he was here he’d not let them
make me marry if I didn’t want to.”
“You aren’t old enough to marry!” Billy
burst out vehemently.
She smiled faintly. “I’m more than two
years older than ma was, and she thinks it would
be fine because Alvin—Mr. Short—has so
much money.”
“Still she won’t—surely she won’t—” He
hesitated, unable to picture a mother who would
sacrifice her daughter to such a man. He had
seldom seen the tired, frowzy woman who kept
out of sight when Erminie had callers.
“Ma always does as dad says. It’s the easiest
way to keep peace in the family. Sometimes
.pn +1
.bn 041.png
she spunks up a little, as to-day. Daddy’s
generally good to her, though; to me, too, if
I do as he wants. But lately he won’t stand for
anything from us.”
“What can you do for a living?”
She sighed and drew in her lip. “Nothing
well, Billy; but I can learn housework, I suppose.”
“Don’t you know that already?” He thought
of his capable mother, of his sister, who was a
good housekeeper as well as an accomplished
musician.
“No. Ma has always made me save my
hands and complexion, study, take music, go to
dancing school, and all that, because she was
sure I’d marry rich.”
Billy thought hard. Wild notions of succoring
this girl, of taking her to his own home, of
leaving school and going to work that he might
support her, of doing something, anything
worthy of a man on whom womanhood calls
for help. A dozen equally impossible plans
surged through his excited brain; but he could
not think of anything definite, practical enough.
“Don’t look so hurt—so angry, Billy. Something
.pn +1
.bn 042.png
will turn up. You’ve told me what I
wanted to be sure about, the sort of man Alvin
Short is, and—”
“Perhaps some of it isn’t true. I’ll find out
exactly.”
“Enough is true to decide me. The man I
marry must have a good name, if he hasn’t a
dollar.”
“You won’t think about run—about any
change right away?”
“No. I guess I can coax dad off—and Mr.
Short—till school closes. I want my diploma.”
“Couldn’t you teach?”
“No, Billy, I’m not built that way; but I
can scrub if necessary; and I will, before I’ll
marry Alvin Short.”
Billy looked at her pretty hands, remembering
what melodies they had drawn from the
piano on the many evenings he and Erminie had
sung together; and his anger rose again.
“We must go back. If dad knows I’ve been
out with any one but Mr. Short, he’ll be mad.”
“But I’m just a boy.”
The bitterness in his tone did not escape her.
“Don’t fret. You’re plenty big enough and old
.pn +1
.bn 043.png
enough to make dad mad, and Alvin Short
jealous.”
She rose and looked into his face as he stood
beside her, head and shoulders taller. She
could no more help saying and looking the
pleasant, flattering thing to those she cared for
than she could help breathing. It was part of
her charm. She was always looking more than
she meant, too, and having to use all her art to
escape the results.
Billy gazed down on her with tender eyes, his
heart beating faster with a manly, protecting
feeling new to him. “Anyway I’m big enough
and old enough to do just my level best to make
things easy for you. Let me know how I can,
won’t you?”
“Yes, Billy, I will. Oh, you’re such a comfort!”
And because she was worn out by a
stormy interview with her father that she was
too proud to repeat, she could not restrain the
sob that came with the last word.
That was too much for impressionable Billy.
He put his arms around her and kissed her.
Often in fun and frolic he had kissed girls
more to tease them than to please himself; but
.pn +1
.bn 044.png
this was very different,—his first man’s kiss;
and with its sweetness mingled a quick-born
sense of responsibility and the acceptance of a
man’s part. He had put himself on record with
her; the kiss was the compact.
They walked for blocks in silence, and separated
at the end of her street with but a word
of good-bye; speech seemed superfluous.
That night Billy went to bed having a secret
his mother could not share, for it was Erminie’s
rather than his own. Life seemed very portentous,
big with duties and prospects that belonged
to a new world. All his past was but a
flash, a gleam of childish nonsense. Now he
was a man!
.pn +1
.bn 045.png
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch03
CHAPTER III || “POP” STREETER’S PROPOSITION
.sp 2
.dc 0.25 0.7
FOR the first time he could remember, Billy
was sleepless till the sun rose. All night
long he thought and thought. He had considered
his life rather complex—he was leader of
one of the patrols of his troop, the Olympics;
he had a part in the school drama which he had
believed very important. And on waking came
the sudden remembrance of the talk Mr.
Streeter was to give soon on the matter of
Good Citizens’ Clubs. Billy was sponsor for
that, and must see it through. Also it looked
still more as if he would not be able to avoid
the clash with the bully.
But all this was trivial now, childish. He
could no longer think of himself alone,—there
would be two. That kiss—that kiss was his
pledge, a consecration of his life to Erminie’s
happiness.
By the time the sun had struck through the
.pn +1
.bn 046.png
window into his large attic room he had mapped
out his course. He would have to continue
school till vacation—his mother would insist
on that; but by that time he would have secured
work of some sort. He regretted having sold
the “ha’nt” in California and invested his money
with his mother’s—by Mr. Smith’s advice—in
the City of Green Hills; but it was too late to
change that. Yet he would work hard, attend
night school, and prepare himself for his real
life-business, which was to be Journalism. He
spelled it with a capital, for he would be no
small truckling reporter, but a faithful, inspiring
leader of the people.
Resolutely he put aside the thought of marriage
although it lay, coiled and conscious like
fate, at the back of all his plans. Other men
married young, why not one more? The conventions
were ridiculous; a man was a man
when he was grown! He drew himself up and
measured again before his mirror. Almost six
feet!
Yet he must not subject Erminie to ridicule.
The world must see that she was marrying a
man who could support and protect her. He
.pn +1
.bn 047.png
would not have to wait very long,—he looked
twenty-one,—and his mother would consent
when she saw he was well prepared, saw how
pitiful was Erminie’s situation. Shyly—though
there was none to see—he rubbed his rough
chin and wondered how he would look with
mustache and imperial.
The elation of the night still lifted him. His
body was strangely light; he felt as if he could
move a mountain. The need for secrecy increased
the stimulation, and he looked on forest,
lake, and Sound with new vision. The yellow
rose of sunrise touched Cascades and Olympics
alike with a splendor he had not before recognized,
and lighted the vast reaches between
ranges with a clear thin radiance not seen in
southern lands.
Billy’s heart ached with this new fulness of
life. Visions undreamed before opened his eyes
to his own manhood; and the impulse came to
put this experience into rhythm,—the impulse
that touches every normal young creature.
Some may not have the wit to fix it on paper, but
all sing the song.
Billy sang it,—sang in a lilting, rather difficult
.pn +1
.bn 048.png
metre, beginning ambitiously with an apostrophe
to his love,
.nf c
“Ermine-white soul of my Erminie,”
.nf-
.ni
and leaping immediately to the next rhyme
which should be “burn in me”—he was not
acquainted with the exactions of prosody. However,
his Muse proceeded for a couple of verses;
and if she limped at times, it was no more than
appears in the work of some real poets when
they push the lady too hard.
.pi
He read the lines several times, softly whispering
the passioned words. They sounded
rather good, though not by a tithe were they adequate.
What miserable, foolish little things
were written words! Still he marvelled that he
could write even these. He would copy them
on a typewriter and gave them to Erminie. No
one could then guess their authorship, not even
her father should he chance upon them.
At breakfast he was silent, preoccupied; but
his mother, being tired from a night of watching
with the baby, who had been fretful, did not
notice Billy, nor object when he said he would
not be home at noon.
.pn +1
.bn 049.png
.if h
.il fn=i049.jpg id=i049 w=405px
.ca
Billy gazed down on her with tender eyes, his heart\
beating faster with a manly, protecting feeling new to him
.ca-
.if-
.if t
[Illustration: Billy gazed down on her with tender eyes, his heart
beating faster with a manly, protecting feeling new to him]
.if-
.pn +1
.bn 050.png
.pn +1
.bn 051.png
He hurried off, hoping to meet Erminie in
the halls before she went to her class-room; but
she was barely prompt, passing him as the bell
rang, with a hasty nod. Billy thought it cool,
till he saw that Walter Buckman was right behind
her.
The hours droned by, seemingly interminable.
Automatically he went from class to class.
Twice he had to be reminded that the bell had
tapped. In the midst of defining the powers of
the Constitution of the United States of America,
he saw a picture of a little house with a vine
over it, and Erminie sitting in the tiny living-room.
And while walking down the hall to his
German Class he built still other castles, followed
impossible adventures that involved Erminie,
himself, and two other men who wanted
her; and vanquished them both just at the moment
his teacher said, “Guten Morgen, Herr
Bennett.”
Yet as the day proceeded, he had to wake to
his many duties. At the noon recess he was
besieged by boys asking of the meeting to be
addressed in the assembly-room by Mr. Streeter,
its importance, and if they could not go would
.pn +1
.bn 052.png
he tell them all about it later? And the girls
appealed to him to know if they were really
invited. A delayed English exercise had to be
copied; and at the moment—hoped for,
watched for—when Erminie went down the
main hall on her way back from luncheon, a
teacher was explaining to Billy some stubbornly
hidden point in his geometry.
Two o’clock came finally, and Billy, waiting
till the last moment, hoping vainly to see Erminie,
went to the assembly-room, where a
crowd of noisy boys waited for Mr. Streeter’s
coming.
“Who is he, anyway?” asked a boy new to
the city and the school.
“He’s the best, jolliest ever,” Billy answered.
“They say he’s never grown up and never will.
But the boys like him that way, and the fathers
and mothers trust him to the limit.”
“What does he do?”
“For a living? Nothing now. He’s had a
fortune come to him, ten times as much a year
as he used to earn.”
“That must beat the old game for fun.”
“He gets his fun with the boys,—spends his
.pn +1
.bn 053.png
time and money that way. You see he’s had the
university, Europe, and all that.”
When Mr. Streeter tapped for order, it was
instant, for he always had some message the boys
were eager to hear, though they knew as little
of the scope of his work as did their busy fathers.
He had a round, jolly face; and near each end
of his brown mustache a dimple that was the
envy of every girl who knew him. But in spite
of dimples, and kind eyes that grew dark and
tender at a tale of suffering, those eyes could
compel, the dimples could disappear in a look
that few disregarded.
After his greeting, and one of the funny stories
that he told well, he said, “I have a message
more serious than usual for you to-day, a
plan that touches not only you but your city of
the future, for which in five years nearly every
one of you before me will be responsible.
“I wonder if you know, boys and girls, how
different this city of ours is from the older,
Eastern cities? It has risen almost by magic.
Your fathers and mothers are still busy with
their hard fight with nature, cutting down trees
and washing mountains into the sea, filling deep
.pn +1
.bn 054.png
valleys or making land where water was. They
don’t have time to think of the future.
“But it’s coming, and it will have as hard
nuts to crack as any we have now. I wonder if
you wish to learn a little about them now, before
they are dropped down on you?
“Don’t we want a beautiful city? Want our
city to look as well on post cards as Paris looks,
or any city on earth? No city in the world has
more beauty from nature; if we should do as
well with our building as Paris has with hers,
all the people on earth would sell all their goods
and travel here to see us,—come any way they
could, on foot if they couldn’t fly,—to see the
beautiful City of Green Hills.
“Do you know how we could have it that
way? By making out of every boy and girl living
here a good citizen, a patriotic citizen, who
would no more be wasteful of her wealth or
beauty than he would strike himself. You are
beginning here in the right way. Your playground
politics, your attempt to make it a clean
place, beautiful and pleasant for ear as well as
eye,—that is fine. But nothing of that sort
amounts to much unless it reaches out to all:
.pn +1
.bn 055.png
that’s it, to all. No city is fine or lasting, or
ought to last, if the set of people that are making
fine avenues and boulevards let its poor folk live
in holes and sow tin cans instead of roses in
the alleys.”
He stopped a moment to get the temper of
the meeting. They knew that his hobby was
hunting boys, to help them. He hunted them
as other men hunt game, or business opportunities.
Only the recording angel knew how many
waifs he “rounded in for rations.” The street
boys adored him for his power as well as for his
goodness. He was the champion all-round amateur
athlete of the town, and though slow to
anger, in the language of the “newsies,” when
“he does let go his bunch o’ fives, skidoo the
bunch!”
There were plenty of cheers, and cries of,
“Go on!”
“Scouts and Sunday schools and school politics
are all good; but we need something that
includes all in one larger work, as the schools
and the city include all. I have thought of a
chain of Young Citizens’ Clubs that should
reach all. How many of you know about your
.pn +1
.bn 056.png
city, her population, income, resources, officers?
Would you like to know? I am willing to lead
such a movement if you’d like it.
“There isn’t time to tell you in detail all the
different schemes I have thought out! Bands—I
will see that every boy that will learn is taught
to play some instrument; drills, scouting parties
in the city to spy out what we’d like to do to
make it better; the best speakers in the city and
State, to tell us just what sort of a pie the politicians
cook for us each year; picnics and camping,
to learn how much fun there is out under
the sky, and how a man can jolly along without
much but a blanket and a frying pan, and have
the time of his life; and each year some great
celebration the young citizens would themselves
manage that would really mean things—all
these ideas, our history, our future,—do you get
this, young people? Would it be great? Or am
I just dreaming?”
They caught the bigness of his idea and responded
as heartily as boys and girls always will
when they are enlisted.
Jim Barney and his followers were there in
force, because it was necessary for them to be
.pn +1
.bn 057.png
in touch with all that was going on. They saw,
or their leader did, that this Good Citizens’
Club meant the end of their influence and of
his rule.
“Of course you don’t mean girls,” Jim
drawled in a slow, confident tone.
“Can girls be loyal to the city? Isn’t your
mother as good a citizen as your father?”
It was an unfortunate question. Jim’s mother
had run off with a man his father despised;
while the father, a successful saloon-keeper, and
good to Jim according to his light, was the boy’s
idol.
“You bet she ain’t. Women and girls don’t
count in politics.”
The girls scowled, some boys hissed, but too
many cheered.
“If they don’t count, America is a lie,” Mr.
Streeter said when the noise had ceased. “Yet
even that aspect of the case is futile. The
amendment to enfranchise the women of Washington
will surely carry; your mothers and sisters
will be citizens whether you like it or not.
What will you do about it?”
Cheering and laughing, good-natured jeers
.pn +1
.bn 058.png
and one or two faint hisses followed. But the
majority were interested, and an organization
on Mr. Streeter’s basis followed, with Reginald
Steele and Cicero Jones as president and vice-president,
Bess Carter secretary, and Billy treasurer.
As these four were of the strongest opposers
of Jim Barney, it was not surprising that
he rose and rather boisterously led his gang out.
Mr. Streeter did not quite understand, but
said rivalry was sometimes wholesome, and perhaps
Mr. Barney would organize something
himself.
“You may think it strange that I come with
this proposition so near the end of the school
year. I wonder if you will like my further
plans? How do you think we can make this
most effective? I had thought we could have
every member of this club, and those that are
forming in the other schools, start a little feeder
in his own neighborhood. The Scouts are already
enthusiastic. And my biggest notion of
all is to have a band in each club; and when
these bands are studying and playing about the
city, we’ll select the very best of them, and the
ten best citizens,—that is, those who, on the vote
.pn +1
.bn 059.png
of all the rest have done most in this work,—and
we’ll go abroad with them. East, all over our
own States, and then to Europe. Well, it’s a
pretty big jump, that is; I won’t propose Mars
till next time.”
“But that would take a heap of money; we
couldn’t—” The “doubting Thomas” hesitated
and subsided.
“There is a city on this coast where they are
doing just that thing. And when, after a tour
of six months, those thirty boys came home, having
earned their way by their splendid music,
and won the applause and goodwill of all the
countries they visited, what do you suppose their
own city did? Gave them the freedom of the
city, made one of them mayor of the town for
a week, and the entire city feted them.”
“Well, what do you think of that?” one astonished
person upspoke in meeting.
“That may be far away, but I have one idea
coming that isn’t,—a flag for the city. Do you
like that idea? Would it be a good thing for a
city to have its own banner floating with the
Stars and Stripes on every school house, shop,
ship, and home?”
.pn +1
.bn 060.png
“Has any other city a flag?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Gee! Then we’ll be the first! Let’s have
it!”
They cheered this to the satisfaction of even
Mr. Streeter.
“I shall offer a prize of fifty dollars for the
best design, to be competed for by the members
of the Good Citizens’ Clubs. The Chamber of
Commerce likes the idea, and will add another
fifty. We’ll begin our annual historic pageants
this year, in September, and award the prize
then. How does that strike you?”
It struck them happily, and they despatched
a few more details of the organization, arranged
for the meeting hour, and for immediate cooperation
with the playground campaign,—for
that was good citizens’ work,—and adjourned.
Billy had to remain with Bess after the rest
to receive, and receipt for, the money paid in
for dues. A teacher gave them a drawer in one
of the desks in the library, and Billy had a key
to it. On passing out of the larger room he had
managed to sign to Erminie, who had attended
the meeting, to wait for him. He and Bess finished
.pn +1
.bn 061.png
their work together, Billy remaining on
some invented pretext till after she had gone;
though he had to follow her immediately, for
the teacher was anxious to lock up and get away.
Very casually, Billy thought, he sauntered
along to where Erminie was standing, looking
nowhere in particular as he came up, and, under
pretence of showing her his club accounts,
handed her a folded paper. But even a pair of
thoughtless boys passing read his beaming face;
and a teacher going by smiled in spite of himself;
smiled, and scowled at Erminie without
knowing it.
She caught the look, read her own meaning
into it, and turned away with a casual, “Thank
you, Billy,” that chilled him as no wind ever
had. He little dreamed she was saving him at
her own expense, as she did again a moment
later, when the teacher repassed with Barney
by his side, and she gave the bully the brilliant
smile Billy had expected for his own.
“I didn’t mean you should kiss him with your
eyes,” Billy growled, jealousy flaming so ludicrously
in his face that Erminie laughed when
she would better have been serious.
.pn +1
.bn 062.png
“Don’t be foolish, Billy; you told me to
square with him. Sh—! Here they come
again,” she added, and with a hasty good-bye
left Billy to gloom all the way home about that
smile.
Of course he himself had advised the recognition,
but not like that. Oh, that smile!
He arrived at home to hear that his dear little
comrade of earlier days, May Nell Smith, had
been hurt and was coming home.
.pn +1
.bn 063.png
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch04
CHAPTER IV || ERMINIE THE UNCERTAIN
.sp 2
.dc 0.3 0.7
A FEW days later May Nell came, and Billy
went to see her. On the way, and while
waiting in the parlor of her imposing home, he
recalled the April evening she had come into
Vina on the refugee train from San Francisco, a
homeless waif. Driven right into his arms he
believed, by the catastrophe, he had led her to
his mother’s door; and the little girl had walked
into their hearts, never to be forgotten.
Yet now she seemed remote,—very young,
and out of Billy’s life, if not out of memory.
He had not seen her since they separated after
the summer together at Lallula; and that was
far away, a part of another life.
May Nell had never been robust since the terrifying
days and nights of the great fire; and her
parents sent her to a girls’ school in a neighboring
town, where health was the first consideration.
.pn +1
.bn 064.png
The maid came interrupting his memories,
and he followed her.
“Come up, Billy!” May Nell called in the
well remembered melodious voice.
He was unprepared for the change in her.
She had been only slightly hurt in the foot in an
automobile accident, and now showed almost
no ill effects from it. She seemed no older, no
larger, yet different, in a way that Billy could
not explain to himself. As she rose impulsively
to greet him, leaning gracefully on her cane, he
felt in full force once more her charm, her otherworldliness.
Her face had rounded and taken on richer
tints; and the gold of her hair and the blue of
her eyes were almost ethereal. She was like a
beautiful dream, or like some little princess of
bygone years stepped from the canvas of an old
master.
“Oh, Billy, Billy! How good it is to see you!
And how fine of you to come this first day I’m
at home.”
Billy was only half at ease. He felt old and
rude, and in some odd way not good enough to
touch her delicate hand, to help her reseat herself.
.pn +1
.bn 065.png
“I had to come, you know.” And though
he smiled he remembered that he had wished he
were going to see Erminie instead.
Yet now that he was here he felt widely separated
from Erminie. A fancy struck into his
mind on the instant between sentences: Erminie
was the bright red rose, quickly blooming and
quickly fading, that grows luxuriantly in plain
view in the valley; May Nell was a rare and
delicate yet unwithering orchid that hides on
the far mountain side.
“Mama says I am not to return to school till
the autumn semester opens.”
Again the daintiness, the foreign flavor that
attached to all she said or did came with the
French “mama.”
“That’s dandy!” and he gave her a boyish
scrutiny. “You’re different, older someway;
but you’re—just as little.” A teasing mischief
danced in his eyes.
“I am older, Billy. Did you think I would
always stay a little girl?”
“Thirteen isn’t very old.”
“It’s only three years younger than sixteen.”
“I’m much more than sixteen,” he objected,
.pn +1
.bn 066.png
and thought with dismay of Erminie. Could she
feel as much beyond him in age as he felt beyond
May Nell?
“Well, no matter, Billy. You look twenty.
But I’ll challenge you on the score of studies,
that is, if—if you’ll cut out mathematics,” she
added in a mock-plaintive tone.
“Mathematics is—are?—the whole business,”
he swaggered; and thus they chaffed
themselves back to childhood standing again,
and talked on of many matters, each telling of
life during the separation.
She was almost well, would soon be ready to
join in their sports again. Going home, Billy
thought over his changed future. The gay days
were coming when May Nell and his cousins,
Hector, Hugh, and little Miss Snow, as they
called their little sister, would all go chugging
around the Sound among the beautiful Thousand
Islands, or startle the silences of night and
day at lovely Lallula.
But he would not be there. He would be
drudging at some sort of hard work; making a
beginning in his long, hurrying climb toward an
income that would warrant him in taking Erminie
.pn +1
.bn 067.png
to a home of their own. Suddenly the
future looked bigger and darker, and he mentally
drew back from it; but instantly chid himself
for a coward.
He need not. He was only a boy. How was
he to know that he was not yet able to endure
long mental strain; that this depression was the
inevitable reaction from exciting days, and
nights with little or no sleep?
On his way he met Bess Carter.
“Hello, Queen of Sheba!” he called as she
was passing him, her head up, eyes unheeding.
“Oh! Billy! I’m glad you spoke. We’re
so busy I’m totally absorbed and don’t have time
to see my friends.”
“Evidently not. What is it? Politics?”
“Yes. Though it doesn’t seem like that. I
thought politics was something tremendous and
difficult and—rather bad. But since mother
says women are to be enfranchised and I must
learn things, and since I heard Mr. Streeter, it
really appears merely a sort of housekeeping for
the city, or State, or whatever; easy, but lots of
work.”
“When you’ve heard more from Mr. Streeter
.pn +1
.bn 068.png
you’ll see that any kind of housekeeping that’s
worth while isn’t so easy; though it’s simpler
when all the people have a pride in it.”
“Yes. Do you know, Billy, I’d never have
been allured by it if he hadn’t said that one who
forgot or abused his city was the same as one
who forgot home or demolished the furniture.”
Bess retained her fondness for long words.
“That was rather striking.”
“And now I’m in—deep in the girls’ reform
party; and we are going to participate in the
Progressives’ playground rally to-night. Will
you be there?”
“Sure. But what will the girls do?”
“We wish to address the meeting. It’s especially
to bring about better conditions on the
playground; and the student body will take some
part there if Hector is president.”
“Yes.”
“You know the boys of the Fifth Avenue
High have an unconscionable name there.”
“Yes; and it’s only a few that have given it
that reputation. You’re going some for girls.
How did you get the chance to butt in on the
rally?”
.pn +1
.bn 069.png
“Oh, Billy, doesn’t the school and the playground
belong to girls as well as to boys? Have
not we a right to be heard?”
“Sure. But how is it the boys let you?”
“Hector told the managers of the meeting
that if they wanted him to speak they’d have to
let us in too.”
“Good. I’ll be there.”
“And—Billy—” Her hesitation was unprecedented.
Billy’s eyes questioned.
“It’s about the—Erminie Fisher.”
“Well?” This time the eyes warned.
“They’re talking about her—the girls don’t
like her.”
“Anything else?” There was a steel-like
quality in his voice that Bess Carter had never
suspected.
“Yes. She’s working for Jim Barney’s ticket,
and you must make her—only you can—make
her stop, or Hector won’t win.” She was intensely
in earnest now, all her loyalty to Billy
fighting for him. “Billy! That girl is no good
friend to you, and she’ll spoil everything if you
don’t stop her.”
.pn +1
.bn 070.png
“I think you’re mistaken,” he said, after a
silence that puzzled and chilled her.
“She won’t join the Girls’ Branch of the Progressives,
nor register. And she says if Hector
Price is elected he will turn the student body
into a kindergarten; at least that’s what Walter
Buckman said she said.” She pumped out the
words breathily.
“Any more slams on her?”
“Oh, Billy, I’m no tattler. It isn’t what they
say; it’s the looks and sniggers that say more
than words. No one would dare to tell me anything
anyway; they know I’m your friend, Billy,
your California friend.”
He caught the emotion in her voice, knew that
in all the world he had not a more devoted
friend, a more fearless champion than Bess Carter.
“You’re to the good, Bess. I shall try to
deserve your kindness.” He lifted his cap and
passed on, leaving her troubled and mystified.
He found his mother busy over her window
plants. After an anxious inquiry as to dinner,
which settled the fact that he would have to wait
ten minutes, he stood watching her in such an unusual
silence that she noticed it and rallied him.
.pn +1
.bn 071.png
“What’s happening in Calcutta, Billy?”
“Not in Calcutta; right here. What are you
killing all those little babies for?”
Mrs. Bennett straightened up and looked at
him, startled. “It does seem almost like that,
doesn’t it? But if I don’t pinch these buds the
plants will be less thrifty, perhaps die.”
“Why?”
“It’s warm here in this room, and the plant
has hurried to put out buds before the root has
struck deep enough. It would be unwise to let
it come to flower now.”
“Doesn’t Nature know best how to do
things?”
“Not always. Nature is very wasteful. Besides,
I’ve robbed these plants of Nature’s care,
taken them into artificial conditions; so I must
stand in place of Nature to them.”
“Suppose the plant gets discouraged and won’t
bloom at all?”
“It won’t do that; blooming is the law of its
life.”
He was silent a moment before asking, “I
wonder if that is true in—in other ways—that
about blooming too soon?”
.pn +1
.bn 072.png
“Yes, true of all Nature. Fruit grown or
gathered prematurely is always poor, tasteless;
still more important, the seeds produce poorer
stock.”
“I don’t quite understand. I thought young
flowers were finest. Didn’t you say pansies
wouldn’t have fine blooms the second or third
year?”
“Yes. That is because naturally the pansy is
an annual. Only in warm climates does it live
through the winter; when it does, the second
season is merely a prolonged old age.”
“How about animal life?”
“The law is the same. In hot climates where
boys and girls marry early the races are not
strong, dominant. And in our own latitude the
children of well-grown, well-trained men and
women are stronger mentally and physically
than those whose parents marry in their teens.”
Billy winced. “I should think that—that—well,
when boys and girls are old enough to
care for each other that would mean they were
old enough to marry.”
“In the dawn of the race when men were no
wiser than the plants, when they lived naturally,
.pn +1
.bn 073.png
it did mean that. But as the race unfolds and we
make artificial conditions, man sees more fully
perhaps the meaning of God’s command to him
to have dominion over every thing on the earth.
Man’s growing wisdom is in charge over Nature
to mould her material forms to higher, ever
higher perfection.”
“Then why is it that kids do marry? Why
do they want to before they ought?”
“Why do you wish to eat before you are really
hungry? Why do you wish to run, leap, dance,
be ever on the move, whether you have conscious
need for motion or not? Why does a baby try
to walk before its legs will bear it?”
Billy grinned. “You’re too deep for me,
marms.”
“Because Nature is often blind. To preserve
the race is her first business. She sacrifices
the one to the welfare of the many. Man, exercising
the power God gave him, sees that only as
each one comes to his best, will he contribute to
the race the best possible stock. Therefore our
wisest thinkers say that all should wait till at
least well in the twenties before marriage.”
Billy was thoughtful for a minute. “What of
.pn +1
.bn 074.png
the fellow who likes a girl so well that he can’t
keep—well, keep from thinking of her?” He
knew very well that his mother cast a quick look
at him, but he did not meet her eye, and she went
quietly on with her employment of snipping
and digging.
“That is a very deep question, one to which
you should give much study. There are books
prepared especially to answer such questions.
For ages man has been developing unevenly.
The truth is that men and women are nine-tenths
alike; that is, human—eating, drinking, suffering,
joying, loving each other and mankind
alike, and dying alike. Only in about one-tenth
of their natures are they different, this being the
difference of sex.”
“Gee! That seems strange.”
“But is it? Look at Bess Carter. She has
been reared most wisely. Is she not nearly as
much of an athlete as you are? What is there
that you can do that she cannot?”
Billy scowled. He remembered uncomfortably
a day when a little child had fallen into the
edge of the lake, and Bess had outrun him and
rescued her just as he was arriving. Also he was
.pn +1
.bn 075.png
more uncertain than he liked as to their relative
percentage for the year.
“She’s an exception,” he evaded.
“So are you. Few boys of your age are as
well developed. Yet you could not endure, except
for a momentary spurt, perhaps, what, with
no accident or illness you will be able to endure
at twenty-three. Mentally the difference will
be nearly the same.”
“Why do people marry so young, then?”
“For many reasons. Children are not taught
these things as they should be taught. Boys who
leave school early and earn for themselves usually
have no aim beyond mere physical satisfaction,
no large ideals to follow, and become a
prey to natural emotions they yield to but do not
understand.”
“How about the others—and girls?”
“The young man who takes a longer school
course or a profession must put his whole effort
to succeeding in that. He cannot take the burden
of a family life, and he has his work, sports,
various matters to occupy his attention, and all
his forces combine to the making of his higher
success. It is about the same with girls.”
.pn +1
.bn 076.png
“But why shouldn’t they love each other, be
engaged and wait?”
He thought it a long time before she
answered. When at last she turned and looked
deep in his eyes her voice took on the tender
tone he knew, and her words were grave.
“Billy, think back to the time when you were a
little boy and the apples, full grown and gloriously
tinted but hard as wood, tempted you from
their leafy nests. What would have happened
if you had fondled and pinched each one?”
Billy’s eyes darkened. “I—I—see.”
“Would it have been the fault of the apple if
it had become later a dented, spotted thing with
decay setting in before it had really ripened?”
“No.” He writhed inwardly at the conclusions
forced upon him.
“Remember, Billy, every girl is like an apple
slowly ripening toward womanhood.”
The room was very still, and they stood together,
Billy’s arm close about her waist, looking
out upon the distant shimmering lake. At
length she lifted her head suddenly and spoke
with a singular passion.
“My boy, the love relation between a man and
.pn +1
.bn 077.png
a woman is the holiest one on earth. It may begin
in passion, but if true, it ends in a constant
devotion that opens the door of heaven. Since
this is God’s way of keeping his race going it is
blasphemy to speak or even think coarsely of it,
or to enter upon it except devoutly. If there is
one relation in life that should be given preparation,
almost I would say that should be entered
upon with prayer and fasting, it is that by which
you shall become responsible for the welfare of
future beings, your children.”
She was trembling, and Billy knew now that
she understood him; that even if she did not
know the one he loved, she knew the fact. He
could not deceive her, nor did he wish it. He
felt relieved that she knew, though he could not
bring himself to speak of it. He thought it was
because he must not let any one intrude on Erminie’s
privacy, but the reason lay deeper than
that, deeper than he could then know.
The dinner was brought in. He had forgotten
his hurry; but now it returned, and he
hastened his meal and excused himself to go to
the rally.
He went round by Erminie’s home. He
.pn +1
.bn 078.png
wished to ask her of the situation Bess had described.
He was sure she could clear up everything
that troubled him, sure she could defend
her course no matter how it might look to
others. Perhaps she really disbelieved in politics
for girls; if so, she had a right to her opinion.
Yet why had she openly assisted the school
bully? That was as much a political move as
the other, and not so frank; more, it was exceedingly
unpopular. She could not be associated
with Jim in any matter, and hold the goodwill
of the best girls in school.
A hot wave swept over him. Whatever she
did, he must stand by her now, make life for her
better, not worse. Yet how could he do it?
Open interference between her and Barney
would be disastrous.
Still questioning anxiously of himself he rang
the bell; once, twice, and a third time. No one
answered, and after a wait and another ring he
went back to the playground, and found a noisy,
chaotic scene.
Redtop was manager. He had planned a
rally in imitation of the campaign meetings of
real politics. There would be speeches, and the
.pn +1
.bn 079.png
candidates for the playground officers would be
presented. There could be no rules, of course,
as if in a room, but three boys were appointed to
keep order, Billy being one. And everybody
was welcome.
Apparently the cityful had arrived before
Billy. As he approached, Redtop, perspiring
and anxious, called, “Billy Next Week, come
on! Get busy! Hold down those kids, will
you? This meeting’s got a football game
skinned silly on noise.”
“All right,” Billy responded cheerfully.
“Shall I scare ’em or run ’em in?”
“Oh, anything. Cop ’em or duck ’em. Here!
Take this.” He pinned a badge of authority on
Billy’s coat.
Billy started through the wriggling, shifting
mass of boys of many nationalities from fair-faced
Swede to swarthy Italian and garrulous
Irish boy, with quiet, squat Japanese fringing
the edges.
“The cop’s coming!” ran derisively from lip
to lip along the crowd, which curved back at
his approach, only to close in behind him with
more and more noise.
.pn +1
.bn 080.png
“Say! Fellers!” Billy wheeled and called
to the nearest, “What’s the matter of helping
here and getting the taffy a little later?”
“Sure, Mike,” cried some. And others asked,
“Where’s the taffy?”
Billy laughed and touched his lip. “You’ll
get as much as I will.”
“What’s that?”
“The fun. See? Now hike, and bring those
benches over here.” He waved his doubled fist
at them as if it were a club; and thirty or more
hurried off laughing, and began to labor with
the park benches which they set in semi-circular
rows on the grass around a central bench between
two torches, that was the speakers’ stand.
Coming on Sis Jones a moment later, Billy
asked him to look after the bench brigade, which
he did, crying out to Billy when he passed
again, “Gee! This is work! Where’s the
reward?”
“Where mine is,” Billy jeered. “Look at the
girls; they’re doing half of the work.” He
nodded to a dozen or more struggling by with
the heavy seats, one bending alone under the
weight of a short bench, and refusing help.
.pn +1
.bn 081.png
“Look at the strong Miss Kid!” shouted a
small boy.
“The mighty suffragette!” another fleered.
The girls only laughed, straightened a little,
and tugged on.
Some of the Kid’s followers caught Sis Jones,
stripped off his coat, tied a girl’s hat on him
with a scarf, threw a girl’s wrap over him,
pulled off his shoes and socks, and dragged him
forward into the circle of light, only to be themselves
caught and lashed to trees farther back.
Billy and his helpers rushed about frantically.
Redtop mounted his bench platform and tried
to call the meeting to order; but the uproar increased,
and after a moment of vain gesticulating
for quiet he stepped down amid wildest
cheers.
Two large boys swung a little negro back and
forth, head down, commanding him to sing.
Too frightened to emit a sound he finally wriggled
away from them and fled like a rabbit, with
a dozen yelling buffoons after him.
A third group crowned a tiny girl with evergreen,
lifted her to their close-touching shoulders,
and paraded with her around the open
.pn +1
.bn 082.png
space, shouting, “Madam President!” “I rise
to a point of order!” “I have the floor—”
“No, no! It’s the ground!” and a lot more
nonsense.
The pranks went on while those in charge
conferred apart upon the question of handling
the mob, each in turn bolstering the courage of
the rest.
“Gee whiz! I didn’t expect any of the real
thing—voters and mamas,” Redtop panted as
he lunged back after his inauspicious beginning.
“What are we to do?”
“If we fizzle out, the girls will never stop
guying us,” Sis Jones groaned; “they toted
almost as many benches as we did.”
“Get a girl to start the meeting; they’re keen
on it, and maybe the fellows wouldn’t give it to
a girl so—so in the neck.”
“Where’s Hec? What does he say?”
“I say we’ve got to beat that crowd into respect,
or not only the Progressives will lose their
election, but we’ll lose ours.”
“But this is no meeting for the student body,”
Redtop urged.
“No. But Barney and Buckman and their
.pn +1
.bn 083.png
crowd know that nearly every one who will vote
for me is mixed up in this playground fight on
the side of the Progressives. The Good Citizens’
Club stands for the Progressives too.”
“You go speak to them now, Hec,” Redtop
urged.
“No, he can’t,” Billy objected. “He’s the
principal speaker of the evening; he must be
introduced properly.”
Behind them stood Bess Carter bursting with
indignation. “You boys haven’t the spunk of a
flea!” she taunted, and before they could reply
she was standing on the bench gazing fearlessly
but silently around on the mob. Her advent, so
sudden and unheralded, touched the most quieting
element of a crowd, its curiosity.
Tall, erect, her dark eyes flashing in the light
of the torches, her beauty enhanced by her air of
refinement and womanliness,—her power was
felt by every little hoodlum there as keenly as by
the older people.
“Gee! The Queen of Sheba’ll do the trick!”
Billy ejaculated softly.
For what seemed to be minutes she stood, motionless
except for her quick-glancing eyes,
.pn +1
.bn 084.png
calmly waiting for perfect silence. It came at
length, and she bowed gracefully and smiled as
if she had expected nothing else.
“Ladies and gentlemen and fellow students:
I did not mount this rostrum to make a speech,
only to announce that the meeting is about to
begin, and that we shall expect quiet. For really
good Americans this is an unnecessary request.
For any others who may possibly be here we
have behind us real American policemen who
will take charge of them.”
She bowed and in a moment was back among
the anxious group again, while the audience
clapped and roared, and the high-school boys
shouted, “Hooray for the Queen!” “Bully for
her!” and other elegant expressions that nevertheless
held only admiration.
“Bess! What did you say that for? We have
no police—”
“Not now, but we’re going to! I never saw
such barbarians! I’m going to telephone for
the police!” Before any could stop her she was
flying across the street to find a telephone.
Taking advantage of the lull that followed
her speech, Redtop mounted the bench and in
.pn +1
.bn 085.png
the briefest way announced the programme and
introduced the first speaker, who was Reginald
Steele. Hector was to follow him, and Billy
was to be called on for an impromptu speech,
when he would introduce one or two of the girls.
But this programme was never carried out.
Before Reginald got to his “secondly,” two boys
sprang at the torches and extinguished them;
half a dozen bunches of firecrackers began to
explode in different localities; and a scream
from the wading pool at the same moment completed
the panic.
The long twilight had faded and the scattered
park lamps shed only faint gleams.
“There’s no danger! Everyone go home
quietly!” shouted one man. And another
called, “The little chap that screamed fell into
the wading pool. He isn’t hurt, and has gone
home.”
In five minutes the playground was deserted
and silent under the quiet stars. Billy remained
to the last, searching in vain for Erminie. He
had seen her there, and expected her to wait for
him. On a sudden impulse he decided to go
across to her home.
.pn +1
.bn 086.png
As he neared the house he saw her standing
under the porch light with Jim Barney. Her
face was in the shadow, and he could not hear
their words; but he knew from their low, tense
tones and Jim’s eager, bending attitude, that
their conversation was important.
Billy watched them an instant, dazed and uncertain,
yet tormented by the tender pleading in
an occasional tone that floated out to him in Erminie’s
voice. But eavesdropping Billy despised;
and as soon as he could recover himself
he turned away, his disappointment at the utter
failure of the meeting pushed to insignificance
by this puzzling, sinister, covert situation that
included both Erminie and Jim. Billy was
utterly perplexed. What could she mean?
Slowly, his feet weighing tons, he plodded
home, and entered to find the telephone ringing.
He hurried to take down the receiver that the
household might not be disturbed. “Who is
it?”
“Erminie,” came back over the wire. “Oh,
Billy, I’m so glad to get you!”
“Yes?” Billy could not keep the coldness
out of his voice. He was hearing again the tender
.pn +1
.bn 087.png
eagerness in her tone as the Kid bent over
her twenty minutes before.
“Oh, I don’t wonder you speak in that Alaska
voice, Billy; but you don’t know everything.
Billy, dear, won’t you trust me? Just for a few
days?”
“I—I’d like to,” he sent back huskily over
the wire. Even at that distance he could feel
her power over him, hear the caress in each word.
“You may, Billy. And you won’t be sorry. Good-night.”
Without another word she hung up, leaving
Billy a trifle comforted but more perplexed
than ever.
.pn +1
.bn 088.png
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch05
CHAPTER V || ERMINIE FUMBLES THE GAME
.sp 2
.dc 0.25 0.7
TWO weeks later came the annual Junior
picnic. It was a variation this year in
being set for evening. They had chartered a
steamer and were to stop at one of the wildest
points on A-mo-té Island.
There was merely a little clearing, with one
or two rustic pavilions for shelter against rain,
and the dancing platform. This last was rated
the best out-of-doors dancing floor anywhere
around the city or its suburbs, and was correspondingly
popular with young people.
Billy started off in fine spirits with a basket
his mother had prepared, and a proud feeling
that he would not be ashamed to open it in the
presence of any girl. He had begged Erminie to
let him bring the luncheon for the two of them;
and when he met her as agreed at the trolley line
transfer point, care-free, erect and strong, his
eyes shining with anticipation, it was little
.pn +1
.bn 089.png
wonder that he saw an answering look of pleasure
and pride in her eyes. He was a young man
any girl might feel it a privilege to know; better
still, older and deeper-seeing ones, mothers,
would turn to observe him and wish their own
sons might be like him.
“On time, Erminie!” he greeted gayly as he
helped her from the car almost before it came
to a stop. “Good girl!”
“Isn’t it perfect?” She met his frank gaze
cordially. “Just warm enough, and the moon is
full.”
The week had been a hard one for her. She
had struggled to hold the goodwill of Jim Barney
without allowing him the familiarities he
had once enjoyed; familiarities she would allow
no boy after knowing Billy. She was anxious
that Billy’s side in both school and playground
politics should win, but she knew the only way
she could help him was to remain good friends
with Jim.
She used her utmost subtlety to exact from
him a pledge of civility toward Billy and Hector,
and found this was the hardest bit of
management she had ever undertaken. The Kid
.pn +1
.bn 090.png
was as keen as she was, and had a half womanish
intuition that matched her own. And
Erminie could no longer juggle with the truth
as formerly; it hurt her. When taxed with undue
interest in Billy, her denials did not ring
true; and her witty sallies ridiculing Jim were
half-hearted. Had he been less in love, or Erminie
less than altogether beautiful and charming,
she would have made no impression.
Billy had looked forward to this day as one
of reckoning. With this in view he had insisted
that Erminie go to the picnic with him openly.
“Don’t you frame up to go with Jim,” he had
whispered days before, in a moment of waiting
in the rain for a car at the school corner; “I
won’t stand for it this time; I’ve things to say
to you.”
“Oh! It’s good to be with you once more,
just us two,” she said, as they went aboard, and
forward to the very peak of the bow of the
steamer.
But there was too much hilarity for any two,
however absorbed, to remain unnoticed.
“Oh, here you are, Fishie!” one jolly girl
shouted, and bore down on them, dragging in
.pn +1
.bn 091.png
her train others with boys following. “We don’t
need spoons at this picnic! Come on, you—the
boys are going to get the band to play so we can
dance.” She pulled Erminie to her feet; and
shortly two or three dozen couple were whirling
around on the crowded deck.
Erminie and Billy took a turn or two and
dropped out, preferring to wait for the ampler
room and smoother floor of the pavilion. Yet
when they sought their places forward again,
and the music and preoccupation of the dancers
isolated them almost as much as walls would
have done, neither of them could speak of what
was uppermost in both minds. The hour and
the surroundings were not propitious.
Billy fretted inwardly. There was much to
say. She must know all his plans; all he had
thought and dreamed since that evening—was
it only a few days ago?—in the park, that evening
that had changed all his life. Still these
were serious matters, even sacred. He could not
bring himself to mention them here, where unsympathetic
eyes might read his emotions in his
face; he was not an adept at hiding them as
Erminie was.
.pn +1
.bn 092.png
When the hour’s trip was nearly over she gave
him a quick nudge with her arm. “There’s
Jim!” She looked down the stairway.
“Where? I thought you said he wasn’t
coming.”
“So I did. He said he had work to do.”
“Work!” Billy’s tone held a fine scorn. “Did
you think any one would stay away for that? I
wouldn’t. I’ve worked in our garden till nearly
ten o’clock some of the nights this week, so I
might feel free for to-day. I didn’t know till
yesterday it was changed to an evening affair.”
But Erminie was not heeding. “Billy, you
must not let Jim see—”
“Jim be hanged! You’ve put me off for days
with that plea. I’m not afraid of the Kid, I—”
“Oh, Billy! Won’t you listen—”
“Not to one word. I brought you to this picnic;
I have the lunch, and you’re going to sit it
out with me while we eat, and dance with me,
and go home—”
While he spoke, Jim and Walter Buckman
came up from the lower deck, in animated discussion
of some matter that pleased them both.
The dancers had stopped, and nearly all were
.pn +1
.bn 093.png
standing in groups at the rail, watching the
shore come nearer as the puffing craft approached
the landing.
“Oh, you Fishie!” Jim sang out on seeing
her. “You’re going to feed with Buck and me;
we’ve got the grub and—”
Billy rose, and every vestige of his light good
humor faded; was replaced by a sternness Jim
had never seen. “Miss Fisher has consented to
be my partner for the evening; and I also have
the—the grub.” Erminie herself could not have
edged a sarcasm with finer scorn than Billy
threw into his last word.
Jim eyed him in surprise for a second, then
broke out in a loud voice, “Well, Miss Fisher
belongs to—” His eyes burned red and his
hands clenched involuntarily.
His companion though not as bright was more
prudent than Jim; also he was selfish; he wanted
the presidency, and knew that open hostility in
any direction endangered his chances. “Come
off, Kid! You always kick in for fair play.”
And ingratiatingly bowing to Erminie, “Probably
Miss Fisher was engaged to Mr. Bennett
first.”
.pn +1
.bn 094.png
“Mr. Bennett nothing! By jiminy!—”
But Erminie interrupted glibly. “I’ve expected
to come to this picnic with Billy ever
since I knew there was to be one.”
“But I told you—”
She laughed nervously. “Jim Barney,
you’ve told me a good many things lately; but
if you are Boss of the Fifth Avenue High you’re
not my boss.”
The words were not out of her mouth before
she knew that all of her plot and subterfuge of
the past weeks was lost. Daily her repugnance
to Jim and his methods had been growing. She
had tolerated, wheedled him, only that it might
be easier for Billy till the end of the term.
Now, with that day only two weeks off, she had
in a moment undone all she had gained.
Yet even in that instant of dismay she was
filled with relief. She need dissemble no more.
She could be straight with Billy and fight Jim
in the open. She would tell Bess Carter a little—what
she needed to tell, join the Progressives,
and be with those she believed were doing well.
Jim was angry through and through, and too
astonished to speak immediately; and in the
.pn +1
.bn 095.png
moment of his hesitancy Walter Buckman led
him away.
“Billy! Billy!” Erminie whispered as she
started up. “You don’t know what an awful
thing I’ve done!”
“You’ve done what I wished you would do
long ago, and I’ll stand for whatever happens.”
A proud light shone in his eye that she saw others
besides herself could read.
“I’m going to speak to Bess Carter,—tell her
that I’ll work with her. Anyway it will be better
if I’m not seen with you till the Kid’s mad
cools off.”
She started across the deck but he detained
her. “Erminie! Did you promise Jim you’d
come—come here with—”
“No, Billy, he took it for granted. I laughed
and let it go so, for that was my game then. But—oh,
Billy! I’ve fumbled everything! And
it’s going to be hard for you when I was trying
to make it—”
“Never mind me. I can fight my own
battles.”
The steamer bumped the wharf, lurching the
standing ones against one another; and the
.pn +1
.bn 096.png
merry confusion of disembarking drove all serious
matters to cover of silence. The few teachers,
making as little as possible of their duties as
chaperones, let the young people manage things
for themselves.
Dinner was the first consideration; and as no
one there knew quite so much about coffee as
Reginald Steele and Billy, that was their job,
which occupied them wholly, together with Bess
Carter, skilled in cookery through use of the tiny
rock fireplace on the bank of Runa Creek in
“good old California.”
Erminie, who had no more idea of how to
make coffee for three hundred than she had concerning
heavenly ambrosia, hovered close to the
three, anxious to tell Bess of her change of heart,
yet more anxious to keep away from Jim Barney,
and most of all to be near Billy, who meant
strength and deliverance to her.
It was early June and the sun still high at
seven o’clock, when they began dinner. In
groups of several, with perhaps fifty sitting in
comfort at the long table in the bark-roofed pavilion,
but oftenest in couples seated apart in the
many nooks of the small clearing, they chattered
.pn +1
.bn 097.png
and feasted, punctuating the meal with many
noisy pranks and repeated yells.
Erminie had expected this to be the moment
for the quiet talk with Billy. No less had he
looked forward to it; but the coffee pots were
an unanticipated tyranny. The making did not
end the care. The pots were not large enough,
and more water had to be heated, and a second
lot made for the thirsty crowd. Billy had barely
spread his cloth, with Erminie’s help laid out
the contents of his attractive basket, when the call
came; and his time till all the rest were satisfied,
was spent in running back and forth, bolting
sandwiches on the way.
And so it happened that dinner was over and
the fiddlers already calling eager feet, while
Billy was finishing his meal.
“It’s too bad, Billy! You let every one impose
on you.”
“No matter. You shall be next. Impose on
me as much as you like. Is it dancing?”
“Nothing doing. You like that as well as
I do.”
“Let’s try it then. You can cook up something
later in the imposition line.”
.pn +1
.bn 098.png
They piled the remnants of the dainty meal
into the basket and went to the pavilion.
The music, the perfect evening, all conditions
were auspicious for restless young creatures who
inevitably love the motion and harmony of dancing;
and Erminie and Billy enjoyed it more than
most people do, for they were both musical and
danced well.
It was an “informal” to-night, with no programmes,
each making engagements for but two
or three dances ahead. Billy wished he did not
have to dance with any one but Erminie; indeed
he did sit out most of the dances he did not have
with her; sat and watched her as she whirled by
him, scarcely touching the floor, it seemed. In
the earlier evening he thought he wanted nothing
else but the chance to take her away by herself
and talk; but the music and the motion
intoxicated both of them, and when he held her
in his arms, in their favorite dance, each movement
so attuned that they felt as one being, he
wished they might glide on and on, with no
thought of time.
But musicians tire if dancers do not; and
when at last the best dance of all stopped
.pn +1
.bn 099.png
abruptly he drew her away. The boys had gone
variously dressed, and as the evening was warm
many of them, among others Billy, had laid aside
their coats.
“You must get your coat, Billy,” Erminie
warned as they went out of the pavilion. “Mine
too. I hung them both on that big cedar. I’ll
walk on.”
When he went to find them he noticed some
one start hastily away from the tree and slip
around the other side. He wondered a little
why any one should be there instead of dancing,
but he was too absorbed with Erminie to think
long of anything else; and he ran back to her,
putting on his coat as he went.
“Is it all right?” he asked as he helped her on
with hers.
“Yes. Did you think it had changed color?”
“I might have taken the wrong one, you
know.”
“Billy, let’s go round by those trees to a place
I know that’s beautiful,—high above the
water.”
“That goes. Is it far? We mustn’t be late
to the boat.”
.pn +1
.bn 100.png
“Only a little way, a block or two. We can
hear the whistle and run.”
They followed a smooth trail to a jutting
point where the underbrush had been cut and a
rustic seat placed to catch the full beauty of the
view.
The warm fragrance of the evening, the pulsing
melodies that floated to them softened by
distance and foliage, the brilliant moon silvering
the broad lake that splashed softly at their
feet, the ghostly mountain in the south looming
into the sky till it seemed a white pathway
right into heaven itself,—it is little wonder that
they sat silent, entranced for a moment, each
thrilled by the spell of the night.
Erminie was the first to speak. “Billy, I
can’t tell you how sorry I am for that break.”
“I’m glad.”
“It’s something terrible. Jim’ll make you
pay for it,—me too, for he isn’t above hurting a
girl; but I deserve it, and—”
Billy turned, quickly moving closer. “Erminie,
you must not worry about this thing any
longer. He’ll have to reckon with me on more
than one count. I—hoped to get through the
.pn +1
.bn 101.png
year without a clash, but I see it’s bound to
come; when it does I’ll get in your score too.”
“No, no, Billy! You mustn’t fight him!
He’ll say things, do things that will lose Hector
the vote because you are his cousin. He’ll—”
She broke off suddenly and covered her face
with her hands.
Billy reached over and drew one hand down
in his own. “Erminie!” His voice was tender.
“I can’t let you worry about this. You
must tell me just why you are afraid of him, so
I won’t be doing things in the dark.”
She lifted her face to the moonlight and
sighed; and Billy thought she had never been so
lovely, never so womanly. “Oh, Billy!” There
was a catch in her voice that made his hand
close quickly on hers. “Before I knew you I
thought it great fun to be engaged to several
boys at once—Jim was one of them. It was
like a game, and—”
“Yes?” he prompted, and did not know that
his grasp of her hand loosened.
“I’m ashamed to tell about it now, but I
thought it all right then. I used to like to see
how the different ones did it, to see if I could
.pn +1
.bn 102.png
catch the difficult ones—” She stopped again,
divining Billy’s disapprobation; but when he
did not speak she continued:
“I thought it fun to watch them get jealous
of each other; to plan to keep them apart or let
them meet, whichever I was in the mood for at
the time.”
“What did your mother say? Did she
know?” Billy asked after an instant of silence.
“Oh, yes. I used to tell her a lot. It was
about all the pleasure she had,—poor ma! Her
life’s awfully dull. Hearing about my courting
affairs keeps her sort of waked up.”
“Did she approve?”
Erminie laughed at his solemn tone. “Sure.
She said it was all good practice; would teach
me how to land big game when it came my way.”
Another and a longer silence awed the girl.
Billy had no idea that the seconds were ticking
by interminably to her; he was trying to place in
his mind the Erminie just revealed to him. Her
measure of life was so different from any he
knew; her mother so—so impossible as a
mother, repelled him as a travesty on womanhood.
.pn +1
.bn 103.png
Yet recalling her from his few glimpses
he could not help a feeling of pity mingling
with his condemnation.
It was natural, though he could not have told
why, that he should blame Erminie’s mother,
her father, any one and every one rather than
herself. She was near him. She was beautiful,—to-night
with the calm moon glorifying, etherealizing
her face, more than ever beautiful,—and
she could not help doing things differently
from—his sister, for instance, who had been so
differently reared.
“Billy! Why don’t you talk to me? Don’t
look off at nothing as if I were not on earth!
I’m not like that now. I know you, and—”
He took her hand again in the closer clasp,
and she saw a new look in his face, the look his
mother saw when they discussed together the
deep things of life. “Erminie, I have been trying
to see your life as you see it. You know my
mother is—she talks things over with me—the
things a chap needs to know before he starts out
for himself; and I have come to see pretty deep
into—into the sort of thing that’s between us,
.pn +1
.bn 104.png
engagements and that; what it means to one’s
whole life, what it means to the race.”
“Why, Billy! Billy! Does your mother talk
to you of such things?”
He smiled innocently at her vehemence.
“Why not? My father is dead; who would tell
me things if she didn’t?”
She looked out over the shimmering moon-track
on the water. “I—I never heard of such
a thing.”
“Do you think the Creator makes anything
bad?”
“Why—why I suppose not,” she returned,
wonderingly.
“That’s the point; He doesn’t. It’s only us
that make wrong out of his creations.”
A shrill whistle startled them.
“Billy! It can’t be time to go!” She started
up.
“That must be the first whistle.” He looked
at his watch and calmly pulled her back to the
seat. “It’s only ten; ten-thirty is leaving time.
If we start ten minutes before we’ll have scads
of time.” He dropped his watch back into his
coat pocket.
.pn +1
.bn 105.png
“That’s no place to carry a watch,” she
chaffed as they readjusted themselves.
“Yes, it is, for I’m such a kid for dropping it
when I bend over anything, a fire for instance.
And then my coat is always off.”
They talked on, but of other matters. Both
were relieved at the interruption of the tense
moment, yet Erminie had a regret she could not
understand. More than ever Billy attracted her
because of his larger, deeper knowledge. He
knew the forbidden things, things she only
whispered about, yet on his lips they had a dignity,
a purity unbounded. He never made silly
jokes where reverence was due, yet never went
out of his way to avoid anything that came in
the natural course of conversation. He was the
only one she knew who did this; and she wished
she, too, might have such an open mind toward
life.
“Billy! The music has stopped!” She rose
hastily and started down the path.
“Oh, I guess it’s only the wait between
dances.” But he was suddenly conscious that it
had been long, and hurried after her.
They turned the point where the pavilion
.pn +1
.bn 106.png
came to view to see it looming dark and deserted.
From the wharf the noise of embarking came
warningly.
“Gee! They’re going!” Billy caught her
hand and ran with her down the steep hill.
But they were too late. When first they
started, the steamer was setting off. Now she
was well out in the lake, headed northward.
Billy called at the top of his voice; and Erminie
added her frantic shriek to his; but the
band was playing, the young people shouting
and “jollying,” and no one heard. The two
could hear sudden gusts of laughter rising above
the music, and after that the steady rhythm and
beat of the instruments.
“Oh, Billy, it’s no use!” Erminie sobbed, as
the boat grew smaller and smaller on the gray
water.
“I guess we’re in for a night of it on a desert
island.”
They faced each other there in the moonlight,
silent, wondering, perplexed.
.pn +1
.bn 107.png
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch06
CHAPTER VI || THE REVEALING NIGHT
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.7
FOR minutes they stood looking after the
boat. They could not believe it true.
Left on the island, far from any habitation!
It seemed as if some one must miss them, as if
the steamer would surely come chugging back
after them.
But instead it went farther and farther away,
and presently out of sight.
As the last gleam of light disappeared around
a far point of land, Erminie turned in dismay.
“Oh, Billy, do you know the way to the Beckets’?”
“Who are they? I never heard of them.”
“They live on this island, but I don’t know
the direction.”
“The island is five miles long and wooded
like a jungle. We might wander in a circle for
hours and not get five hundred yards from where
we started.” Billy spoke calmly and rather absently.
.pn +1
.bn 108.png
He was sizing up the situation, trying
to see the best way out of it. While they talked,
clouds that had been earlier hovering on the
horizon, now joined and veiled the moon.
“Gee! If Luna goes back on us we’ll have
to give up travel by land.”
“Perhaps there’s a boat—canoe or rowboat.”
“I’ll see. You stay here a minute—”
She caught his hand. “Billy! If you leave
me I’ll scream; and if I do that I’ll faint, I
know I will. There may be wild cats!”
Billy laid an impressive hand on her arm.
“Kid, there are no wild animals about here.
We’re just as safe here as anywhere. And whatever
comes, we’ve got to buck up and take it,
haven’t we?”
“Ye-es, I suppose so. Oh, I’ll try to be game
if—if only you won’t leave me, Billy.”
“All right. It’s partnership, then. Come
on.”
They went to the wharf and skirted the lake
up and down a few steps, but found nothing.
“Perhaps that path we took leads to some
house,” Erminie suggested.
They climbed the hill to the pavilions again,
.pn +1
.bn 109.png
and followed the path; but it ended in the little
clearing where they had sat a few minutes before—hours
it seemed to Billy.
“Possibly there’s some other trail leading off
from the park; let’s investigate.”
They went back, and slowly, and with many
scratches from blackberry vines, Billy leading,
they felt their way around it, diving into the
dense thickets at each promising bit of openness,
only to be met after a few steps with close-woven
vines, breast-high ferns braided like a net, or
fallen logs covered with briers.
Erminie stumbled and almost fell; rose pluckily
before Billy could reach her; tried again;
fell prone the next time, and was not quite on
her feet when he came.
“Erminie, you can’t stand this. We’ll have
to give it up. It’s so dark anyway with the
moon hidden that if there was a path we’d likely
miss it.”
“What then, Billy? We can’t give up trying.”
“Suppose we try the shore again. Perhaps
we can make it that way to some house.”
She agreed, and they went to the water’s edge
.pn +1
.bn 110.png
and started north. But their progress was
stopped by the very promontory from which,
high above, they had looked out on the moonlit
lake. The bank rose perpendicularly from the
water, which was deep here; and the only way
to proceed was to climb back to the cleared space
and down on the other side, a course they had already
proved unfeasible.
Next they tried the southern way. Unlike the
shores of salt water, there was no beach to be
bared by lowering tides; and they could only
pick their way along shore at the edges of the
same dense growth as above, a growth that in
spots even trespassed on the water.
They succeeded in going some distance; and
once were cheered by discovering an unmistakable
path; but when they had followed it a little
distance it grew less plain, and broke into half
a dozen blind trails which all ended in the blank
wall of green.
They tried one or two of these, their courage
and Erminie’s strength growing less with each
effort.
“What made trails like these, I wonder?”
Billy asked, half to himself.
.pn +1
.bn 111.png
“Could they be deer trails? There were ever
so many on the island years ago; dad used to
come here to hunt.”
“Whatever they are they aren’t for us.” Billy
looked at his watch. “Twelve o’clock! We’ve
been thrashing round for nearly two hours, and
got nowhere; and you’re all in, Erminie. We
must go back to the picnic ground and think out
some other scheme.”
Erminie made no objection. She was too
weary and frightened to do anything but fall in
with his suggestions. Billy himself, as perplexed
as she was, and with the added weight
of responsibility for her safety, felt the need of
a little respite for fresh planning.
In silence they climbed the hill again, each
thankful for the broad smooth path that led up
from the steamer landing.
“The first thing is a snack, Erminie. It’s a
great thing for us that my mother’s eyes are bigger
than our appetites,—at least for a first trial.”
He left her in the pavilion and went to look
for his basket, but it was gone. Puzzled and
more weary than he knew till this fresh disappointment
revealed it, he dropped to the ground
.pn +1
.bn 112.png
for an instant in sheer discouragement. What
next? They would have to remain all night,—there
was no other way. And what would that
mean?
For himself it did not matter; he would tell
his people just how it happened, and they would
believe him; they always did. But Erminie—would
other people—strangers—believe?
Think as well of her as before? Would her father——Her
father! What would he say?
Billy knew he was a violent man; what would
he do?
She called him, and there was a pitiful note
of distress in her voice that warned Billy he
must not leave her alone. “I’m coming!” he
answered, and sprang up, aroused by her need
to fresh action and a semblance of cheer. “You
can’t shake me, you see.” He ran up the steps
toward her.
“I’m so afraid when you are not near me,
Billy.” Her voice trembled.
“I couldn’t find our basket. I guess Mumps
or some of them thought I had forgotten it, and
took it along.”
A sudden gust shook the trees above them, and
.pn +1
.bn 113.png
the noise coming so unexpectedly on the dead
quiet of the cloudy night, startled them.
“It’s going to rain; and you’re shivering,
too,” he added as he took her outstretched hand
at the top of the steps. “The first thing to do
is to make a fire.”
“Can you? Have you any matches?”
“No, but I guess there will be some coals
under the ashes.”
They went down and raked over the fireplace,
but the boys had obeyed the rules only too well;
every vestige of live coal was gone.
For a minute they stood speechless, looking
out over the dark and angry water. There
seemed to Erminie absolutely nothing further
to be done. She was worn and faint, and with
difficulty restrained her tears.
“There’s nothing for it but to try to make a
fire camp fashion. It will be tough work, even
if it doesn’t rain.”
As if in answer to this last, another gust swept
through the trees, louder than the first.
“Erminie, you’re just all right. You’ve
never once hinted that I was the boss slob to get
you into this.”
.pn +1
.bn 114.png
“Why, Billy, I wouldn’t think of such a
thing. I saw as plain as you that half-past ten
was the leaving hour. It’s the fault of the
steamer people; or——Are you sure your
watch is right?”
“Yes. It’s never failed yet. My brother Hal
said it was guaranteed. He gave it to me. It
hasn’t varied a minute in two months. But this
isn’t work. You go back and cuddle as close in
that corner as you can, little girl, and try to
keep warm, while I see what I can do with my
jack knife. Here’s a time when a fellow that
smokes has the advantage.”
“I don’t see why he couldn’t carry matches
if he didn’t smoke.”
“I know one chump that will after this.”
But Erminie did not settle to uselessness.
“While you’re trying to make a fire I’ll see
what was shaken out of the tablecloth. I saw
them hold it over this corner; and if we could
find a roll or a bit of meat,—you wouldn’t mind
eating scraps just about now, would you,
Billy?”
The cheer that came into her tone with the
prospect of something to do heartened Billy as
much as herself. “Mind? I could eat the shell
.pn +1
.bn 115.png
right off the eggs. You’re a bright kid, you
are, all right.”
“Oh, I’m sure it will be something better
than egg-shells.”
“Go to it. You may find a course dinner
there in the grass, or at least the nice brown tint
on one of Bess Carter’s biscuits.”
She laughed, which pleased him; and he went
to a spot in the path where he remembered to
have stubbed his toe on a projecting rock, intending
to get it for a flint. But he had barely
found it when she called to him.
“Billy! Billy! I’ve found a match-box with
one match in it.”
“Bully! We’re saved!” He was by her side
in a second.
“But one match,—it’s—”
“It’s as good as ten.”
He was woodsman enough to succeed with
his fire very quickly.
“How did you come to be so clever, Billy?”
She watched him intently as he prepared his
gathered paper, twigs, bits of bark, and boughs;
and struck his precious match within the shelter
of his coat.
Soon a crackling blaze cheered and warmed
.pn +1
.bn 116.png
them. And when Erminie found some sandwiches
and a few bits of ham thrown away in
its wrappings of oiled paper, they felt as if a
second feast had been like manna dropped from
heaven to save them. The moon broke through
the clouds for a minute, and Billy, rummaging
in the grass, found the discarded coffee sack.
“Good enough! Hot coffee in five minutes!”
he called softly. Without realizing it they had
not spoken really aloud. Unconsciously they
felt and acted as if a thousand sentient, invisible
beings surrounded them, hearing and seeing
their every word and move.
Billy found a lard pail, one among the many
thrown away, washed it, saw it did not leak, and
put the coffee to boil a second time. When a
few minutes later they drank it, without sugar
or cream, they thought it better than any coffee
they had ever tasted before.
With hunger banished and the cheer of the
warm fire, the situation seemed less direful; and
they sat with feet to the embers and talked more
calmly.
“Don’t you think a steamer will be along
early in the morning, Billy?”
.pn +1
.bn 117.png
“I don’t know the Sunday schedule very well.
I think they stop here only for picnic parties;
but I shall tie my handkerchief to the signal
pole; maybe she’ll see it out there if she has a
regular run to town.”
“There’ll be the Sunday picnics! But we
don’t want—we must not be seen by—by anybody
here.”
The tone of desperation told him that she had
waked to the fact that had troubled him ever
since he knew they were left,—what might be
said when their plight became known.
“It’s lucky to-morrow’s Sunday; it needn’t
be known at school,” he comforted.
“How can it be helped?”
“If we can’t get a steamer in the early morning
you can hide in the brush by the wharf till
the boat discharges her passengers; and when
they are climbing the hill, you step into the path
and head for the steamer. No one will know
that you are not one of them, and the steamer
people will think you came only for the boat
ride, or—oh, they won’t notice you any way.”
“But the picnickers, Billy; they’ll know I
don’t belong—”
.pn +1
.bn 118.png
“Sure they won’t. At those promiscuous public
picnics half are strangers to the rest.”
“But you, Billy? When—?”
“Don’t worry about this kid. If we’re not
seen together, no one will be able to say certainly
that we were here. You just ’phone my mother
that I’m safe—” He stopped suddenly, his
face pale with another thought which he did
not voice,—her people might be seeking her,
telephoning to the pupils, the police. That
would mean certain disclosure of the whole situation.
“Your mother will be having a bad
time, I’m afraid,” he said calmly.
To his consternation Erminie showed no concern.
“Oh, no; ma won’t worry. She’ll think
I’ve gone home with one of the girls.”
“Is it—is it often—that way? Doesn’t she
know where you go?”
“Not to which house. I’ve a lot of chums,
most of them out of school; and their young
men—when I don’t have one of my own—take
us to the theatre, and to supper afterwards; and
it’s late then; and if I stay with the girl the
young fellow doesn’t have to make another trip
taking me home.”
.pn +1
.bn 119.png
Billy was silent, wondering what his mother
would think of a girl who went about thus. It
revealed to him a new sort of girl-life. In his
boyhood town of Vina such a situation as this
could not have happened; and in his city life
he had known intimately only the cherished and
protected daughters of careful parents.
His own evenings were full of boyish things,
meetings, study, decorous calls, and work or
play at home. His attendance at the theatre was
rare, either in school groups or with his mother,
or alone, high among the “gallery gods.” He
tried to put out of mind the feeling of “commonness”
that Erminie’s story gave him.
As if she divined his thought, she said a little
plaintively, “I know lots of mothers don’t think
it nice for girls to run about so; but mine always
told me to go ahead and have a good time while
I could. When I am married, she says, all such
fun will be over.”
“Well, it won’t be!” Billy’s vehemence
startled her. “But it will be a long time before
we can be married; I’ve got to learn how to earn
a living first. But it shall be a good enough living
to include a little fun.”
.pn +1
.bn 120.png
“Billy!” Surprise, gratitude, and besides
these a more genuine and womanly emotion than
she had ever experienced, came out in the single
word. “Billy, what do you mean?”
“Mean? Why, our marriage of course. At
first I felt badly because you would have to wait
so long; but I don’t any more. I had a good
chin with my mother. You and I—we’ll both
of us be all the better for waiting and—learning
things.”
For a time Erminie sat quite still save for absently
stirring the ashes with a twig. When she
did speak her voice was low, with a half timid
note in it that touched Billy. “How splendid
you are, Billy! Too good for me. I didn’t
dream you thought that—that we were engaged.”
“Gee! How else could I save you from Alvin
Short?”
“But, Billy, that—that is not exactly a reason
for—for—”
“Don’t you care for me? Wasn’t that what
you meant that night I—I kissed you?”
“Oh, yes, I care for you, Billy; ever so much;
but I never got as far as an engagement. I—”
.pn +1
.bn 121.png
“But that kiss—”
“Oh, I just thought you kissed me because—well—because—Oh,
Billy, do you tell your
mother everything?”
He caught the anxiety in her speech, and wondered
if kisses of the sort he had given her were
so common in her life that she could dismiss
them with merely a “because.” But his reply
was to her question only.
“‘Most everything. You see I’m just the
common transparent sort,—she reads me anyway.
But of course I didn’t tell her about you;
that’s your secret. I shall not tell that till you
give me leave.”
She caught up his hand in both her own.
“I believe you’re the best boy that ever lived.”
“Boy! That’s just what I am! And you
need a man, right now, to protect you.”
“You are doing it,—doing it better than any
man I ever knew.”
He threw on some more wood. “I’ll have to
hunt fuel in a minute,” he said, and stirred the
fire to a blaze.
“What did your mother say that changed
your mind about—about—”
.pn +1
.bn 122.png
“About waiting to get married?” he finished
as she hesitated, and repeated much of the conversation
prompted by the pinching of the geranium
buds.
Erminie was silent again, and Billy waited on
her mood. When she did speak her words were
plaintive and halting. “Billy,—Billy, dear, it
would be a very wrong thing for you to marry
me. I am older, anyway, and it would wreck
your life to be hampered with a—a wife when
you’re so young. Perhaps—perhaps there’ll
be—”
“Perhaps children,” he finished fearlessly.
“I’ve thought that all out; but you need me to
take care of you; and after—this—this night,
it’s got to be.”
“Oh! oh!” She cowered a little closer.
“People won’t know of—of this—” She put
her hand over her eyes and shivered.
“They may; and—”
“It’s awful!” she burst out. “Just because
an accident happens, for people to talk—say
bad things about us.”
“They won’t think it an accident, Erminie.
Don’t you see? I have a watch—all our set
.pn +1
.bn 123.png
know how foolishly I’ve bragged about it. We
had our strict orders not to go out of sight—”
“We weren’t out of sight,—not in the day-time
anyway.”
“And to be on hand at the ten-thirty whistle.”
“But it wasn’t ten-thirty; it was ten.”
“We can’t make folks believe that.”
A sudden dash of rain fell upon them and
made the fire sputter.
“Gee!” Billy sprang up and threw on the
last of the wood, arranging it to cover the heart
of the fire from the rain. “Get under shelter,
quick! We’re in for a heavy shower.”
She stood, but did not move away. “Aren’t
you coming too?”
“No. I must keep up the fire. Go and get
under the table; that will be more sheltered.
Here! Tie my handkerchief around your
neck.”
There was a new insistence in his words. She
obeyed as a little child, and he hastened to the
fringing woods. He remembered where he had
seen a fallen tree, and a lot of loose bark, and
chips that might have been hewn from the rough
beams that supported the floor of the pavilion.
.pn +1
.bn 124.png
But he did not touch any of these. Instead
he whipped out his knife and began to slash at
a fir that was thrashing in the rising wind. He
worked fast, piling branches till he had all he
could carry, when he took them to the pavilion
where Erminie sat huddled on a seat.
“That won’t go, kid! You’ve got to obey orders.
Here!”
He threw down the branches and began to
strip off the soft tips.
“Let me help you, Billy.” She set at it, glad
of action.
“There!” He piled them under the table,
spread them smoothly, and stood back. “In
with you! I’ll have to spread the covers. You
can’t do it for yourself,—not in this boarding-house.”
She was not deceived by his jocularity, but
something compelled her to submit without
words. She lay down in the sweet-smelling litter,
and he covered her thick with the boughs.
“Sorry my blankets are so heavy, but they’re
the best the house affords.”
“But where is your—what will you do,
Billy? You must be awfully tired.”
.pn +1
.bn 125.png
“I’d be a nice lad to go to sleep now,
wouldn’t I? The fire must be kept up, the
wolves scared away; bears, too, and—”
“Oh, Billy, don’t!” Her self-control broke,
and she began to cry.
“Say! Kid! If you do that I’ll run away!
I’ll jump into the drink! I can fight a bear, but
I can’t stand salt water—not that sort!”
He reached down, felt for her face, and patted
her cheek. “You’ve been as plucky as— Do
you know, I really can’t—”
What in Cain was the matter with him?
Would he snivel too? Right there! Before
her? He scorned himself silently, not knowing
that the situation and her pitiful tears were
enough to break an older and calmer fellow
than he was.
“There, Billy! Good boy! I’m all right
now. I won’t cry another tear. Why should I?
I have the best, the bravest—”
“Cut it out! I’m the fool that got you left.”
He ran off with her half laughing challenge
to fate ringing in his ears. “Billy, I almost
don’t care. It’s awfully grand to see any one
prove all to the good the way you do.”
.pn +1
.bn 126.png
Back to the chips and the bark he hurried,
and had hard work to nurse his fire in the rain.
Only by a constant piling of the dried
fir branches that he found around the prostrate
tree did he defy the shower,—which was harder
now,—and keep the blaze going till it passed.
When at last the clouds broke and the moon appeared
it was behind the hill, leaving the little
clearing in the shadow; but a faint tinge of
lighter gray in the east heralded the dawn.
Worn with anxiety more than with effort,
Billy dragged some dryer limbs from under the
tree, finding them by feeling rather than by
sight, as indeed he had done nearly everything
that night. After banking his fire high with
bark, he shook his wet cap and put it to dry,
threw open his wet coat to the heat, and prepared
to watch out the rest of the short night.
Soon an irresistible drowsiness overtook him.
He fought desperately, not wishing to stir about
lest he should keep Erminie awake. In the
midst of a moment that was perilously near unconsciousness,
she called:
“The signal, Billy! You forgot it. Here’s
the handkerchief.”
.pn +1
.bn 127.png
“Gee whiz!” He sprang up and went to her.
“My forgettery deserves a medal. You should
be proud to—”
“Stop calling yourself names, my—”
“It’s mean to take it,” he interrupted, “but
I have nothing else.”
“I don’t need it. I am as warm as a kitten in
a feather pillow. It was a shame to wake you.”
“Wake! Do you think I’d sleep when—”
He stopped, recalling how near he had come to
the Land of Nod.
“But you must,—a little anyway. I’m not
afraid any more.” She reached the handkerchief
up to him, and he took it, holding and patting
her hand a second before he went on. “Good
girl! You make a jolly fine pal all right. I’ll
bank on you.”
With those words still on his lips as he ran
down the path to the wharf, suddenly before
him rose the face of May Nell. Something
tugged at him, gave him a queer feeling that he
could not understand. He wished Erminie’s
mother had been like Mrs. Smith, that Erminie
might know all the beautiful things May Nell
.pn +1
.bn 128.png
knew, might look out on life with May Nell’s
clear, loving vision of the soul of things.
Even as he thought, and chided himself for it,
while he fixed the tiny, fluttering signal, a rosy
light in the east told him the night was going,
and deliverance near.
Another dilemma presented itself—suppose
a steamer should answer his signal, what
would the crew, the scattering passengers, think
if Erminie came aboard alone at that early
hour? Could she do it and not cause comment?
A story for the papers perhaps?
With this in mind he ran back, thinking to
ask her; but no words greeted his noisy steps,
and he knew she must be asleep at last. He
threw himself on the ground before the ash-covered
embers and in five minutes he also was lost
to his troubles.
He had taken the precaution to face the east
in such away that the sun, surmounting some tall
firs, would waken him as nearly as he could
guess at about six o’clock. As the first ray
struck into his eye he started up to find it nearer
seven, though but for his watch and the dancing,
diamond-tipped ripples in the track of the
.pn +1
.bn 129.png
morning sun, he would have declared he had
not slept five minutes.
“Half an hour for breakfast!” he called
cheerily. Erminie answered, and soon came
down to him.
At once Billy told her his latest worry, and
asked her opinion.
“I believe I’d better risk it. If the captain
says anything, I’ll tell him I got left. It will
be about nine when I get home, and people I
know won’t be out so early.”
“Then we’ll have another dish of manna,
and—”
A whistle interrupted Billy.
“There she is now! What’s got into my
watch? That’s been the joker all the time.”
“Do you suppose she’ll stop, Billy?” Erminie
had already started down the hill.
“You’ll have to run for it. Got any money?”
While he spoke he thrust a dollar in her hand
and she flew down the path out of his sight.
He heard the signal to stop, heard the mate
cry “All aboard!” as usual before the gang
plank was lowered, and after a moment heard
the vessel puff her way out on her course again.
.pn +1
.bn 130.png
When he was certain that Erminie was off he
realized, as not before, his great fatigue. A
search by morning light revealed many toothsome
bits of picnic dainties in the high, clean
grass, which he gathered, an egg in an unbroken
shell, some butter in a covered jelly glass, and
a bun which he toasted by the coals.
They did not taste very good. In spite of
sunshine he was depressed. The night had revealed
Erminie in a way that almost repelled
him at the time; but now that she was gone she
seemed nearer and dearer than ever before.
After eating, and raking out the fire, he carefully
removed all traces of Erminie’s bed to a
nook well hidden in the brush, and threw himself
down on it to rest. He did not expect to
sleep,—he had too much that was exciting to
think of; but hardly had he touched his bed of
fir when Morpheus claimed him. He heard
nothing till the advent of noisy picnickers arriving
on the four o’clock steamer, when he
jumped up, drowsy still, skirted the park carefully,
and barely made the steamer in time.
At half-past five, dishevelled and haggard, he
walked into his mother’s room.
.pn +1
.bn 131.png
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch07
CHAPTER VII || “DO YOUR BEST AND THEN——WHISTLE”
.sp 2
.dc 0.3 0.7
BILLY! My son!” Mrs. Bennett started
forward as he opened her door, and threw
her arms around his neck.
“Did she—did a girl telephone you that I
was all right, mother?”
“Yes. This morning. She said you were detained,
but did not tell me where or why.”
“What else did she say?”
“Nothing, but hung up the receiver before I
could ask any questions. Very odd, I thought;
certainly not courteous.”
“Mother, don’t judge her too quickly. A
girl who has to stay all night out in the woods
with a chap like me, is not likely to be very
proud of telling it around.”
“Why, William Bennett!”
Billy was as much astonished to see his mother
turn pale as he was to hear in that stern tone his
.pn +1
.bn 132.png
full name. “Sit down, marms. It’s all right
for me, but pretty rocky for her.”
Then he told her the whole story, except that
he did not divulge Erminie’s name, nor their
relation to each other.
For a long time they were silent, his mother
strangely serious and sad, it seemed to Billy. At
length she turned to him, took both his hands in
hers, and looked steadily in his eyes, but still
did not speak.
He bore the scrutiny well though it made him
uncomfortable. “Don’t look like that, mother.
What could we have done different or better
than we did?”
She kissed him on the cheek and he felt her
closer clasp. “Nothing, my boy. It was one
of those trying situations one cannot foresee.
But it is serious. Do you realize what it will
entail upon this girl if evil-speaking people
learn the story?”
“Gee! That’s what I’ve been thinking of all
night. But I don’t see how any one is to know
about it.”
“If she is questioned she will have to tell
more than one falsehood to keep people from
.pn +1
.bn 133.png
knowing some one was with her; and lies always
defeat themselves.”
“Well, mother, if it comes to the worst I shall
stand by her.”
“Of course, if you can; but whatever you say
will only harm her. Your silence is the best
thing you can give her.”
“I can marry her.”
If Billy had shot at his mother he could
have astonished her hardly more.
“Billy! You’re only a little boy!” she gasped
with her first recovered breath.
“Oh, not to-day, but after a while. And
meantime, while I’m growing old enough and
earning something, I can lick any fool that
speaks against her.”
In a long life of many trials Mrs. Bennett had
learned self-control; also that many worries are
best left alone for a time before attacking them.
She rose and stood behind Billy’s chair, stroking
his soft, abundant hair. “Boy, put such
thoughts out of your mind. They are unsuited
to you. Whatever is just and right, whatever is
manly and needed by this girl from you, that of
course you must do. But time will show what
.pn +1
.bn 134.png
that may be. In the meantime you must go on
as usual, doing the duty of each day. Just now
that means a bath, supper, your lessons, and
bed.”
Again she kissed him, drew her hand caressingly
across his forehead, and left the room.
And to Billy’s keen ear it seemed as if her step
in a moment had become the slow, shuffling
tread of an old woman.
As the evening passed, his depression grew.
He found it difficult to study. The pages were
meaningless. Or if he roused himself to some
attention suddenly the print blurred, and he
heard again the quick tempest of the night before
surging through the trees, or Erminie’s pitiful,
“I’m so afraid, Billy!”
And his mother’s step, as she left the room,
haunted him. What had made her walk like
that? He began to suspect the case was worse
than he had thought if it could hurt her so.
“Betsey, Betsey! Why didn’t you get a move
on?” he whispered whimsically. It was years
since he had thought of his boyish name for his
conscience. Yet reviewing the night’s experience
he could find little blame for himself.
.pn +1
.bn 135.png
His large attic room, usually so cheery and so
much to his wish, was full of sounds that to his
overwrought mind seemed to come from unseen
beings. He listened for a time, then
switched on the light; and seeing only the familiar
scene, turned it off again, impatient with
himself, ashamed. He need not have been so.
He was neither a coward nor a hyper-sensitive;
it was his own high-strung imagination that
peopled the darkness with jeering shapes.
But finally he slept. And with the morning
youth asserted itself, and he went off to school
with new courage to meet whatever might come.
That proved to be nothing unusual. Erminie
was there, pale and quiet, but otherwise
quite herself. By a subtle understanding that
needed no explaining they kept apart. No one
seemed to notice them except Jim; at noon he
watched Erminie’s every move. At first Billy
thought himself over-suspicious; but once when
he caught a gleam in Jim’s eye, saw the covert
smile on his lips, Billy knew something malicious
was brewing; believed that the Kid possessed
their secret and only waited his own time
to use it—no one could foretell how.
.pn +1
.bn 136.png
Billy was not very light of heart when he
went around after school to Mr. Smith’s town
office, and found Dr. Carter there. He wished
to talk with Mr. Smith alone, to ask him for
employment, for something to do that would be
worth good wages at once. He was not skilled
of course, but he was strong and quick, able to
do a man’s work at hard labor; and with a boy’s
optimism he knew he could learn, “Make good
from the start.”
Dr. Carter’s genial face and excellent stories,
even though Billy knew he had no better friend
anywhere, were not welcome to him now. He
did not know just how to proceed. He wondered
if the two were considering business; though it
must be so, since Mr. Smith was a very busy
man, and it was still in business hours. And yet
they were laughing heartily and had admitted
Billy at once.
“Well, what can I do for you, Billy?” Mr.
Smith asked cordially. “Jove! It’s time we
called you ‘Mr. Bennett,’ you’re such a giant.”
Mr. Smith was a short, stout man, and when he
stood beside Billy he had to lift his face to look
into the boy’s eyes.
.pn +1
.bn 137.png
The doctor greeted Billy in his quiet, friendly
way; and with his firm hand-clasp a quick memory
came to Billy of the day, so long ago, when
he had found the counterfeiters, and raced to
town on his wheel with his secret, not knowing
how to tell it till he met the doctor. Again he
saw himself, coatless, torn, dusty, freckled, his
hair wet and “plastered,” following the immaculate
doctor into the grand dining room of the
new hotel. After that came the memory of
telling his story to the sheriff, and of that awful
trip when he led the sheriff and posse up the
mountain, through the edge of the forest fire to
the counterfeiters’ den. And after that, the
rescue of May Nell—
These pictures flashed through his mind during
the instant he was returning the doctor’s
greeting; and on recalling himself he felt as if
he were coming back from a long journey, felt
unpardonably abrupt when he tried to state his
business to Mr. Smith.
“I came to—I’d like—”
“You’d like a private interview? Is that
it?” Mr. Smith prompted.
“The boy’s after a job. Don’t give it to him,
.pn +1
.bn 138.png
Mr. Smith. He’d better play through his vacation;
he works hard enough at school to deserve
it.” The doctor smiled and rose to go;
and Billy wondered how it was that the doctor
could “beat a chap’s own thinker to it.” He did
not know that the keen, trained sense that enables
a skilled physician to read the hidden
meaning of every line and tint and pulse of the
body, could also reveal to him the meanings the
mind writes into voice and eye.
As soon as he had gone Mr. Smith motioned
Billy to a seat and listened with no interruption,
while the boy told his errand. For a time after
he had finished, the man of affairs continued
to draw meaningless designs on the blotter, till
Billy grew first hot, then cold, and wished himself
away.
“What can you do?”
“I—I don’t know. Isn’t there a lot of just
common work to do on your railroad that
you’re building over to Tum-wah? I surely
can do digging; I am strong.”
“Yes, there is plenty of digging,” Mr. Smith
said absently, and again lapsed into silence.
“Does your mother know you’re doing this?”
.pn +1
.bn 139.png
he questioned so suddenly at last that Billy
jumped.
“She doesn’t know I’m here to-day, but she
knows that I intend to work this summer,—perhaps
right along.”
“Do you intend to dig in the dirt for a living?”
The stern words stung Billy as a whiplash.
“No, sir. I hope to do something better—I
shall do something better after a while,” he
added with an energy that pleased Mr. Smith.
“Have you decided what you will make your
life work?”
“I’ve thought of—” He was about to say
journalism but something about this fearless,
successful man made the boy feel young and
very ignorant. “I had thought of trying to get
on a newspaper.”
“Nothing in it! You’ll smell of a grindstone
all your life, and be a slave besides.”
“Slave?” Billy repeated anxiously.
“Yes. The newspaper business is no longer
an outlet for individual character. It’s just a
machine where each man is a cog, and writes
what he is told, no matter what he believes. If
.pn +1
.bn 140.png
his stuff is good the paper gets the credit; if it
isn’t he is fired.”
Billy made no reply to this, but after a moment
asked, “Would not that be the way with
anything I tried at first?”
“Yes, boy, it would.” There was an unexpected
kindness in his tone. He rose and walked
once or twice across the richly furnished office,
when he stopped and looked down upon Billy,
who sat with every muscle tense, his hands unconsciously
gripping the chair arms.
“Billy, ever since the day you prevented that
devil from kidnapping May Nell, I’ve had you
in mind. I’ve no son of my own; but if I had,
I’d be glad if he was as much of a man as
you’ve always shown yourself.”
Again he walked the length of the room and
back. “You know I wanted to educate you; but
your mother was right, wiser than I. Now I’m
not so sure I’m going to do this thing you’ve
asked of me. If you need money to tide you
through your school, Billy, I shall be more than
glad to advance it. No amount of money will
square what your family has done for mine. But—I’m
blamed if I’m going to help you ruin
.pn +1
.bn 141.png
your future. What you need now is school, and
the university; a year or two of running about
the country to see what sort of a nation you belong
to; and then you’ll be fit to settle in some
business where you’ll have men digging for you.
That’s what I want you to do, Billy.”
The boy could not speak. This was what he
had looked forward to, had planned to do, even
if he had to earn his way and take years in doing
it. But Erminie’s coming into his life had
changed everything. Such dreams must be
abandoned for a different and harder future.
At last he stood, and looked into Mr. Smith’s
face steadily, but with a disappointment in his
determined eyes that touched the man. “There
are reasons,—reasons that I am not at liberty
to mention, Mr. Smith, why I must go to work
as soon as school closes; and probably I shall not
be able to go back. If you had anything I could
do I would rather work for you than for any one
else. I’d try very hard, sir.” He hesitated an
instant, but not long enough for the other to
speak. “But since you don’t approve I must
look farther.” He stepped toward the door.
“Here! Sit down! If you’re bound to make
.pn +1
.bn 142.png
a fool of yourself about work it might as well
be where I can hold you down to it till you’re
sick of it, and come to your senses.” Mr.
Smith’s eyes twinkled, and his voice was softer
than his words. “You needn’t hunt any other
boss. I’ll have a job for you when you come for
it. How soon will that be?”
“School closes on the twenty-third of June;
I’ll be ready the morning of the twenty-fourth.”
“That’s Saturday. I won’t take any fellow
from school till he’s had a vacation; come Monday,
the twenty-sixth.” He laughed at his own
joke, and opened the door, and Billy knew the
interview was ended, yet he tried to stammer his
thanks.
“I’m very—I’m—”
“Get out with you! I won’t be thanked for
helping you to ruin yourself!” Mr. Smith blustered,
and shut the door on Billy.
Ruin himself! The words roused a sudden
anger. He’d show them! This course that he
was taking was not his own choice; circumstances
forced it on him. It was the right thing
to do, and right never ruined any one. Or if it
did—He looked up as he walked and saw a
.pn +1
.bn 143.png
lineman high among the deadly light wires, held
only by belt and spurs, busily splicing wires and
whistling at his work.
“That’s it,” Billy thought. “Do what I have
to do as well and carefully as I can, and then—whistle.”
.pn +1
.bn 144.png
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch08
CHAPTER VIII || THE POTATO ROAST
.sp 2
.dc 0.3 0.7
A FEW nights later came the rally of the
Progressives before their election for playground
officers. Since the episode of the stilts
Hector had taken a prominent part in playground
affairs, and some thought it was hurting
his candidacy for president of the student body,—that
it was too small a matter for high-school
students to consider. But he held to his course.
The election for president was due the next
week. Jim had decided on the next afternoon,
Friday, for Walter Buckman’s last demonstration.
Hector’s party had held their preëlection
meeting also; but this playground rally would
be one more opportunity to test Hector’s
strength.
The benches were arranged on the ball ground
this time, and Billy, who was manager, saw that
everything was ready before he went home for
dinner. When he came again he found Mumps,
.pn +1
.bn 145.png
Redtop, and the squad of freshmen left on
guard, looking as if there had been things doing.
“It’s good the cop’s coming to-night; the
Kid’s crowd intend to act up,” Mumps said as
Billy came up.
“What makes you think so?”
“They tried to beat us out of the benches.”
“How did you stop it? I see they haven’t
been touched.”
“Mumps is the keen kid,” Redtop commended;
“he told ’em we had those benches
from the supervisor and could keep them here
till to-morrow morning; and that we had a cop
to see that no one interfered with them.”
“Bully for you, Mumps!”
“Redtop told the Kid that if they get busy
hoodooing the Progressives that’s all we ask; it
will be the prettiest sort of a finish for the Kid
and Buckman.”
“Do you think that fixes them?”
“Yes, unless—They have some plan hatching
to beat Hector that we can’t find out. The
election’s no walk-over for Hector; I can tell
you that.”
Billy noticed that the Buckman boys were
.pn +1
.bn 146.png
rather quiet, standing about in small groups on
the edge of the crowd; and also that whenever
he went near them the talking suddenly stopped;
and once he caught a significant lifting of the
brow and a sneering smile.
There were many people already on the
ground besides school children, some walking
about in the waning sunlight. Even at half-past
eight the torches seemed a joke this late May
evening.
But the band was no joke. It was the band of
the Chetwoot (black bear) Troop of Scouts, the
newsboys’ troop, and Mr. Streeter’s pride.
Their uniform was handsome, their marching
excellent, and their music remarkable considering
they had been playing together less than a
year. Under the guidance of the best teacher
Mr. Streeter could hire for them, and with an
enthusiasm that warmed his heart, the little
chaps worked together night after night; and
now, when they came up the street, and filed into
their places, proud of being invited to play before
such a large audience, he led the clapping,
which lasted till long after the boys were seated.
Billy made a good chairman. Everything
.pn +1
.bn 147.png
went off in orderly fashion. The girls were represented
by two short speeches in which the importance
of good manners on the playground
was emphasized; the band played several selections;
Hector spoke convincingly of the responsibility
of the Fifth Avenue High for the good
name of the playground, and Reginald Steele
won the fathers and mothers present by telling
of Mr. Streeter’s Good Citizens’ Clubs, and how
their work should dovetail with all that the Progressives
were working for in their proposed
playground government.
Billy expected some demonstration from Jim
and his followers, but none came; and the meeting
was dismissed after band and audience had
joined in “America.”
The crowning triumph was a surprise; and
provided by the girls. It was a potato roast on a
vacant lot across the street from the playground.
Every one present was invited, the parents being
especially urged to join the feast.
The bonfire made both light and cheer that
were welcome in the cool evening; and the girls
with very rosy faces poked the ashes with long
sticks and rolled out bushels and bushels of hot
.pn +1
.bn 148.png
potatoes. They had thoughtfully graded them
as to size, so that the smaller ones were served
first, though all had as many as they could eat.
Salt, butter, and sliced ham, with pickles for a
relish, made a high mark for evening outdoor
fun.
The surprise was complete. Even the opposition
could find no chance to gibe.
“The girls take the cake but we get the potato!”
shouted Walter Buckman. “Three
cheers for the potato roast!” he proposed with a
heartiness that showed him an adroit politician.
They were given with vigor. And the band
played again, and they dispersed.
Billy felt well pleased with the evening, till at
the very last of the frolic, when he stepped into
the edge of the crowd, he caught a low sentence
spoken with incautious clearness. “Oh, yes,
they are hollering to-night, but we’ve got the
jump on them. The Kid is laying low.”
The words troubled him all the way home.
And Erminie had not been there as he had
hoped. He did not agree with her that she
should keep aloof from the school activities; it
was like acknowledging a wrong that did not
exist.
.pn +1
.bn 149.png
But he was tired, and too young and normal
to lie awake long over any anxieties—save those
“Betsey kicked in for,” and he “hit the hay
with eyes already shut,” he told his mother the
next morning.
.pn +1
.bn 150.png
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch09
CHAPTER IX || FACE TO THE SKY
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.7
THE next evening Billy was busy with
preparations for starting at six o’clock in
the morning on the scout for which he was patrol
leader. Although it would last only two days
he had been a little uncertain about going, since
the end of the school year with its many duties
and activities was so near; but the day before he
had learned that he would have to take but one
examination, his high standing excusing him
from the other “exams.” And now that he
would not be able to take any of the long, summer
scouts, he could not resist this last chance
for the tramps he loved.
A little before nine over the telephone came
Bess’s voice.
“Hello, Queen of Sheba! That was a great
gift you brought us last night from your domain
in the south.”
.pn +1
.bn 151.png
“I only planned it; and like the queen of old,
I didn’t do it for nothing; I crave a boon.”
“Say on. I’m no Solomon, but you shall
have your desire if I can grant it.” Billy
laughed and waved an imaginary sceptre, forgetting
that Bess could not see him.
“It’s not so difficult. May Nell has just telephoned
that two of her classmates arrived before
dinner time on their way East, and she wants
you and me to come over.”
“Gee whiz! It’s late to spring your command.”
“Not five seconds since I received mine.
They’ve been motoring all the evening.”
“And I’m—not—dressed to meet—”
“Billy To-morrow! When did you begin to
cogitate about apparel?”
“It’s different—”
“No more. The Queen commands. Come
over right away, and father will set us down,—the
machine is at the door. I won’t be a minute.”
Bess’s home was only a block away, and her
“minute” only five, yet in that short time Dr.
Carter had a call in another direction, and the
two young people had to take a trolley car. This
.pn +1
.bn 152.png
was an opportunity Bess had desired, and she
improved it at once.
“Billy, I want you to tell me why you didn’t
ask May Nell to go with you to the picnic instead
of Erminie.”
“May Nell isn’t a pupil of Fifth Avenue
High.”
“That makes no difference. A lot of the Juniors
brought friends. For that matter what was
Mumps doing there? If I had known you
wouldn’t ask her, I should have taken her.”
Billy did not reply. For once Bess could not
understand him, and was distressed. He was the
playmate of her lifetime, the one boy comrade
she had treated as frankly as a brother. But now
she realized he had interests apart from hers,
cared no longer for things she could share; and
the knowledge hurt her.
“And then that Erminie Fisher! She’s no
more to be compared with May Nell than—”
“Go easy, Bess. You saw that Miss Fisher
went with me, didn’t you?” There was a look
in his eye, a tone in his voice that chilled her,
that added to her feeling of distance from him.
She glanced up almost shyly. “Then do
.pn +1
.bn 153.png
you wish it to be ‘Mr. Bennett’ and ‘Miss Carter’
after this?”
“Oh, piffles, Bess! You’re always to the good.
The reason I said that is because it makes me
mad to hear every one say mean things of Erminie.
She’s a lot better than—” He did not
finish. An uncomfortable memory of her self-revelation
during the night on the island told
him why girls like Bess shunned her. But what
she had said of her mother also came to him,
and what he knew of her father. How could she
be the sort of girl Bess was, whose parents were
not only loving, but wise?
“Well, there must be something good about
her, Billy, when you like her. But I can’t see
how you can neglect May Nell for her.”
“I don’t neglect May Nell. But I am no
J. Pierpont; I’ve got my living to earn. Do
you suppose May Nell will want me ringing her
door-bell after I don overalls and grease?”
“Will Erminie?”
“Yes.”
“Then she’s different from what I think. But
anyway you won’t do that. You’ll do something
splendid; something with your brains; or you’ll
.pn +1
.bn 154.png
go out into the mountains or desert and juggle
old lady Nature, and—”
“And she’ll beat me to it—juggling. Bess,
you’ll soon be going by shy of a nod to me yourself.
I’m going to work, just plain digging
with no frills on it.”
“Billy!”
They were at their destination with no chance
for pursuing the subject.
Billy was not usually self-conscious. Before
his experience with Erminie he would have
entered Mr. Smith’s elegant parlor as easily,
would have met the strange girls who were larger
and older than May Nell, as unabashed as if he
had been reared in luxury. But now he felt out
of place. He was beginning to note social differences;
to realize that daughters of very rich
men are reared to a luxurious scale of life; that
they cannot understand poverty, or even simple
comfort. He was seeing that no matter how
willing they may think themselves to endure
poverty with the loved man, they are totally unfit;
and their failure is not their blame.
Something of this made him awkward and
silent, while the four girls together with Reginald
.pn +1
.bn 155.png
Steele, Redtop, and Sis Jones, chattered
and laughed and joked, till Billy began to wish
he had not come.
May Nell did not know of the changes coming
to him. She attributed his different attitude
toward her entirely to the fact that she was too
small and young to interest him. But he was
her guest, and courtesy as well as pride determined
her to compel him to unbend. She left
the others, and on a quickly invented pretext
drew him to the farther end of the large room.
“Billy, is it true, as Bess says, that you have
given up your part in the Fifth Avenue High
play?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, Billy, why? When you wrote it, too.”
“No, no! Who told you that? Three of us
wrote it; that is, we thought out the stuff, and
Mr. Streeter helped us put it in shape.”
“But he told father the ideas were all yours,
and that you were very clever.”
“I guess I’ll have to hand ‘Pop’ Streeter
a nickel.”
The half cynical note in Billy’s laugh did not
escape her keen ear; and though she could not
.pn +1
.bn 156.png
have told why, it hurt her. “You bad boy! He
meant every word of it. Tell me about it.”
“It isn’t much. Just a picture of Washington
life as I thought it would be if we did all the
things with Nature we might do. Just imagination.”
“Just imagination makes the whole world,
Billy.”
“That’s what we think when we’re children,
but I guess when we get out with the cold facts
we’ll find imagination doesn’t fill the dinner
pail.”
“Billy, imagination makes everything! It
builds the world. Why, when God himself
looked into the void didn’t He have to imagine
a world before He could speak the fiery word
that created it?”
“That’s—that’s a pretty big thought, isn’t
it?” Billy answered slowly, overmastered by
her eagerness.
“And, Billy, you used to believe in it so thoroughly.
Don’t you any more?”
“Do you?”
“Yes, yes! I’ll have to die when I don’t believe
in it.”
.pn +1
.bn 157.png
“Don’t say that.”
“But it’s true, Billy Boy!” She had not
called him so since the days in Vina when she
was a waif and the Bennett home her refuge.
The affectionate child-name touched him,
bridged the distance between them.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he hesitated, “imagination
may be a divine privilege; but for mere
man,—too much dreaming makes him discontented.
I think when one must earn one’s bread
and butter the straight fact is better.”
“Boy, boy! Nothing but slavery and plodding
comes of such a feeling. You’re holding
your head down when you should look up, face
to the sky.”
“I guess if one were making chairs for a living,
he’d have to look down.”
“I guess if he hadn’t looked up he’d never
have had the idea of a chair for a pattern. Oh,
you’re no sheep, Billy. You couldn’t hold your
nose to the ground! You’ve got to look up, or
you’ll die.”
The others interrupted, calling for songs, little
French songs that May Nell sang captivatingly.
And after that they had college songs,
.pn +1
.bn 158.png
and a rollicking time. Billy joined, yet with his
voice only; his thoughts were lifted to the realm
his soul always reached when with May Nell.
Mr. Smith came in, bringing with him a gust
of the big out-of-doors; as if his swift flight in
his great motor did not stop at the door. He
was a man who drew all to him. Children and
dogs, men and women, rich and poor. He
seemed to have a wealth of power and substance
that sufficed for a cityful. And he was a providence
to more of the needy than any but himself
knew.
He greeted the young people breezily, unconsciously
giving the feeling for the moment that
their presence was the one thing needful to make
him happy, and left the room taking Billy with
him.
“Sorry to interrupt pleasure, my boy; but
since you’re determined to become a business
man, you will find that pleasure has no rights
that business is bound to respect. I want to
speak to you.”
After preliminary explanations Mr. Smith
took Billy into his confidence in a remarkable
way. “I have a piece of work that you may be
.pn +1
.bn 159.png
able to do for me, that’s beyond your years. If
you fail I shall not blame you,—others have
failed before you. Here is the situation: That
interurban line I’m building, the Washington
Railway line between the city front and Tum-wah,
is a small matter in itself, but it is the key
to a big situation.
“We have pushed our bill through the Legislature,
allowing the canal between the two big
lakes, and we are going to change that little
Tum-wah Valley into a great city with a payroll
of thousands of men. We’ll dredge the
small river right to the falls, make our own
power, and load our own ships,—while they
clean off the barnacles in fresh water,—load
them for the world’s ports. In a few years the
plant will be worth ten or fifteen millions.”
Billy gasped in astonishment. The narrow
little valley along the Tum-wah Creek was
within the city limits, yet it showed nothing now
but the vegetable gardens of the Italian colony,
sordid little huts, dirty children, and the rickety
old electric line where dirty cars went bumping
along on an elastic schedule that got people to
town along in the forenoon, and home some time
.pn +1
.bn 160.png
in the evening. This seemed as distant from
Mr. Smith’s fifteen-million dollar dream as is
heaven from a very dirty earth.
Something of this Billy ventured to express.
“The only heaven we have is right here. If it
isn’t clean, it’s up to us to make it so. And one
thing sure: it will never be any bigger or any
cleaner than we imagine it to be.”
The boy thought of May Nell. This was off
the same pattern of life as hers. As if in answer
to his thought, Mr. Smith went on.
“Business is merely realized dreams; preferred
stock in imagination. But it takes sweat
to realize on them. And it’s your sweat, boy,
that I am asking. The people who own that old
teetering string they call the Tum-wah Railroad
are down on me because I’m paralleling them.
They will give me all the trouble they can,—they’ve
served one injunction, but it didn’t stick.
I have men watching them, but they suspect
these men. You see they are stirring up those
Italians to believe that as soon as I get my business
started I will take their lands from them.”
“You’ll have to have them, won’t you?”
Billy questioned as the other paused; Billy’s
.pn +1
.bn 161.png
vision had run forward to the teeming city Mr.
Smith had prophesied.
“Surely. And those Italians will get more
for their land than they can make in raising
vegetables all their lives. But of course I’m
not advertising that now; and the other concern
is, I have reason to believe, making the Dagos
think I shall steal them out of their homes.
What I want of you is to keep on the lookout,
let me know things before they happen. Go to
work with the other laborers, run errands, keep
your ears open, your mouth shut, and look as
stupid as you can. Will you do it?”
“I’ll try, sir. It won’t be very hard, that last.”
“Say! Stop that! And that ‘sir’ business.
Who taught you that?”
“That’s the way we address the Scoutmaster;
and—and my father was a soldier of the Civil
War.”
Mr. Smith softened. “And made a record to
be proud of; I’ve heard it from your mother.
But here’s the situation, Billy: You’re beginning
at the bottom; but if you are to be useful to
me you must have a definite power of your own;
you must compel. It’s in you; and while you
.pn +1
.bn 162.png
must adopt a stolid exterior in this first job,
when you come in contact with my men, when
you are delivering my orders, you must charge
them with enough powder of your own to make
them carry. See?”
Billy thrilled with the prescience of future
force. “I think I see what you mean, Mr.
Smith. I shall try not to disappoint you;
though—” A sudden thought of Erminie intruded
itself,—what would this man of great affairs
say if he knew that a wife, and the support
of a home, would soon be the burden that he, a
mere boy, would have to add to the difficult service
Mr. Smith was asking.
“Out with it! Better thrash out all the ‘ifs,’
and ‘thoughs’ right now. But I don’t allow
those words a place in my vocabulary.”
“Then I won’t!” Billy brought out the words
with a snap.
“Well said, my boy! That’s the soldier’s
way. But remember this: While I get my business
done, done at any cost,—if one man can’t
do it another must; yet I know when a thing
proves impossible. I don’t expect the impossible.”
.pn +1
.bn 163.png
He gave Billy a reassuring clasp of the hand,
and a look that determined the boy to “make
good if any chap going could,” and bade him
good-night.
Billy did not know how long he had been
away from the drawing-room till he went in and
found the others going, and Bess already hatted.
“I began to think it all a dream that one Billy
To-morrow brought me here this evening,” she
chaffed.
“No dream; he’s arrived.”
“Yes? So has to-morrow—almost.”
Billy glanced at the clock. The chimes for
eleven-thirty had already rung.
They laughed and “jollied,” delaying their
departure with joyous nothings. Both Bess
and May Nell felt a subtle change in Billy; he
was not the same boy that had entered there so
shortly before.
Thus did Mr. Smith galvanize to unsuspected
power all who came into his presence. Billy
went home lifted, ready to meet any future.
.pn +1
.bn 164.png
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch10
CHAPTER X || THE SCOUT
.sp 2
.dc 0.8 0.7
LONG before the alarm clock buzzed the rising
hour, Billy was awake. He hopped
out and hurried with his dressing, watching the
sunrise meanwhile with some anxiety. It
seemed more golden and opalescent than usual;
or was it only because it was some time since he
had seen it? Such a fine beginning was apt to
end in rain, he remembered a little impatiently.
He was at the meeting-place before time, as
were the five other eager ones. Two days! So
short a time in which to win honors! Three patrols
had failed to find the flag so cunningly
hidden by Scoutmaster Streeter to test the troops.
The Skwis-kwises (squirrels) had tried, the
Chetwoots, and Billy’s troop, the Olympics.
This was a joint patrol, and the honor of being
its leader Billy had long coveted.
They looked quite smart when they started
off, in their khaki uniforms and their scouts’ hats
.pn +1
.bn 165.png
all at precisely the same angle with chin-straps
resting jauntily on the tip of the chin. Billy
carried the banner of his own troop, the design
being a snowy mountain with a jagged crest, a
picture of old Olympus himself; not the classic
mountain, but the Sentinel of the Pacific.
Their work was definite. They were to take
the trolley line to the northeast city terminal,
going and coming; from there cover at least fifteen
miles on foot in the two days, whether they
found the flag or not. Mr. Streeter said if they
could only read his plain signs they could not
miss it; but so far the patrols had failed.
Besides finding the flag each was to fulfil the
rule of one kind act each day; to report some
fact of the woods-life not before recorded in the
annals of the city troops, or some new deed; and
to stop one hour on Sunday for exercises of their
own devising that should take the place of
church. To accomplish this most of the circumstances
would have to be in their favor. Billy
hoped the weather would be one.
The start included breakfast which they took
at an early restaurant, that their knapsacks
.pn +1
.bn 166.png
might not weigh an unnecessary ounce. They
set off northward from the railroad terminus,
following the beautiful boulevard as long as its
direction was right, then a country road for a
mile or so, which they left at a given point for
the trails where their real hunt began.
Billy divided the patrol into three squads,
Hugh of the Skwis-kwises had Mumps from
the Chetwoots for his partner; Redtop was assigned
with “Bump” Parker; and Billy took
Bob Brown. He was a tenderfoot. So was
Hugh, though one of the cleverest and most
observant of all the scouts; but he was doomed
to his class till time should bring around his
twelfth birthday, when he would be eligible to
all the scout honors he could win.
“We’ll search the trails for three hours,”
Billy decided, “and meet at the south end of
Lake Mow-itsh on the main road.” He studied
his map, a copy of which each one carried.
“Ten points for the first squad to arrive, and ten
points for any new bird seen in the forest and
rightly named.”
“That’s easy!” Bob exclaimed. He was a recent
arrival from the Middle States.
.pn +1
.bn 167.png
“You won’t think so after you’ve hiked
a while; the forest is too dense for many birds,—not
enough food for them.”
“And now for the routes; draw straws.”
Billy and Bob drew the longest route, which
pleased the patrol leader. “Now’s your chance
to show your grit, kid; your legs are not as long
as mine.”
“But they’re as good, I bet,” Bob returned
spunkily. And they separated.
The woods here were dense and heavy with
rain of the night before. The fickle sun disappeared,
and the stillness of the forest settled
upon them. Unconsciously Billy and Bob
lowered their voices, doing very little talking,
for Billy’s eyes and mind were on the trail intently
watching for the slightest sign. At each
division of the trail he searched so long and carefully
that Bob was impatient.
“We’ll lose all chance of winning in at the
lake.”
“If we find the flag that will be the biggest
win of all, and I’m not going to lose one pointer
if I can help it.” Billy went down on his knees
to look at a track.
.pn +1
.bn 168.png
“What did you expect to find?”
“I didn’t know; but it’s up to a scout to pass
nothing by in the woods. Look for the arrow
that points the way, you tenderfoot. It may be
only a straight shaft or it may have a square at
the feathered end.”
“What does that mean?”
“A letter three paces from the arrow.”
“What color will the arrow be?”
“Gee whiz! Did you think it would be
bought from a store? Diamond-tipped, maybe?
It’ll be any old stick touched up with a jack
knife perhaps. You’ve got a lot to learn, kid.”
“What direction from the arrow would the
letter be?”
“What do you think?”
“The way the arrow points?”
“Right—What have you found?” Billy
crossed a small open spot to where the other boy
was bending over two crossed sticks at the foot
of a tree. “Good! You’re not blind as you
might be. That’s luck—finding that. We’re
on the wrong lead.”
“How do you know? Two sticks might fall
that way.”
.pn +1
.bn 169.png
“But look here! See that crooked line made
of pieces of bark?”
“Yes, but that’s nothing—Why, it’s the letter
‘S.’”
“That means Mr. Streeter. Around here
somewhere we’ll find more signs.”
They hunted carefully along, leaving their
own records on tree or ground. Billy explained
the many ways of marking the way,—smokes,
wigwagging, shaking the blanket, the semaphore
code, all of which are practically useless in the
dense forest, where trees reach higher than could
any smoke that would be safe.
“I’ve got it!” Billy shouted presently, and
blew three blasts on his whistle three times repeated,
to herald the finding of an arrow.
No answer.
“We’ll have to write our message in bark
chips, I guess.” Billy selected one large
smooth piece, placing it directly beside the path,
with another small round piece on top.
“What does that say?”
“This is the trail,” Billy answered. “And
this means ‘Go to the right,’” he continued, making
a similar sign except that he put the small
.pn +1
.bn 170.png
piece at the right of the larger one, and scratched
a rough “B” in the soft forest debris.
A drizzling rain had begun, and the summer
forest was dark and very dreary to the plains-bred
boy. “Golly! I’m glad I’m not alone.
I’d be dippy in an hour.”
“Why?”
“Oh, you can’t tell it in words. It’s like hearing
and feeling things in the dark; you could
swear they were there just where they could
touch you; but light a match and you find every
one of ’em on the hike.”
“Yes, I know the feeling. You almost think
these ferns will rise and strangle you. In California
the forests are more open—” He stopped
suddenly. “Here’s a blaze!” He pushed away
the ferns that almost concealed a square cut in
the bark of a tree, in the centre of the bared
space was a pencilled “S.” “These ferns have
done a good job of growing since Pop Streeter
hid the flag two weeks ago. But it’s his mark
all right. No wonder the other boys missed it.”
They pressed on, not minding the rain now
that the goal seemed near; Billy’s enthusiasm
warmed the other boy.
.pn +1
.bn 171.png
“It’s funny, ain’t it, how a fool bit of cloth
can make a fellow work? When we get it, it’s
worth nothing.”
“Bob, I guess some of the things that seem
useless are really worth the most.”
“But we can’t sell it for anything, we can’t eat
it, and it won’t pay debts.”
“Well, how many debts would greenbacks pay
if the American flag was wiped out? And anyway
those that do the biggest things seldom do
get paid in money.”
“Who, for instance?”
“The great artists; many of them starved in
their own day, and now we pay a fortune for one
piece of their work. And who pays the mothers?
They do most of anybody.”
Bob was thoughtful. “Ye-s; I reckon lots of
mothers get slim pay.”
The signs became more frequent now. They
were written in broken twigs, in bunched and
tied grass, and once in a more open place in
piled stones. Presently the boys found themselves
on the shore of Mow-itsh Lake about two
miles from the rendezvous. There, in front of
a great cedar, stood the notched and numbered
.pn +1
.bn 172.png
staff with its well-known device etched with
knife and ink,—a mountain with a scout and a
flag on its summit. But the flag they had
searched for was gone!
“I wonder what that means!” Billy shook the
water from his hat and gazed in all directions
for an answer.
“Search me. I’m no more good at knowin’
things of this country than if we were in Sahara.”
Billy looked at his watch. “Half an hour to
get back to the rendezvous; and then dinner.”
“Well, filling the hole in my stomach will be
real pay for this hike; enough for me, whether
we get any glory or not.”
Back over their way they went to the main
trail, with no delays, for Billy had blazed the
way carefully.
“Use your eyes, kid,” he admonished.
“There are things in the woods besides trees;
and to-night we’ll have a gab to see how much
six pairs of eyes have been able to discover.”
They arrived to find Hugh alone, preparing
to make a fire.
“Billy, I’m glad you’ve come. Now you
can watch me,—see if I work right.”
.pn +1
.bn 173.png
“You’re not going to try it by friction, are
you? It will take too long.”
“No, it won’t. I got fire in six minutes the
other day by following Mr. Seton’s directions.”
“That’s all right if you have dry wood and
the right kind; but it’s been raining.”
“Just the same I’ve found some fine cedar.
You watch me.”
While he drilled out the fine wood-dust Billy
was busy finding dry bark fibre for tinder; and
soon a tiny spark appeared, then a little glowing
coal upon which they placed the bunch of fibre,
fanning it with their hats till a flame answered,
and soon they had a blazing fire with its cheering
warmth.
“Gee! I didn’t know it was easy as that.”
Bob was a trifle contemptuous.
“Easy!” The Fairy rose, rather quickly for a
fat boy. “If you think it’s easy you just try it:
I’ve been three months learning.”
“Three months?”
“Not all the time of course; but every time I
could get the chance to practise. The directions
in books are as good as words can tell, but there’s
a lot you have to see with your eyes that can’t
be told.”
.pn +1
.bn 174.png
“Six minutes—that’s fair time. Oh, Billy!
The flag-staff! Where did you find it? Where’s
the rest of it?”
“That’s what we want to know; this is all we
found. Did you get anything?”
“This.” Hugh took from his pocket a much
worn shoe the size to fit a child of seven or eight.
“Heavens! A lost kid!”
“A little girl, too.”
“How do you know that, Fairy?”
“See the little buckle business? Boys don’t
wear that sort.”
“Where is Mumps?”
Billy scowled. “That’s against the rules, you
two being separated.”
“We aren’t. He’s in earshot.” Hugh sent a
musical “hoo-hoo” into the distance, which was
immediately answered.
“Is there water so near?” Bob questioned incredulously,
while Hugh went on with his calls,
singly, in groups, and by spaces.
“Mumps has four fish,—bass.”
“Well, how in jiminy do you know that?”
“Oh, it’s a little set of signals we decided before
he set off.”
.pn +1
.bn 175.png
“Trust the Fairy for talking by signal; he’s a
cracker-jack at that,” Billy explained.
Sydney came up with the fish cleaned for
broiling; and presently the others came in. It
had stopped raining, and the sun though not
shining still warmed and brightened the air.
Their luncheon was a quick affair of coffee,
fish, and bread and butter; for they were too excited
over the “finds” to take much time for eating.
If there was a child lost what better “kind
act” could they do than to search for her? Redtop
and Bump had passed a farmhouse some
distance back, which was the only hint of human
life any of them had seen.
Billy decided to start immediately, and keep
together till they came to the house. They
would make that headquarters, to which any one
finding any trace of the child should report.
“Perhaps there is no lost child; maybe the
shoe was just thrown away,” Bump ventured.
“Who would carry a shoe into a forest to
throw it away?” Redtop jeered.
“A dog might,” Billy returned, and the others
laughed at Redtop.
They broke camp and hurried on, spurred by
.pn +1
.bn 176.png
the apparent seriousness of the situation. The
quest of the flag lost all zest beside the mere
possibility of human life in danger.
Half a mile on, or more, they came to a comfortable-looking
house where a woman was
washing on the back porch. To their question
she shook her head. No child was missing. She
had one, and she had gone home from school the
night before with her cousin to stay over Sunday.
But when Hugh showed her the little shoe
she caught at it and turned pale.
“That’s hers. Where did you find it?”
Hugh told her, and she became hysterical
with fear. The men of the place were away on
business, and the boys had to plan their search
without help. Billy managed to learn from the
excited mother the name of the cousin’s family
and the direction of their ranch, where he sent
Redtop and Bump to find out if the little girl
had left, and when; and to arouse the few neighbors
to the hunt.
Billy took the other three with him and set
out to the spot where Fairy had found the shoe.
This was near the lake shore; and as they noted
the steep banks and how the green things grew
.pn +1
.bn 177.png
close down and hung into the water, they chilled
with apprehension.
Carefully they worked through the afternoon,
peering into every opening, following every
slightest path, calling every few minutes that
they might not lose one another, and with the
added hope that a little voice might answer.
Later they came upon the neighbors and
learned that the child had left the cousin’s home
early that morning unseen by any one. There
were not many hunters, less than a dozen, including
two or three school-boys. Three or four
small ranches were all the settlements on that
side of the lake; the few children rowed across
the narrow inlet to the school on the other side.
A fear that the scouts had not voiced was yet
present in every heart,—the wild creatures, cats
and bears. Billy asked of this, under his breath
that the smaller boys might not hear. The
answer was reassuring. There was such a fulness
of wild young growth that animals would
not be hungry, and a little thing that did not
attack them was comparatively safe.
The men had taken out several dogs; but they
were untrained, and the rain had washed away
.pn +1
.bn 178.png
what scent there might have been. They did
nothing but start up small game and go baying
off on their own quest.
Till nearly dark they all beat the woods but
with no success. The boys were worn. The
men believed the search useless and discussed
among themselves the advisability of dragging
the lake. However when dark fell they ate
hastily of food brought to them by some of the
women, and set out again with lanterns into the
woods.
Billy was anxious. He was responsible for
getting his scouts home not only safe but in good
order; and he believed that to continue the hunt
without rest would utterly exhaust them.
Though his own desire was to push on, and on,
through the night and the awful forest till it was
compelled to give up its secret, he ordered them
to make camp.
.pn +1
.bn 179.png
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch11
CHAPTER XI || “WHOSE GLORY WAS REDRESSING HUMAN WRONG”
.sp 2
.dc 0.3 0.7
BILLY kept every one busy till an excellent
meal was ready. It would surprise those
unaccustomed to camping to know that they had
hot potatoes, broiled bacon, coffee, and hot bannocks—“sinkers,”
the boys called them. Yet
they had neither kettles nor dishes, except one
aluminum pail, and each scout had his collapsible
cup.
The potatoes were roasted in the ashes, the
bannocks were mixed in the pail, patted into
thin, wafer-like biscuits, spread on a clean board
Billy had begged at the farmhouse, and put to
bake before the fire. The pail was then washed
and used for the coffee. The bacon was toasted,
each man for himself, his slice pinched in the
split end of a green stick.
Butter, jam, crackers, and canned milk added
the “class” to the meal, for which Billy carefully
.pn +1
.bn 180.png
measured out the rations, that they might
not encroach upon to-morrow’s supplies, for
there would be no time for fishing: a more serious
business claimed them.
Around the camp-fire they sat a while, toasting
and drying, for the night was damp and
chilly. Billy insisted on some speech, song, or
story from each one, knowing that would help
to banish the gloom. He called for opinions or
stories regarding the Scouts’ motto, “Be prepared,”
showing how it might become more of a
talisman to them, how it could become a continual
incentive to effort.
“You never know when knowledge is going
to come handy,” Redtop said. “That reminds
me of a story of the desert country over east of
the mountains, where the ranches are fenced with
barbed wire. They run their telephones by
means of them now; but some years back before
any one had thought of that, some miscreants
planned to rob a place, and cut the telephone
wires that their escape might be easy. A bright
boy discovered the cut, suspected some deviltry
was up, and connected up the wires by tying the
cut ends to the fence. The robbers did not discover
.pn +1
.bn 181.png
the trap, and when they went to loot the
house they met the police, and were caught.”
“A good story,” Billy declared; “I wonder
how that boy saved himself a shock?”
“Rubber would do it,” Redtop answered;
“and glass, though that would be hard to
manage.”
“The shock from telephone wires wouldn’t
be much,” Mumps said.
Billy called for a count of things each had
noticed in the woods that day, Redtop to keep
the count, and was pleased when Hugh outdid
all in original observation.
“Some of those things have never been reported
in any book that I ever read,” Bump
declared. “You’ll make a boss scout, Fairy. I
never can get the hang of making fire the way
you do.”
“If I live long enough,” Hugh gloomed;
“I’m big as sixteen and not twelve yet; just a
baby.”
“No matter, kid. Put your thinker to something
else. Who’s trying for the city flag design?
September will be here before you know
it.”
.pn +1
.bn 182.png
“Have you done anything, Billy?”
“I’ve an idea coming, but I haven’t chased it
down to paper yet.”
“Are you going to try, Redtop?” Hugh’s
thin little voice finished in a low rumble that
made the rest laugh.
“Me? I couldn’t draw a flag-pole that anybody’d
recognize unless it was labelled.”
Billy tried hard to keep the talk brisk, yet his
own mind wandered. He was thinking unusual
thoughts. Something in the lush fragrant
woods, in the silence and the leaping flames,—or
was it the feeling that other denizens might be
prowling near?—recalled “The Idyls of the
King,” that king
.pm verse-start
“Whose glory was redressing human wrong.”
.pm verse-end
All his boyhood Billy had wished he might
have lived in the olden days of chivalry, when
men gave their lives for the succor of the weak
and wronged. The glitter and splendor of court
and tournament described in Tennyson’s ringing,
singing lines, thrilled him; stirred a passion that
he hid within the silence of his own heart, since
he found few that understood the feeling. Hugh
.pn +1
.bn 183.png
and May Nell were the only ones of his friends
who felt as he did about the ideals of chivalry.
Erminie either looked at him in wonder or
laughed at him for a visionary.
But to-night the world-old stories of high adventure,
where all was risked for love of humanity,
came to him with new force, culminating in
a sudden vision of what the tragedy on Calvary
meant. There could have been no good deed
done in the past that was not possible to-day;
and perhaps this very quest for the little child
was as worthy as the romantic deeds of Arthur’s
knights.
Suddenly Billy straightened, and began to tell
the story of that famed Round Table where sat
the knights of the king, Launcelot, Sir Percivale;
Merlin, the Magician, and his evil fate,
Vivien. He told of the pitiful Elaine, the beautiful
queen, and how she wrecked Arthur’s
court, and of Sir Galahad and his search for the
Holy Grail.
At first the boys were not interested; but Billy’s
voice deepened with earnestness; and the fire declined,
leaving only its glowing heart changing,
gleaming, and paling like a monster opal, while
.pn +1
.bn 184.png
the silent forest drew closer, seemed to reach
down and clasp them, till almost they felt themselves
transported to those
.pm quote-centered-start
“Great tracts of wilderness
Wherein the beast was ever more and more,
But man was less and less till Arthur came.”
.pm quote-centered-end
“Fellows, every age needs its King Arthur
and a Round Table of knights who think more
of redressing human wrong and abating human
suffering than they think of their own bodies
and meat and drink. That is what our Congress
at Washington should be. I wish it might become
the fashion to go to Congress for what men
could put into the nation, not for what they can
get out of it.”
He rose and reached his hand up toward the
stars, showing bright in the small open space
above the tall trees. “Think of it! Just to do
nothing but feed oneself, earn, spend, sleep,
and die,—an ox does that. Yet most of us think
that if we do that and keep out of jail we do
enough; we are men.”
“Just what are you driving at, Billy?” Bump
yawned.
Billy, out of patience, went over and shook
.pn +1
.bn 185.png
him. “Driving at? I’m thinking of the
chances I waste every day while I moon over the
great things men used to do: that if we can only
find that child and I can get back to work, I’ll
dig! I’ll ‘be prepared’ even if my sword is a
shovel instead of Excalibur. I’m going to—”
He stopped abruptly. “It’s time to turn in,
boys,” he said quietly, turning away, ashamed of
having shown his emotion.
Rubber blankets over boughs were all “to the
good.” They spent little time in chaff or
“rough-house,” and in a few minutes all but
Billy were asleep. He could not rest. The day
had been too exciting to give room to any of his
own affairs; but now Erminie intruded.
Why had she not come out the night of the
playground rally? He knew her contention that
she should keep out of sight, yet she had almost
promised. Had her father learned of their night
on the island? He had thrashed this over before,
but in each quiet moment the question
came again insistently. He tossed and turned
wondering that he should notice that the bed was
hard, that his blanket was short, that the others
snored; usually these things were as nothing.
.pn +1
.bn 186.png
But at last he slept.
They were astir at five o’clock, and breakfast
was soon over, when they were off again. They
stopped first at the farmhouse to hear the latest
word, which was not encouraging. The men
had been out all night and found no trace; now
they were starting for the lake where nearly all
felt the search would end.
Not Billy. He decided that, if the lake
proved the child’s fate, it mattered little when
she was found. Yet she might be in the forest;
and with the endorsement of the others he set
about a still more careful hunt in the woods.
Through the forenoon, which was clear and
warm, they travelled by twos, taking many by-paths
they had neglected the day before. The
going was hard, and their faces were scratched
by thorn and brier. They climbed logs and
delved into many a hidden hole where the child
never would have thought of going, unless she
had crept there in fear. Billy kept the details
well abreast of one another by whistles and calls,
and as fast as possible made their general direction
toward home, for soon they must give up
the search and be on their way.
.pn +1
.bn 187.png
Near noon a shout from Bob who was following
up one side of a huge fallen tree halted Billy
on the other side. “I’ve found the flag!”
Billy ran around the towering root of the
trunk. It was true, but such a flag! Creased,
torn, and soiled, it was hardly recognizable.
Where it lay, the ferns and wild grasses were
trampled as if some light thing had walked
about, perhaps lain there.
A whistle said imperatively “Come!” and
Billy, marking the spot and the way, followed
the call to find Mumps and Hugh excited over
a little black stocking. That, too, was torn;
and a dark spot on it showed where briers had
pierced the tender skin.
“We’re warm!” Billy exclaimed. “We’ll
find her near here, or—” He did not finish;
but each knew what Billy did not voice. They
forgot their own fatigue; their scratched hands
and weary feet. A fresh strength invaded them
as a tide from some unknown sea of life. They
divided again, travelling faster and in parallel
lines following the direction pointed by flag and
stocking.
It was perhaps half an hour later when Billy’s
.pn +1
.bn 188.png
quick eye detected a splotch of white protruding
from under a fallen log ahead. He called
to Robert and ran forward, his heart beating
with mingled fear and hope of what he should
see. His feet were lead and would not move, he
thought; yet he was running fast, catching in
tangles, recovering, jumping logs, fighting each
clinging, hindering vine and shrub.
When he reached the place he saw what he
sought—the child. One small scratched bare
foot lay out from under the torn white frock,
beside the other, hardly more protected by its
torn shoe and stocking. With a sick fear Billy
bent to look upon the face hidden by the drooping
ferns.
But when he looked, he saw a sweet little face,
stained with tears but unmarred by claw or tooth,
the lips red with life, her breath coming evenly.
At once he turned and gave a great shout
which Robert echoed; and both blew their
whistles. Instantly came replies. The sudden
noise woke the child in fright, and she screamed
and cowered closer; yet in a second she hushed,
and peered cautiously out from her leafy nook.
“Don’t be afraid, little kid,” Billy said softly,
.pn +1
.bn 189.png
not touching her lest that might add to her fear.
“You’re lost and we’ve been hunting you a long
time. Come out. Are you hungry?”
Between each sentence he paused, thinking
she might be dazed with wandering, loneliness,
and sleep, and could not at once realize that
they meant her no harm. “Don’t be afraid, little
girl,” he said again. “We’ve come to take
you home.”
She sat up and looked the boys over with calm,
questioning eyes that measured them well before
she spoke. “Are you a gypsy man? Because
if you are, you won’t take me home, but to your
gypsy country.”
“Not so bad as that, baby; just American
boys going to take you to your mama.”
“I’m not a baby,” she gravely replied, creeping
out of her nest, surprisingly free from stiffness.
“I’m seven, and my name is Signa.” But
when she put her weight on her brier-torn foot
she winced and cried out with pain.
Billy opened his knapsack and offered her
some crackers and cheese. “Here! Eat this.
You must be awfully hungry.”
She took the food, but ate slowly, at which the
.pn +1
.bn 190.png
boys marvelled; they had expected to see her
bolt it.
“Have you had anything to eat since you ran
away?”
“I didn’t run away, I walked. And I had
my dinner pail, and in it was some lunch I didn’t
eat at school. I tooked some cookies from my
Aunt Felda’s pantry too.”
The others came tearing up, expectant, excited,
puffing with their speed. After so much
walking an extra run told on them; but the relief
of finding the little girl safe and well was
as good as rest.
Billy ordered them back to a more open space
to make camp, carrying the little girl himself.
In a jiffy they prepared their light meal, dispensing
with coffee for no one felt like taking
time to hunt for water.
While Billy was carrying the child to a place
of honor at their luncheon she spoke up shyly.
“I ’spect my face is dirty—I didn’t wash this
morning; I couldn’t find any water.”
“I’ll fix you, kid.” He put her down, took
from one of his pockets a clean handkerchief,
searched a moment till he found a wide, cup-shaped
.pn +1
.bn 191.png
leaf full of rain water in which he wet
a part of the handkerchief, and went back to
her. “Here you are, a whole toilet outfit, little
kid.”
“No, I can do it myself,” she said as he began
gently to wipe the smudged little face. She
caught the cloth and used it vigorously.
“Weren’t you afraid?” Redtop asked when
the first, busy part of the meal was over.
“Of what?” she asked nonchalantly.
“Of everything: bears, the dark, and—”
“Dark doesn’t hurt; it isn’t anything. And
bears—we don’t have much of them. For a
minute I was afraid of—of him.” She pointed
to Billy. “I thought he was a gypsy man, and
they are the baddest, they are.”
“She’s plucky for a girl kid,” Bump volunteered.
“She’s plucky for anybody, boy or man. It’s
no sociable experience to be lost overnight in
these woods, I bet.” Mumps looked gloomily
into the dark depths in front of them.
Some laughed, and the reaction from the long
strain brought relief; but Billy interrupted it.
“Fellows, our scout has been different from
.pn +1
.bn 192.png
the plan, but we have found what we came after,
the flag and—the good deed.”
“Oh, is that a flag? Where’s the red, white,
and blue? I was cold and I wore it.” The child
reached up where it hung and traced the design
with her finger, the while rubbing one brier-scratched
leg with her calloused little bare foot.
Billy explained the flag to her, and then to
the others said, “We must start if we are to
reach home to-night. There’s no time for Sunday
exercises, but what do you say to a song?”
“All right! Good enough!” they shouted.
“What shall it be?”
They answered one thing and another, but the
girl piped, “‘My Country, ’tis of Thee’; I can
sing that.”
So there in the woods they sang the hymn, not
so inappropriate as it might seem, since a country
is its people, and these young citizens had
performed a noble service. There was a note of
thanksgiving in the voices swelling there in the
forest stillness, the child’s thin treble standing
out clear from the rest.
The mother was beyond speech when they
brought her baby to her; but the father, who had
.pn +1
.bn 193.png
been summoned from the city and had spent the
night in vain search, coming now from his dismal
task on the lake, had more than words for
two. He praised the boys, begged them to stop
all night, tried to reward them, and failing that,
ordered his wife to cook the best dinner “ever
spread in the shack.”
With difficulty Billy explained that they had
no time to wait for dinners, that they must get
back to the city by sunset.
The Swedish farmer frowned at this speech,
and tried to dissuade them. Failing that, he
made a welcome proposition. “I have a good
team and carriage, my neighbor also; we’ll
drive you to town in two hours. To that you
shall not say no.”
They were glad to accept this offer, and none
knew how tired they were till they were jogging
on their way home. Billy’s pedometer recorded
forty-one miles.
They arrived in town with no adventure; and
after reporting by telephone to Mr. Streeter,
Billy went home to find his mother keeping dinner
warm for him.
Mrs. Bennett waited on him, and listened to
.pn +1
.bn 194.png
as much of his story as he felt like telling; he
found it hard to repeat from sheer fatigue.
When he had left the table she handed him a
note.
“Bess brought that to-day, and said you were
to read it the minute you arrived; but I thought
something to eat might prepare you. She
seemed to think it of great importance.” Mrs.
Bennett smiled and began to clear the table; but
Billy, with a prompting he could not understand,
took it to his room to read.
What he saw in the printed slip, a circular in
form, banished sleep, fatigue, every emotion but
anger.
.pn +1
.bn 195.png
.if h
.il fn=i195.jpg id=i195 w=441px
.ca
“Weren’t you afraid?” Redtop asked when the first busy\
part of the meal was over
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.in 8
.ti -4
[Illustration: “Weren’t you afraid?” Redtop asked when the first busy\
part of the meal was over]
.in 0
.if-
.pn +1
.bn 196.png
.bn 197.png
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch12
CHAPTER XII || THE FIGHT
.sp 2
.dc 0.3 0.7
BILLY did not suppose he would sleep that
night, so disturbing was the matter of the
little circular; but nature protects youth. In a
few minutes the words jumbled incoherently and
lost themselves; and a night of dreamless sleep
prepared him to meet the day.
His first waking thought was the circular.
He caught it up and read it over, growing angrier
with each line.
.pm letter-start
“A certain lily-necked, high-browed junior found the
picnic plus one Dark-Eyed Beauty so enthralling that he forgot
the call of the whistle, and they had a forced sample of
the simple life for one night in the open.
“This is what may be expected from the kid-gloved,
Sunday-school contingent represented by the haughty H.
They’re all handy with the moral tacked on fore and aft
to—the other fellow’s story. But when it comes to getting
away with any little plum, viz., the D. E. B., they’re there
with both feet, and the goods. See?
“N. B. All who favor muck-raking the other man in
public, and the primrose path on the sly, vote the High-brow
ticket.
.pn +1
.bn 198.png
“N. B. No. 2. Every man who handles money for clubs
or societies should be under bond. This means the Fifth
Avenue High. A word to the wise is sufficient.
.pm letter-end
Billy was so disturbed by the first item that
he took little note of the third, though he
knew it was intended for him. But his conscience
was clear; he had—A quick fear assailed
him. He had not banked the money on
Friday! It had been too late. School duties
pressed that day, and he thought it would be
perfectly safe in Miss Hartell’s desk in the high-school
library. How could it be otherwise?
Yet when he put on his school clothes the key
to his drawer was missing! In a fever of worry
he hunted through his belongings, knowing all
the time that he could not have taken the key
from his ring. He tried to think back over his
every movement on Friday afternoon; first, his
interview after the session closed with Miss Hartell
about his essay; next, the meeting of the
Good Citizens’ Club when they had taken many
initiation fees. He and Bess had counted the
money and he had receipted to her for it; and
last, he had locked it in the drawer, but this
was after Bess had gone.
.pn +1
.bn 199.png
Nothing illuminating came to him. A suspicion
instead filled him with indignation: Who
could write such a paragraph unless he knew
something to warrant it? Whoever knew that
was the one who had tampered with the drawer,
the lock.
Hardly able to concentrate his mind, Billy
wrote out his report of the scout for filing,
brushed and cleaned the flag as well as he could,
and tried to settle down to study; but the lessons
dragged. The words meant nothing; his mind
was held by the disquieting slip, that had neither
signature, nor slightest mark to show who
wrote it or who printed it. That was evidence
of evil intent; and if the school authorities could
find out its source, they would expel the student
responsible for it.
He went to the dining-room, impatient for
breakfast, and while waiting his sister Edith
came down with the baby. “Good-morning
Billy. Baby is glad you’re at home again.”
Billy touched the pink cheek, and put his finger
in the tiny hand that closed softly around it.
He thought his sister very lovely in her sweet
dignity of motherhood.
.pn +1
.bn 200.png
“William Bennett! Your grandfather made
your name worth while, my baby, and now Uncle
Billy is adding honor to it.” She caressed the
soft cheek.
“Don’t count on me; I may not add lustre
even if I do the best I can.” The future loomed
rather dark to him just then.
“Billy, that is all any one can do,” his mother
said, coming in with Mr. Wright at the moment.
Breakfast followed, and while they ate, Billy
recounted the happenings of the scout.
He went early to school, and barely greeting
the first comers, hastened to the library. The
drawer was locked, and no trace of meddling
appeared.
Puzzled and worried he went to the west entrance
to wait for Erminie. Instead of seeing
her he was surrounded by friends with voluble
congratulations; for the morning paper, in large
type and pictures, featured the adventure of
little Signa and the part the Scouts had played
in her rescue.
Billy wondered how such an account, fairly
accurate, had been managed, and again his
desire to do that work burned in him. Yet on
.pn +1
.bn 201.png
inquiry it was simple. The Morning News
Company kept photographs on hand of every
important and picturesque spot in the State, and
the lake was among them.
Through Mr. Streeter they learned the main
facts that concerned the boys, and also through
him obtained pictures of the boys, Billy and
Redtop; for the Scoutmaster’s den was littered
with pictures of his admiring boys.
With all the effusiveness of the greetings,
Billy divined a reticence, an aloofness, even on
the part of some who had been his most demonstrative
friends; and on the appearance of Hector
he broke away from them to tell his cousin
of his difficulty.
“Perhaps I have a key that will fit the lock;
those desks are nearly all alike.” Together they
went to the library, locking the door behind
them.
The lock yielded to one of Hector’s keys.
“There should be over forty dollars there,”
Billy said, his voice a little shaky.
“Why, didn’t you bank—”
“It’s gone!” Billy threw up his head and
looked blankly at Hector.
.pn +1
.bn 202.png
“When did you put it there?”
“Last Friday. It was after banking hours
when the meeting closed.”
“And Saturday morning you left town.
Nearly three days the start of you that thief has,
Billy. I guess you’re in for making good. Can
I help you?” Hector’s voice was sympathetic.
“I may need your help. Did you see that
dodger?”
“Yes.”
“When did it come out? Are there many?”
“At Buckman’s meeting. It was circulated
so adroitly that not one of us can tell where it
came from. It just appeared. Everybody has
one.”
“Of course it’s the Kid’s game.”
“Probably; but it will not be safe to say so.
He’s too sharp to leave an opening for proof.”
“Whoever wrote that circular knows where
that money went to.”
“Yes. I wondered what that ‘treasurer’
squib meant.”
“That key was stolen in this building.”
“What did you do after the meeting Friday
before you went home?”
.pn +1
.bn 203.png
Billy thought. “I threw my coat over a
bench while I straightened up the drawer and
locked, and then went to the lavatory to wash
my hands. A lot of kids were there, joshing,
and I may have been gone ten or fifteen minutes.”
“Whom did you see, coming or going?”
“Gee! I can’t tell, fifty, I guess.”
“And you were the last to leave the library?”
“Yes, before it was locked.”
“It’s a mystery surely. But I must go. See
you later.”
The loss troubled Billy sorely, and the morning
wore on dully, his books a burden, his recitations
poor. At noon he waited again for Erminie.
When he did not see her go out of the
building as usual, he went upstairs, and watching
his opportunity at a telephone when no one
was near, called her up at her home.
Her mother answered. Erminie was gone,
Billy could not learn where. Indeed the tremulous
voice at the other end of the wire sounded
as if the mother herself did not know. Above
her words and his own he heard her husband’s
voice swearing, and the curses were coupled
.pn +1
.bn 204.png
with Erminie’s name. But of the scraps he
heard, the one that electrified him was this: “Al
Short showed me that paper—”
Instantly Billy divined that he meant the circular.
He was speaking with a third person in
the next room. “Don’t you have an idea where
Erminie—”
“Billy Bennett, Erminie’s whereabouts is
none of your business. You’ve made her and us
enough trouble.”
He dropped the receiver. It was true. He
was the cause of their trouble; he had gotten Erminie
left at the picnic; he had angered Jim
Barney, whose threats, Billy believed, had
frightened Erminie into running away. And
Billy could not say a word in her defence. She
had to bear the cruel slur alone. How shameful
that an innocent accident should be the scourge
of a girl, perhaps for the whole of her life!
The afternoon was duller than the morning.
It was near the end of the year, when the routine
was somewhat relaxed, and the coming election
on the morrow caused a buzz and stir, an undercurrent
of restlessness that swept around and
.pn +1
.bn 205.png
past Billy unheeded. He sat with his eyes glued
to his books, trying to think, and failing.
At the close of the session he met the officers
of the Good Citizens’ Club and told them of the
loss of the money.
Bess, girl-like, jumped to her conclusion.
“That Jim Barney has something to do with
it!”
“Bess! Bess!” Reginald chided; “it’s serious—accusing
one of stealing with no proof
against him.”
“Just the same, I’m sure I’m right.”
“It makes no difference who took the money,
I must make it up.” Billy faced them fearlessly.
“Boys, and Bess, I know you’ll believe me
when I say I don’t know a thing about where
that money is. Yet I’m all to the bad for being
so careless about it. I want to do the right
thing, but I can’t refund it all at once, not—not
to—”
“Of course you can’t, Billy! We’ll make it
up, and the club need never know. I’ll lend
you thirty myself, and I’m sure—”
“Here, Queen, you can’t have all the glory;
.pn +1
.bn 206.png
the rest of us want to prove good too,” Reginald
shook first her hand and then Billy’s.
His throat began to ache and he could not
speak, but gave each a racking hand-squeeze
and turned away, his eyes burning, his heart
beating, yet feeling lighter than since his first
glimpse of the venomous circular.
On the steps outside he met Jim Barney face
to face. He had hoped this would not happen.,
Since the day when, a little boy, he had fought
Jimmy Dorr for whipping the twins, Vilette and
Evelyn, fought with every muscle in his body
a twisted whip-cord of indignation, he had had
no such “bloody hate” for anything living as
he now felt for Jim. It took all the self-control
he possessed to answer the Kid’s sneering greeting
calmly and pass on.
“Where have you cached the D. E. B?
Money comes in handy when one has—” Jim
never finished.
The double-barrelled shot was barely sped
when Billy sprang upon him. Fortunately for
Jim he was on the last step and had not far to
fall. He had not expected Billy to retaliate.
He knew that Billy prized the honors he expected
.pn +1
.bn 207.png
to win, and did not believe he would forfeit
them by fighting, no matter how great the
provocation. Neither did he reckon on the reversal
of his own maxim in life, “Might makes
right.”
Billy was proverbially good-natured. His
quick wit could turn most of the “joshing” back
on the “josher,” and he had learned that fighting
is usually an indulgence to the blood of the
beast in us, rather than an act of devotion to
right. But when the man slow to fight does become
enraged, especially if it is in the just cause
of others, he is twice an adversary; the blood of
the beast joins with the spirit of man. Right
then makes might.
Billy was younger, slenderer, less skilled; for
the Kid valued his “good right arm” as his
chief glory in life. But right arm and skill, any
force that mere physical exercise had developed,
met its Waterloo in such a tide of outraged spirit
as enables a little woman with a carving fork, to
put to flight desperadoes, or such as now nerved
Billy’s arms.
In that grapple his fingers were pincers of
steel. His doubled fists were derrick hammers,
.pn +1
.bn 208.png
and every blow brought blood. The Kid did
not have time even to think of his vaunted
“strangle-hold,” his pet “trip-trick.” He was
down and under—not under a man, but a fury
all legs, arms, weight, crushing knee, strangling
fingers powerful beyond belief.
So fast rained the blows that the by-standers,
silenced by what they read in Billy’s face, hardly
believed the fight begun before they saw the
Kid’s resistance weaken, his body grow limp.
Billy realized it, and ceased his onslaught.
“Say ‘enough,’ or I’ll kill you!” Billy’s
words were not loud, but they carried a white-hot
power to the half-conscious fellow under
him.
“Enough,” came in a thick voice.
Billy got to his feet, bent and turned the Kid’s
face up,—a bloody, bruised face,—and set his
foot on the heaving breast. “Stay where you
are till I speak.” His words hit like bullets.
“Within a week you get out another dodger and
take back the slam you gave that girl. You find
the key to that desk, and return the money you
stole from me—”
.if h
.il fn=i209.jpg id=i209 w=426px
.ca
“Stay where you are till I speak.”
.ca-
.if-
.if t
[Illustration: “Stay where you are till I speak.”]
.if-
Billy, blinded by his passion and sure of his ground,
.pn +1
.bn 209.png
.pn +1
.bn 210.png
.pn +1
.bn 211.png
flung out his accusations, forgetting that
money is visible, ponderable; that evidence to
its theft must be equally convincing.
But the Kid did not forget. He was cowed
but not beaten. He reached out a thick, dirty
forefinger and interrupted. “Go to the man
who printed that dodger if you want retraction,
not to me. You’ve called me a thief, you son
of a gun! You’re the thief, and I’ll prove it!
I’ll have you in the pen—”
Reginald and Sis Jones, who had stayed to discuss
Billy’s plight, now came on the scene in
company with Redtop in time to see Billy spring
again on the prostrate Jim.
“Hold on, Billy! Do you strike a man when
he’s down?”
Reginald’s cool voice checked Billy’s wild fury, that had leaped again
at the Kid’s accusation. He looked up fiercely. “He called me a thief,
Reg,—a thief!”
“What evidence have you for saying that,
Jim?” Reginald asked sternly while helping
him to his feet.
“I’m not giving my case away.”
“You’ll have to, or be arrested for libel.”
.pn +1
.bn 212.png
This was a bold stroke, but Jim thought he
knew more than any of them when it came to
accusation, law, and trickery. “Arrest nothing!
You didn’t hear me. You can’t swear—”
“But these others did.” Reginald glanced
about at the five or six boys looking silently on
at the quarrel.
“Then they’ll have to bring suit, not you.”
“What rot is this?” Redtop lunged forward
and leaned threateningly near Jim. “I don’t
give a dead dog for law, but if you call Billy
Bennett a thief, you loafer, I’ll mop this town
with you!”
It looked to Jim as if he would have two furies
to fight. “I’ll explain. Bill won’t even try
to deny that he stayed out all night after the picnic
with—”
“If you bring a girl’s name into this I’ll kill
you! I’ll—”
“That’s right! No girl’s name may be mentioned
here.”
The cool, authoritative voice was the Principal’s,
Professor Teal’s. He ordered the boys to
his office, and there the story of the fight and
the causes producing it were retold, save by
.pn +1
.bn 213.png
common consent the episode of the picnic was
not touched.
“I’ll take this under advisement,” the Principal
said quietly, when the matter had been
thrashed out with no definite result. He saw it
was a tangle none could unravel except those who
would not. Jim had been so adroit that no gap
in his story left an opening for attack.
Billy remained after the others were dismissed.
The Principal returned from closing the
door, and did not speak for a moment, but stood
with his back to Billy fumbling with some books
on his desk. When he wheeled Billy saw a different
Principal from the one he knew, calm,
cheerful yet powerful and a little stern. Instead,
he saw a sorrowful face.
“Bennett, I can’t tell you how I regret this.
I—I suppose you know that if you have not a
more convincing explanation you’ll lose your
honors?—perhaps have to leave the school?”
“Yes, Professor Teal.”
“Can you tell me privately anything more
than I heard? As it is, you are charged with
theft, and have been fighting.”
.pn +1
.bn 214.png
Billy hesitated. “I—I think I can say no
more.”
After another silence the man asked suddenly,
“Did the picnic episode noted in that circular
refer to you?”
Billy’s eyes blazed. “It did.”
“You are the last one I should have suspected
had I not heard Barney’s remark. How did it
happen?”
“It was an accident. My watch went wrong.”
“That was unfortunate.”
“Professor Teal,” Billy burst out suddenly,
“I believe my watch was purposely set back, for
it has never varied before nor since. Some one
planned the whole thing for spite. How else
could any one have known about it? We came
home separately and—and—Not one moment
of that night is one we need be ashamed
of.”
“Then I shall have two or three of the
teachers hear your report and the young woman’s—”
“Pardon me, Mr. Teal, I would never give
her name.”
“Will she not wish to do this herself?”
.pn +1
.bn 215.png
“I think not. My silence will protect her.
That’s what I fought Jim Barney for.” And
when the man did not reply at once, Billy added
impulsively, “Mr. Teal, in my place would you
give away a girl?”
The man turned, laid a kindly hand on Billy’s
shoulder, and smiled. “Billy, if I had the pluck
I wouldn’t. But go home and tell your
mother.”
“I—I had hoped not to worry her.”
“I’ve met your mother; and from what I
know of her I think she’s worrying already.
Moreover, she will have to know why you lose
your honors, won’t she?”
“I—I guess you’re right. I’ll tell her.”
He bade the Principal good-bye and started
off with a buoyance that surprised him, for he
was stiff and sore, and he knew his standing
among his mates was lost.
Not till he was nearly home did he think of
his troop. Would the Scoutmaster take away
his badges? He must, if the theft of funds was
known. For Mr. Streeter the return of the
money would not be enough; he must know that
Billy did not commit the theft.
.pn +1
.bn 216.png
“He need never know; they have made up
the sum,” Billy thought. Yet instantly he knew
that was neither justification nor proof of his
innocence.
.pn +1
.bn 217.png
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch13
CHAPTER XIII || ERMINIE TIES ANOTHER KNOT
.sp 2
.dc 0.3 0.7
BILLY told his mother all except Erminie’s
connection with the situation, which his
stubborn loyalty withheld. But Mrs. Bennett
had seen the circular and drawn her own conclusions,
which were the same as Bess’s, though
the older woman saw there was no way of
reaching Jim Barney. She resented the heartlessness
of the girl who could allow Billy to
bear the blame alone, though of course she did
not connect her in any way with the theft.
“Billy, Billy! I thought you had at least
learned to keep your money in a bank.”
“I told you the bank was closed.”
“I could have banked it for you.”
“I never thought of that.”
“‘Never thought’ doesn’t lock the door, nor
rebuild the burned house. Of course I shall advance
the money, but that does not clear you.
Your brother Hal is too busy to be troubled just
.pn +1
.bn 218.png
now, but before school opens in the Autumn
everything must be straightened out. Perhaps
before that the girl will see fit to speak—”
“She can’t tell anything about the money.”
“But she can clear up the picnic matter.”
“But I shall not return to school, mother; I
am going to work for Mr. Smith the Monday
after school closes.”
Mrs. Bennett looked at him sternly a moment.
“Billy, don’t you know that you are still
my little boy in the eyes of the law? You will
have to go to school if I require it.”
Billy put his arm around her. “Yes, mother;
but you won’t require it if a woman’s good name
depends on my doing what I think right.”
She returned his earnest look and sighed.
“Perhaps you’re right, Billy. At least I cannot
live your life for you. Take your position for
the Summer, and afterward—we’ll see.” Mrs.
Bennett had learned that patient waiting, more
often than opposition, adjusts tangled matters
wisely.
The election for president of the student body
took place the next day, at the close of the afternoon
session. All day groups of students at every
.pn +1
.bn 219.png
opportunity had discussed the situation in
low tones. It was known to both factions that
the teachers were watching carefully, and that
on the slightest indication of disorder or chicanery
they would interfere.
The Kid was openly jubilant, and his forces
full of brag, though Walter Buckman did not
quite conceal his anxiety. But Hector’s friends
were serious, extraordinarily quiet, yet mysteriously
busy.
Several of the leading boys wore badges bearing
an inscription none but the initiated could
read. These were seen to be in close conversation
for a moment at a time with student after
student; and after each such conversation the
badge-wearer was seen to pass a card. He was
especially busy among the girls.
Observing these groups, sensitive Billy
thought they often glanced his way; and he noticed
that the active ones were all his friends.
But none of them came to him. It was the first
mark of disapproval they had shown him.
Among the workers were Redtop, Sis Jones,
Reginald, and Mumps, his four best friends except
Hector.
.pn +1
.bn 220.png
He watched them pass and repass during the
noon hour, always with a pleasant nod but too
busy to stop. In the halls he met them as groups
passed to the recitation rooms, and outside it was
the same. And even Bess, who always had time
for a word, now waved to him and actually hurried
away.
At last he could endure inaction no longer.
He wanted to be in the fight, to be doing things
for Hector. The truth did not occur to him till
he finally appealed to his cousin at the close of
the session. “Say, Hec, what do the fellows
mean, leaving me out of your fight? I’ve
chewed the rag with myself all day, expecting
I’d be asked to kick in for something; but
they’ve passed me by as if I were a stone dog or
a skunk cabbage.”
“Don’t get peeved, Billy. You don’t know
the whole game. Our boys are secretly fixing
the lie on the circular. We’ve found out the
whole business, name of the printer, and how
much he got for concealing the name of his
press; but we’re not talking out loud, because
that would queer things.”
“Gee! That’s great!”
.pn +1
.bn 221.png
“Every one in the school who holds club or
society funds has been investigated and found
to the good.”
“That—that—”
“Fixes you. Of course I’m not supposed to
be busy on any of this, neither are you supposed
to be interested. See?”
Billy looked down and scraped the floor absently
with his toe. “I see I’m a heavy drag
on you, Hec. I’ve about knocked you silly.”
Redtop, hurrying by, heard this. “Stop running
off at the mouth, Billy To-morrow! We’ve
got them shot all to pieces; only it’s on the q. t.
till after the trick is turned. It’s your cue—ours,
all of us—to look all in, meachin’ like.
We’ll hit the cheers later.”
And so it transpired. The contest was quickly
over. Hector won by a clear majority of thirty-seven.
The jollification followed; and several
of the teachers, waiting in the building conveniently
in case of difficulty, came into the assembly-room
and listened to the riot of exultation.
The other party was dazed. They had counted
so confidently on Jim Barney’s contention that
“queering Billy meant queering Hec Price,”
.pn +1
.bn 222.png
that they could not at once realize their defeat.
Their leader was a master at vilifying; but had
not lived long enough to know that reputation
is cumulative and powerful for better or for
worse. Billy had built his good name in the
school too surely to be downed by one blow; and
the students who didn’t know Billy proved their
good sense by voting for Hector on his merits
instead of his connections.
But the leader “played his game” to the end.
After Hector had closed his speech of appreciation,
the Kid claimed the floor and delivered a
scathing speech, full of innuendo, and interrupted
by hisses and cat-calls, and ending with
a startling threat.
“I leave school in a few days. I know the
schools are run in the interest of certain political
factions, in the interest of the classes. I’ll be a
voter pretty soon; and when I am, I’ll have my
father and his bunch behind me, and we’ll make
school matters sizzle. We’ll see that student
rights are not invaded by teachers, and that the
smooth-tongued element gets what’s coming—”
Because Hector had been the speaker’s opponent
he felt that his first act in the newly created
.pn +1
.bn 223.png
chair could not be one of repression; but now
the speech was becoming so incendiary that riot
threatened. The factions vied with each other
in demonstration, each going as far as it dared
in the presence of teachers.
At this point Hector rapped for order, ineffectually
at first but insistently; and two or three
of Barney’s followers who had another year in
the school to forfeit if they overstepped discipline,
plucked at him and audibly warned him
that he was likely to lose his diploma.
He glared at them and went on. “They can’t
do it. They can’t refuse me my diploma because
I exercise the right of free speech. I can
call the President of the United States any name
I please, and the president of a school-board or
a principal is no better, because my taxes support
all of ’em. I—”
He got no farther. Redtop whispered something
in Walter Buckman’s ear that made him
start up in his seat. He reached over and pulled
the Kid down, and three or four boys hustled
him from the room. And Hector adjourned the
most threatening meeting in the history of the
school.
.pn +1
.bn 224.png
Affairs moved on to the end of the term in
outward quiet; yet the Principal, aided by a few
of the teachers, carried on a thorough search for
the author of the circular, that proved little.
The small firm that printed the circulars told
what they knew, but said the business was carried
on entirely through correspondence. The
copy being private matter required no signature,
and the payment was by coin brought
by a small boy whom they could not identify,
and to whom they delivered the order.
Thus when graduation came, Jim Barney
stepped arrogantly forward and, as the others,
received his diploma. Billy’s anger swelled
again, but he could not indulge it for long.
There was Reginald who had won first place,
delivering his oration with a power that cheered;
and many others Billy knew, receiving well
earned rewards. Only Erminie’s name was not
called, and Billy felt anew his remorse as he remembered
that but for him she would have been
there, more beautiful than any of them.
Next year it would be Hec and Redtop, Bess,
Sis Jones, and all the “gang”; and he would not
be with them. This was the last day of school
.pn +1
.bn 225.png
for him. But soon he forgot regret in the midst
of good-byes, bustle, and joyous confusion, that
presently subsided and left the gray building
silent and ghostly for the long summer vacation.
Saturday was a busy day, spent at home in
preparation for work, in “squaring up” troop
duties, a bit of shopping, and other matters that
had been put off till the end of school. He was
to sleep at home, but would leave early for his
work and return late. There would be little
time for other matters.
For weeks, beneath the push of increasing
duties, he vainly had tried to down the ache
that came with thought of Erminie. She had
not written. He missed her, and was hurt, sore
because she had gone without a word to him,
and had not let him know her hiding-place.
He tried to excuse her. He invented a dozen
ways in which a note she might have left for
him could have gone astray. But the ache still
lingered.
The Sunday before he left home was the hardest
day of all. He was tired. His bridges were
burned behind him, and his march ahead, not
begun, was portentous with unknown trials.
.pn +1
.bn 226.png
He worried himself with visions of Erminie ill,
in trouble, alone, or perhaps worse, with people
who mistreated her. Might the struggle be too
much for her? Might she end it?
But he did not dwell long on that thought.
Erminie was too cheerful, stout of heart, too
bright and winning, and life meant too much
to her; she would not fail. One thing, however,
haunted him persistently: she would need
money, and he could not send it to her.
The day wore on. In the evening they
gathered around the piano and sang the songs
they loved, Billy’s smooth, rich bass making
the family quartette complete. It was nine
o’clock, and Billy was saying good-night because
he must be up and off by six in the morning,
when a messenger came with an “immediate
delivery” letter for Billy.
At last! He felt sure that it was from Erminie
and his heart jumped, though he held
his face calm. He was glad the address was
typewritten,—they would think it was from
the troop, or from some of the boys on important
business. With a hasty excuse he took it to
his room to read. There he tore it open, surprised
.pn +1
.bn 227.png
that his hand was trembling, his breath
coming in gusts.
.pm letter-start
“Dearest Billy:
“You must have worried about me something awful. I
did not write before because you told me not to. At first I
didn’t know what to do, but now I’m going to stay right
here. They want me to. It was perfectly darling of you to
let me have that money, so much too. And I know you’ll
need it. But what a funny way to send it! I’m sending
two dollars. I can’t spare more yet.
“I had an awful chin with the Kid the night before I went
away, the night you were on the scout. As soon as I saw
that dodger I called him up over the phone and told him to
come over; and he did, and we walked and talked and talked.
He wanted to go and sit in the park, but I wouldn’t. I told
him he’d have to take back all he said, but he was nasty.
He said he had both of us right where he wanted us; that
I had lied to him, and a few more like that; and he wasn’t
even yet,—he’d only begun. There was more coming.
“Billy, I hated to run away and leave you to bear everything
alone; and I hate it when I can’t even tell you where
I am; but as long as you told me to do it, and wait four
weeks before writing, I’ve done just as you said, though it’s
been hard. I’m sure you know best. But why did you
typewrite it?
“Don’t worry about me. I’m at my cousin’s,—my uncle’s
house, and they treat me fine. I don’t have to do anything
that I don’t wish to, and Cousin Will is dandy. Tell ma
this; though I suppose you won’t since you fixed everything
safe for me. Poor ma! I’m sorry for her.
“I’m sending you a thousand kisses and a heartful of love.
I’ll send more money as soon as I can earn it.
.ti +10
“Your loving, troublesome Erminie.”
.pm letter-end
.pn +1
.bn 228.png
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch14
CHAPTER XIV || THE BLACK HAND
.sp 2
.dc 0.25 0.7
THE Summer was well on toward September.
Billy’s first business that Monday
morning in June when he made his final break
with boyhood was to go to Mr. Smith’s Tum-wah
Valley office for instructions. Here Mr.
Smith came every morning to see how his big
concerns were going in earth and rock, before
he took them up in his town offices in the mystic
symbolism of paper and figures, and business
policy and confidence,—all that vast idealism
which is so much more really the business of the
world than are the products of the earth we
live on.
From the open door of the artistic, vine-covered
log building Billy could look up the steep
hill to Tuk-wil-la (hazel-nuts), Mr. Smith’s
summer home, set in the edge of the forest overlooking
the little valley and the broad Lake
Kal-lak-a-la-chuck.
.pn +1
.bn 229.png
Mr. Smith’s instructions were brief. “I told
you it would be no picnic, Billy. This is your
stunt: take your shovel and go to work with
those Dagos on the grade. Learn all of ’em, the
look of the face, walk, and whatever you can
pick up of their talk. You’ll have to slouch
along and be a Dago yourself. Mind, I don’t
want any tattling,—just to know if they are plotting
any mischief, that’s all. And don’t come
near me unless you’re called. Treat me as you
see them treat me. See?”
“I’ll try,” Billy answered. He went to the
foreman for his tools, and set to work.
The hard work, the long hours, and Billy’s
youth unaccustomed to labor left him at night
little more than a log to roll into bed, sleep heavily,
and go dully off in the morning to another
day of digging. It was no wonder that the
strange situation of being engaged to marry a
young woman and already entered upon his life
obligation of providing her home, and yet not
knowing where she was, did not weigh upon
him as much as he had thought it would.
But as he became hardened to his labor, her
problem grew more obtrusive, and he longed
.pn +1
.bn 230.png
to hear from her. He puzzled over the one, the
only letter he had received, trying by many
readings to understand it, but it revealed less
and less meaning. That she had received a letter
purporting to be from him instructing her
to take the money from his club fund, go away,
and not write for four weeks, and even then not
reveal her location,—this he gathered. But
how she came by such a letter which he had
never written, how she could be deceived in the
writing, how she got the desk drawer open,—these
and many other questions would have become
unendurable had he not been so engrossed
with his new life.
Through the papers he had seen that her father
had failed in business, that Mr. Alvin Short
was the chief creditor, and that the home had
been sold. It also transpired that Mr. Fisher’s
business record was not one of which any son-in-law
could be proud.
Billy could never recover from his disgust at
the camp feeding where the dirty crew bolted
better food than they were accustomed to in
silent haste, and yet complained. It was some
time before the well-bred boy could mentally
.pn +1
.bn 231.png
detach himself and imagine he was in his own
home; but he partly accomplished this feat at
last, and ate with better appetite.
He found one among them, an American
whose better upbringing had somewhat survived
the tramping that had gone with the bottle. He
was now “doing his yearly stunt” at work, he
said, putting by enough to keep him out of “the
poor house, or the chain gang, or whatever is
the fashion for the gentry of the road in the
town I strike next Winter.”
At one corner of the table they ate together,
and sometimes talked a little, while the rest fed.
But he was a philosopher, and Billy learned
from him many things that set him thinking.
“Billy, a man must fight and wait,” the man
broke out suddenly one day, “before he can
fight and win.” They were lying under a madroño
tree, resting after the midday meal.
“You’ll have to switch on the light; I don’t
get a glimmer,” Billy replied lazily.
“Anybody can fight, when he has to; even a
dog does; but few of us have the grit to fight and
hold on. You’re just beginning life, my boy;
hold on.”
.pn +1
.bn 232.png
“I mean to do that.”
“Not to this! It is a dog’s life—to slave for
another man, feed, sleep, wake, and do it all over
again. I shall not do it much longer. But you—don’t
form the quitting habit; hold, and all
the time search for something better. Then
your fight tells. See?”
“Yes. But what’s the matter with you? Why
don’t you do a little holding yourself?”
The man’s eyes darkened and he frowned.
“Too late.”
“It’s never too late.”
The man jerked himself up, and energy
flashed in the weak face. “Not too late for you.
Opportunity will pass your way many times.
Catch her every time—hold her. By Heaven!
With your face and body, your clean mind and
good brain, you can do anything,—be a young
god. Billy, a fellow at the open door of life
doesn’t suspect his power, doesn’t use a fraction
of it.” He reached his hand up to the summer
sky. “Up there, down here,” he dug his foot
into the fecund earth, “a thousand million possibilities
wait for us to draw them forth with our
minds.”
.pn +1
.bn 233.png
“And you?” Billy asked as the other looked
off gloomily.
He wheeled almost angrily. “I? I have
ruined my chances. It takes a clear eye, a
steady hand, and a clean heart—mind you, a
clean heart—to see and hear the secrets up
there, down here.” Again he indicated earth
and sky. “Under desert skies, miles from any
human habitation, I’ve watched the stars march
from purple twilight to golden morning, and
heard things—whispers right out of heaven that
would have been triumph for me if—if I had
been fit.”
The foreman called, and they took up their
shovels; and Billy’s was no longer heavy. But
the man settled into his habitual silent, uneven
effort.
Side by side they worked till mid-afternoon,
when the Smiths’ machine appeared in the distance,
May Nell alone in the tonneau. Billy’s
first impulse was to straighten and greet her, but
it flashed across him that the men must not know
of his acquaintance with the daughter of the
“boss.” “Stand in front of me, will you?” he
asked of the man, and bent to re-tie his shoe.
.pn +1
.bn 234.png
“What did you do that for?” the tramp inquired
as the machine flew by. “Do you know
her? If you do, don’t let any devilish pride
keep you from standing in her presence, a man,
clean-faced or dirty.”
Billy grinned. “That’s all right; it’s part of
my game.”
“I don’t get you.”
“It’s not because my face is dirty, or that she
would care—she’s pure gold—but because it’s
part of my job to do that.”
“All right; you know your cards; I don’t.”
Billy’s eyes twinkled. “This is the fight,” he
waved his hand around toward the sweating,
bending crew; “and not letting her see me is
the holding on. See?”
The philosopher smiled. “You’ve caught
on, all right.”
That night after work, and supper, and when
Billy was trudging down the hill to get the car
for home, he met the machine again. He tried
to dodge it for workmen were passing, some
lounging along the dusty road in groups.
.if h
.il fn=i235.jpg id=i235 w=421px
.ca
“What do you mean, Billy Boy, by refusing to speak to me?”
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.in 8
.ti -4
[Illustration: “What do you mean, Billy Boy, by refusing to speak to me?”]
.in 0
.if-
May Nell saw him and ordered the driver to
stop. “What do you mean, Billy Boy, by refusing
.pn +1
.bn 235.png
.bn 236.png
.pn +1
.bn 237.png
to speak to me? I saw you this afternoon. Your shoe didn’t need—”
“Miss Smith, I—”
She stiffened as if struck.
“Miss Smith, circumstances alter cases,”
Billy added quietly.
She was conscious of the slower gait of the
dark passers, their smiles and frank curiosity.
“I’m sorry I can’t tell you any more, lady,”
he finished with a comical imitation of the
obsequious attitude of the foreign workman to
his employers. “I tell-a the Big-a Boss.”
She laughed and ordered the machine on, but
he saw the perplexity in her face as she sped
away.
Billy turned to meet a leering, grinning Italian
face. “Boss-a girl vera good look-a.” He
gave Billy a nudge that permitted no resentment,
since Billy had encouraged familiarity
from the workmen. “You lika?”
Billy ached to “spoil his face.” Instead, “Be
prepared” came instantly to his mind. He
pointed to the palatial home on the hill, Tuk-wil-la.
“Queens! Understand?”
The man nodded.
.pn +1
.bn 238.png
Billy stooped and gathered a handful of the
dust at his feet and pointed to himself. “Me.
Understand?”
Again the man nodded, but with a queer look,
half credulity, half suspicion, and trudged on.
Billy had not grown up in the vineyard country
of California without learning something of
Italian peasantry, and he had not worked a
week before he knew the men had a grievance.
He got an Italian primer and a phrase book, and
utilized his time on the car, which was nearly
two hours each day, for studying, with the result
of being shortly able to catch the drift of
most that was said around him. So it was that
as the Summer passed he learned and reported
enough of their crude plottings to keep Mr.
Smith on his guard.
When Billy arrived home a second letter from
Erminie awaited him, and again behind his
locked door he read it, wondering as he tore it
open, that he did not feel the same excited hurry
as over the first one. It was the unsatisfactory
letter of one unaccustomed to correspondence
and without the natural gift for it, yet it was
surprising enough.
.pn +1
.bn 239.png
.pm letter-start
“Dearest Billy:
“Here is five dollars more. I’ll be able to pay up soon
now, for Cousin Will got me a job. It has seemed a long
time to wait, six weeks; but I’m doing just as you said in
that letter of instruction, Billy.
“I want to tell you again, Billy, that I would rather have
faced it out with you, because I wasn’t afraid to stand up
to anybody about that night, with you so splendid to me.
It’s all right. Whatever you say goes about that business.
“I can’t understand yet how it was you knew all about the
circular, and had it all planned out—what I was to do—before
you went on the scout. None of us knew about it,
the dodger I mean, till Saturday night. And how was it,
Billy, that you had me send the key to a place away over in
North City? I didn’t know any of your friends lived over
there. The way I put it up is that some one there is to act
in the club pro tem, for you this Summer, while you are
working.
“I like my work just fine. Such a jolly bunch, hayseeds
of course, but I’m getting so I don’t mind that. And
they’re all so nice to me, especially the boys. But Cousin
Will don’t let any of ’em get funny. They all think I’m
his steady.
“I’m sending a letter to ma in this. Please mail it. I
expect she’s about crazy. I sent one to the home number.
I had to do that, Billy, if you did tell me not to. That wasn’t
a bit like you, Billy. But the letter came back. If this
goes to the general delivery maybe she’ll get it. You’ll send
it, won’t you, Billy? She’s lost her home, you know; I saw
it in the paper. Or Will did.
“So long, dear Billy. Don’t forget me, though I’m not
worth remembering. I think a lot of you. If I amount to
anything it’ll be a lot because of you.
.pn +1
.bn 240.png
“Cousin Will is dandy to me, so thoughtful,—lots like
you, only he’s a hayseed too; but I don’t mind that; I’m
getting used to it. He’s twenty-four.
.ti +10
“Your loving Erminie.”
.pm letter-end
Billy stared at the sheet a long time, turning
it over and over, and scrutinizing the envelope
as if he might make it tell him something more.
What could it all mean? Who had sent her that
letter? Planned her movements so carefully
and forged his name? And the money? He
didn’t see yet how she could have got it out of
the drawer at school even if she did have a key.
Twenty-four! An old fellow that Will was.
He wasn’t really her cousin either. Billy set his
teeth and wished he were free to set out on a
search for her. The letter was postmarked
Portland, Oregon. The other had been the same.
But of course the place where she was must be
the country, and some distance too, or she would
not call the people hayseeds.
Suddenly the task of finding a girl somewhere
in the State of Oregon with nothing but that
postmark to guide him revealed to him its hopelessness;
and too restless to sleep he went out and
walked,—faster and faster, without realizing it,
going south.
.pn +1
.bn 241.png
With every step the puzzle grew worse. Only
one grain of comfort showed: Erminie’s letter
would prove him no thief. Why, yes! that
really fastened the proof on him, and worse,
showed that he was taking care of her. That
was no way out of the tangle.
Who could be using his name for this business?
Of course, no one but the Kid, and he was
too cunning to be caught. And where was that
key? Would some of the boys get it, and never
know where it came from? And the desk
drawer—whose would it be when September
found that silent old pile ringing again with a
thousand student voices?
At length he found himself in the southernmost
park of the city, not so very far from Tum-wah.
Exhausted, he threw himself on one of
the benches, drawing well within the shadows
that he might, unmolested, go over again all the
matters that troubled him.
While he mused, he became gradually conscious
of voices approaching, and he was sensible
of some ominous import in them. He knew
they were Italians. Instantly he dropped to the
.pn +1
.bn 242.png
grass and crept behind the bench, intending to
go on as soon as they passed.
They were quarrelling, but speaking in
guarded tones, vehemently. Billy heard broken
bits, “More, more,” and “Thousand dollars,”
in English; and in Italian, names of places he
knew were in Italy. But nothing excited him
till he heard, “the boss,” and “in the lake!”
The Black Hand! That had put its mark on
Mr. Smith! Well, even the Black Hand might
find its mate in a white one!
Billy was not so frightened as he might have
been, had he known less of their ways, these hotheaded
Latins that live in America, but not of
it till a second generation binds them to the soil.
He knew their allegiance to hates and friendships
rooted in the land they had left; and perhaps
what he had heard was only a scheme to
“even up” somewhere, and concerned Mr.
Smith only so far as the fact that the money
they earned came from him.
The men went by slowly, halting once or
twice, and Billy crept cautiously out and followed
them at a distance till they came under one
of the park lamps that revealed them perfectly.
.pn +1
.bn 243.png
Billy knew them; one was the man who had
chaffed him about May Nell.
He hurried around by the gate on the other
side and took a car for home, where he called
up Mr. Smith at Tuk-wil-la.
“It sounds important, Billy. Out with it.”
“It’s not to be told over the wire. But please
don’t leave your house to-night—”
“To-night? It’s twelve o’clock. You’ve got
me out of bed.”
“Well, let me see you in the morning before
you leave the house, then; it may be nothing,—what
I have to tell,—and it may be a good
deal.”
“All right, boy. Don’t worry yourself. Nothing
is as bad in the morning as it seems at night.
Good-night.”
But in spite of that bit of truth Billy went to
bed to dream of swarthy banditti, Italian caves,
beautiful maids held for ransom, and hair-breadth
escapes known only to dreams.
.pn +1
.bn 244.png
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch15
CHAPTER XV || A GLEAM OF LIGHT
.sp 2
.dc 0.3 0.7
WHEN Billy rang at Tuk-wil-la the next
morning Mr. Smith was waiting for
him; and safely in the den Billy told his story.
At the close he was astonished to hear Mr. Smith
chuckle softly.
“Look at that curiosity.” He handed the boy
a smudged and rumpled letter.
It was a threat common enough to men of
large concerns, ill-spelled, blotted, and signed
with a black hand. It demanded ten thousand
dollars, to be delivered by Mr. Smith in person
and alone, the next night at a certain designated
hour and place; and failure to comply meant
certain death to one of his family.
“Sounds creepy, doesn’t it, Billy?”
“What will you do?”
“What they tell me to do,—with a difference.”
“You—surely you won’t go, Mr. Smith!”
.pn +1
.bn 245.png
“Surely I will. But three or four good men
will be hidden out there in the bushes.”
“Gee! I’d like to be one; I can shoot.”
Mr. Smith shook his head, and his smile died.
“This is probably comic opera, yet—you’re
your mother’s only son, and there might be a bit
of a scrimmage. Besides I have other work for
you.”
“All right.”
Mr. Smith smiled, for Billy’s tone was not
hearty. “The Tum-wah people’s second injunction
is out; but I can take care of that well
enough, if I can beat daylight on another proposition.”
He rose and took a turn or two around
the room, one hand in his pocket, the other pulling
roughly at his mustache. “Do you know
what our real trouble is?”
“The city won’t let you have the right of way
over the boulevard? Is that it?”
“Yes. Do you know why?”
Billy looked up shrewdly. “You won’t pay
the price?”
“Right, the first guess. Alvin Short wants to
cinch us. And the worst of it is, if he gets what
he asks, he’ll bleed us every time we cross a
.pn +1
.bn 246.png
street or cut an alley. Now your job is this: to
watch this property while the Smith family go
on an excursion.”
Billy could not help showing his surprise.
Usually the force of servants was trusted to do
that.
Mr. Smith laughed and nodded through the
window to where thick green woods swept an
impenetrable curtain past the singing falls, past
the private grounds, and down the hill. “The
boulevard lies through there. It won’t be built
for two years, yet I may not go over it nor under
nor across it till they get their price. Billy,
there’s—how many points of law in possession?”
Billy smiled but was discreetly silent.
“I want six of the Italian bunch down there,”
he nodded toward the valley below, where men
were already gathering for the day’s work. “I
want six that work, and don’t talk. Can you
pick ’em out?”
Billy named six, but recommended the tramp-philosopher.
“No, not any Americans; not on this job.
Now I must go down to the grade, stop the
.pn +1
.bn 247.png
work, and pay off the men. I guess that’s all,
Billy. Your work here begins to-morrow night.
Sorry it’s not to be at our picnic.”
When Billy left him and started down the
steps, May Nell came running out to meet him.
“Billy! Wait a minute!”
The sun touched her hair to brighter gold.
She was rosier, fuller of cheek than formerly,
and rounder of neck and arm, with an indescribable
dignity that was not quite a woman’s, yet
more than girlish.
“I heard you and hurried out to catch you. I
never see you any more.”
“I’m pretty busy these days.”
“Tell me why you called me ‘Miss Smith’
the other day.”
“I’m only your father’s hired workman down
there—as I am anywhere for that matter—and
those fellows mustn’t see me presume to speak
to you.”
She laughed merrily. “That seems positively
funny, Billy, when I think of the day you
led me into your mother’s house with a sheet
pinned round me, a woman’s skirt torn and trailing,
and my toes showing through my shoes.”
.pn +1
.bn 248.png
“But now your father is worth a million and—and
my face is dirty.” They had stopped
near the conservatory, and he saw himself in a
window that greenery behind had turned into a
mirror, and laughed not quite mirthfully.
She caught his hand—hard and grimy—in
her soft ones. “Your heart isn’t dirty, Billy.
And I want you to remember always that I think
you are the very best boy in the world.”
They laughed lightly, and Billy ran off, and
that day the shovel was light.
May Nell and her mother went away, the
servants were given a vacation, and the house
closed. It looked rather lonely when Billy came
in the early evening. He had a room in the garage,
and was to be on duty practically all of the
time. This was not arduous, for the entire place
was enclosed in a high barbed-wire fence, as effective
as if not hidden by honeysuckle, wild rose,
and clematis; and at night the gates were locked
and two Great Danes policed the grounds.
The first evening was a test of Billy’s courage,
not because anything happened, but because it
was the first night of his life absolutely away
from human beings. And also because his mind
.pn +1
.bn 249.png
was with Mr. Smith, wondering what was happening,
and magnifying the danger.
Morning came, and a telephone message saying,
“Nothing doing; the blackmailers caught
on.” And Billy almost forgot to be glad, so disappointed
was he at the tame ending of his adventure.
As the day passed, he knew something was
going on in the forest. Soft voices came occasionally
above the roar of the falls and the clink
of iron; and in the evening he detected the
odor of fresh coffee and toasting bacon. And
Billy knew—Mr. Smith was crossing the boulevard!
Visitors and men on business, applying at the
gate or by telephone, soon lessened; and the rest
and time for reading stimulated Billy to thought
of things unremembered during the months of
hard work. Each day he opened and aired the
house, and found in the library books that made
the hours short.
Vague ideas he had hardly glimpsed for the
flag design now took shape. The banner of the
city! It must be a noble idea, yet simple, one
that all would love; and it must be like the city,—the
.pn +1
.bn 250.png
City of Green Hills. It was also a city of
blue waters and bluer skies.
Each day he dreamed over it till at last the
idea bodied itself in a spire-crowned, forest-enfolded
hill, with a sea at its base and the declining
sun on the far horizon. A shallop in full
sail was setting forth toward the sun.
There it was, the green hill, the city, the sea
and its commerce. But this was present and future;
something must show what had been vanquished.
Rather sadly Billy put in an Indian
and a bear at the edge of the forest, both looking
backward.
A sudden reminder came to him,—he was no
longer a school-boy. With the resignation of
his office of treasurer of the Good Citizens’ Club
of the Fifth Avenue High he had severed every
link between him and school. Yet he was still
a club member,—that admitted him to the competition.
He felt out of it all, old,—was he
old before his time? He thought of his mother’s
words, and then of Erminie, and—of May Nell.
After about twelve days Mr. Smith appeared
suddenly. His shoes were dusty and his hands
.pn +1
.bn 251.png
and cuffs soiled; but he was oddly jaunty, as if
some great load had been lifted.
“Didn’t expect to see me, did you, Billy?”
Billy returned the greeting, and waited, wondering
where his employer could have been.
“Great job, Billy! All done. As good a viaduct
over that boulevard site as there is in the
city. I’ve just been looking it over. Did you
know it was building?”
Billy smiled. “I only suspected.”
“Good boy! You may see it now, any time
you wish; but the men who built it won’t be
there.”
Billy looked inquiringly but did not speak.
“It’s all right, boy; everything’s right.
We’ll be riding on our own railroad in a week.”
“Knock on wood.” Billy laughed.
“That’s right. There’s many a slip betwixt
rail and tie. Run into town for a couple of days,
boy, and see your mother. I’ll look after the
house now.”
“Thank you. I—”
“Oh, and you needn’t say I am here.”
Billy was glad of the two days’ visit at home.
.pn +1
.bn 252.png
It had never seemed so pleasantly dainty and
quiet; and it was good to spend some time with
his family when he was neither sleepy nor in a
hurry. He called up some of “the kids” over
the wire and began to feel young again. Sydney
answered excitedly, and what he said took Billy
flying across the town to see him, when he caught
a glimmer of a clue to the mystery that had enveloped
him all Summer.
“A Postal Telegraph kid I know saw Jim
Barney go by one day,” Mumps began, “and
that set the boy talking. ‘That’s a crooked one,’
he said, and then he told this story. He said
that he took a letter for Kid Barney once late
at night to a girl,—a mighty good-looker, he
called her,—and the next morning he went to
the same place to get another letter; and in both
was something hard, a key he thought it was.
This made me sit up, and I asked him where the
girl lived, and he said East Street, somewhere
in the seven hundred block.”
“That’s Erminie!” Billy burst out.
“Sure. And that letter had—”
“That letter was a forged one from me, and
.pn +1
.bn 253.png
it ordered her to take the money and run away,
and not let any one know where she was.”
“Jiminy! How do you know that much?”
Billy told briefly of receiving the two letters.
“Where can I find that telegraph boy?”
“He’s gone to the country for a few days, but
he’ll be back.”
“Then we can clean it all up, and—” Suddenly
all the hope died out of his face, and he
turned away dejectedly. “No use, Mumps;
there’s nothing doing.”
“You bet there is! Now that I know so much,
I’ll have it out myself with—”
“Mumps, it’s just where it was before. Nothing
can be done in the matter without bringing
in the girl, and that we can’t do.”
“Then it’s straight, what all the fellers are
saying, that you two stayed out all night at the
picnic?”
“I’m not acknowledging that,” Billy said
sternly; and then wheeled quickly. “Nothing
happened that night that the whole world might
not have seen.”
Sydney looked his sympathy and his entire
understanding. “I see.”
.pn +1
.bn 254.png
“My watch was set back that night.”
Sydney jumped to his feet. “Gee whack! Did
your coat hang on a tree back of the dancing
place?”
“Yes, for a time.”
“I saw the Kid fooling with something there,
saw him hurry away just as I turned the corner.
And that minute you passed me; but it wasn’t
very light, and you didn’t notice me.”
Billy was silent for a time. “Mumps, all this
may help me some day, but not now. Will you
keep track of that messenger?”
Mumps promised, and after some further discussion
that was barren, they separated.
The second day Billy spent with the Scouts,
visiting each troop, hearing of their scouting
trips, watching the practice work, and with Mr.
Streeter going over the plans for the great civic
review of the Scouts, the Good Citizens’ Clubs,
and the ceremony of accepting the successful
flag design and awarding the prize.
The evening of the second day Billy went back
to Tum-wah. He was not due till morning, but
he had become already a part of the great activities
incipient there, which his imagination could
.pn +1
.bn 255.png
see perfected and powerful. He felt by proxy
the responsibility and the joy of it.
Mr. Smith in his machine overtook Billy
trudging up the hill, and took him in.
“Ought I to ride—be seen riding with—”
“Jump in! You should not have come back
before time, but I’m glad you did. After to-night
your job is over, and you’ll have a better
one.”
“Why, what—what’s doing?” Billy began,
too astonished even to realize the import of Mr.
Smith’s remark.
“Yes; find things changed, don’t you? We’ve
been busy.”
When Billy left, the grade had stretched bare
and brown for miles without tie or rail. Now,
except a short gap at the station and the half-mile
of contested right of way the track was
completed up the hill and into the forest.
“The girls took a notion to come home ahead
of time—surprise.” Mr. Smith looked toward
the villa. “I hate surprises! Bad enough in
business; but this—Well, now they’re here,
we’ll have to take care of ’em, Billy.”
The boy thrilled at being included as a defender
.pn +1
.bn 256.png
of the two in the house they were approaching.
“Get down in the tonneau,” Mr. Smith commanded.
“They must not know you’re here—and
to watch; they’ll be uneasy.”
Billy obeyed.
“Stay here—out of sight—till I come again;
I won’t be gone long.” Mr. Smith drove to the
garage, but not in, and Billy got out and went to
an inner room, his sleeping apartment.
As he had feared he heard May Nell’s voice
when her father returned to the machine. But
he got rid of her.
“Run back, kiddie. I have some figuring to
do, and then I must see a man at Tum-wah, and
some other things—it may be very late before I
get back.”
“It’s your birthday, papa. We came home to
celebrate—”
“To-morrow night will do as well; make the
old house hum if you like to-morrow.”
“I suppose I’ll have to be satisfied,” May
Nell said, and Billy heard the crunch of her
slippers in the gravel.
“Come out, Billy. I have time to burn,” Mr.
.pn +1
.bn 257.png
Smith called; and as Billy entered he saw the
anxiety the man could not conceal. “If anything
suspicious occurs don’t wait to investigate
but call up South 265, and tell ’em to come at
once; then me at Tum-wah.”
“Why don’t you have—the police, is it?—on
hand before—”
“I didn’t expect to have women in on this
deal. And—there are times when one must
have the trouble before he calls for the cure.
Sometimes that makes a point in law.”
He was silent a long time. And the night,
too, seemed stiller to Billy than usual. Not a
breath of wind was stirring, and nothing was
moving out on the road, though the hum of the
distant electric car was making itself heard.
“By George, Billy! I don’t want trouble,”
the man broke out suddenly. “If those Tum-wah
fellows had let me alone I’d have been
willing to divvy even, and they’d have had
twice as much as they have now. But they’ve
hogged the game. They’ve pushed their injunction
suits, and fixed these Dago gardeners.
Last night they tried to blow up my grade.”
“They did?” Billy began to realize that
.pn +1
.bn 258.png
there might be a shadow of the Black Hand
after all.
“But I’ve got the jump on ’em, Billy; got ’em
in the neck, by George! They’ve violated their
franchise,—I have the evidence in black and
white; and if this night’s work meets any interference
I’ll put their old once-a-some-time-in-the-day
cattle cars out of business.”
He lit a cigar and puffed at it nervously.
Billy had never seen him in this mood before.
“They think I want to get the land round here
for nothing. Boy, when a real man wants to
make money, he takes something out of Nature
that’s worthless, or worth little—or perhaps it’s
man’s waste—and makes that thing, after a dose
of brains and a civilized dress, worth good
money. But a lazy man jumps a lot of land and
sits down to listen to his neighbors holler for it.
In your time, my son, the people will have their
eyes open, and there’ll be no land going that
way. Then you’ll have to use your brains to
think up new things.”
“Sometimes it seems as if all the new things
had been thought up.”
“New things! Why, Billy, if every man
.pn +1
.bn 259.png
should invent a new job there’d still be as many
coming. Look about you and see how many
little things need fixing. And who has made use
of sawdust? We burn millions of dollars’ worth
every day. They’ll be making hot cross buns
out of it some day. Look at the thistles, nettles,
base ores, the millions burned up in sewage.
Think of the untended, burned, and rotting forests,—billions
go that way. Think of the deserts
even along foggy sea coasts,—why, when we
really use our brains we’ll condense that fog, irrigate
with it, and raise pineapples where the
horned toad now preëmpts all the real estate.”
He stopped a moment, rolled his cigar in his
fingers, and looked out of the open door; while
Billy, breathless, waited for him to go on.
“Think of the tide. Billy, men of the twenty-first
century will run nearly everything in the
world that calls for power by the force of the
tide. They’ll turn it into acres of light, and
heat, and force their garden truck with it.
They’ll cook with it, grind with it, carry it up
mountains and down into mines; drive with it,
fly with it, and laugh at us for troglodytes.”
Both laughed softly, and Mr. Smith presently
.pn +1
.bn 260.png
rose. “I guess I’ll go down to the grade and
kill time there. May Nell might come again;
she doesn’t have as much respect for business as
you do, Billy.”
“Perhaps it would be the same with me if you
were my father, though I don’t see—how—”
He hesitated, wondering what life would mean
with such a man for father.
“Perhaps so. Well, lie low. And don’t let
the girls know you’re here.”
With that Mr. Smith got into the machine
and chugged off down the hill.
.pn +1
.bn 261.png
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch16
CHAPTER XVI || A NIGHT OF DISASTER
.sp 2
.dc 0.3 0.7
BILLY looked after him a moment thinking
it rather a pleasant fancy to call mother and
daughter “the girls,” but the situation quickly
claimed his attention. It was still light, and
May Nell might come to the garage and discover
him; he would go to see the viaduct.
He went by the lower gate and skirted the river,
a river in volume, though called Tum-wah
Creek. As he walked he mentally constructed
the scene as it would look when Mr. Smith’s
enterprises possessed the valley,—he heard the
hum of mills and factories; on the peaceful lake
below saw ships entering the canal from the
Sound to load for ports, for the world’s far ports.
He looked back at the beautiful mansion; it
would be a pity to see it desecrated, made into a
boarding-house, perhaps. Yet Mr. Smith would
move his summer home farther on. It was the
.pn +1
.bn 262.png
way of this vast growing city,—to-day’s lovely
suburb was to-morrow’s mart of business.
Billy had barely walked around the viaduct,
marvelling at the swiftness and secrecy of its
building, when a low whistle halted him, and
the tramp-philosopher came from the woods.
“Hello, Billy! Back in time for the rumpus,
are you?”
“What rumpus?”
“Hasn’t the boss put you wise? It’s coming
sure.”
“What’s coming?”
“There’ll be a row down there to-night when
the old man starts to close that gap in the rails.”
“Oh, I guess not.” Billy turned away with
more jauntiness than he felt.
“See here, boy!” Billy could see that the
man was serious and sober. “I know—those
hounds have it in for Mr. Smith.”
“But surely he is prepared.”
“For what will happen down there,” he
pointed to the valley, “but not here. The ladies—they
came home.”
“Mr. Smith didn’t expect them. It can’t be
helped now.”
.pn +1
.bn 263.png
“Not helped? Why doesn’t he send them to
town?”
Billy thought hard. Why didn’t he, to be
sure? There must be some reason,—perhaps it
must not be known that Mr. Smith expected
trouble,—but whatever his motive Billy must
stand by him, stand by May Nell and her mother.
“He had his reasons; it’s not for you or me to
question them.”
“Perhaps not.”
“Are you going down there?” Billy nodded
toward the railroad.
“No. He needs help here. They’d like to
see this viaduct go up in smoke, those Tum-wah
rascals.”
“Gee! Will they do that?” Billy thought a
minute. “Say! If you should need me, blow
this whistle twice; but don’t do anything that
will let the two at the house know I’m there.
See?” Billy handed over his whistle.
“I’m on. If you hear shots don’t be scared.
I’m heeled.” He showed a new revolver.
They separated, and Billy hurried back to his
place. So far there was nothing unusual in the
quiet evening scene. Through the foliage he
.pn +1
.bn 264.png
could see May Nell and her mother in their
summer white, sitting on the veranda; could
hear the soft murmur of their intermittent conversation,
though no words. The evening was
warm, and the fragrance of honeysuckle and
mignonette heavy on the air. For years afterwards
Billy never smelled them that he did not
live over again the events of that awful night.
Many times he made the rounds, stealthily,
keeping most of the time near the garage lest he
should be called. When he went in once for
something, the clock said eleven; and the next
time he looked toward the veranda, they were
gone. The lower house was dark, but upstairs
lights twinkled from two of the rooms; shortly
they, too, were dark.
Two men entered the radiance of the gateway
lamps. Billy hastened down the drive to see if
they went toward the viaduct; but they kept on
up the road that led through the woods to some
small ranches.
For more than an hour all was quiet. Billy
hoped the two in the house were sleeping calmly;
hoped no hint of this night’s anxieties would
ever come to them. Suddenly, unbidden, came
.pn +1
.bn 265.png
the thought of fire! He knew how the stairways
ran, how he could reach those rooms unless both
stairways were cut off. In that case—was there
a ladder? He measured with his eye the more
than twenty feet between those windows and the
sloping ground.
He remembered seeing a ladder at the back of
the garage, and went to look for it, but it was
gone; and he wondered if it could have been
placed in the basement for safe keeping while
the servants were away.
As he returned to his beat again, a ringing of
metal struck through the darkness. It was the
hammers! They had begun to lay the rails!
Regularly, beat on beat, came the blows. Dozens
of lanterns were bunched each side of the
track, shedding a dim light. Billy wondered
why Mr. Smith had not strung electric lamps on
a sliding wire. Perhaps he did not want the
Green Hills Power Company to know,—since
he must buy power of them until his own plant
was completed.
Billy crept quickly back to his post near the
garage, thinking Mr. Smith might call him.
Again he saw the two men in the lamplight going
.pn +1
.bn 266.png
by on the road, this time headed for Tum-wah.
An uneasy suspicion came to him: What
business had taken those men to the isolated
ranches and back so late at night?
A dozen answers,—business, illness, a telegram,—many
legitimate errands might be theirs
for this midnight trip. Yet Billy could not rid
himself of his suspicion.
The sounds from below came regularly, but
more rapidly, as if some force were hurrying the
workers. He could see the bent backs, and occasionally
the glint of metal in the lantern light;
could see the helpers move the stacked lights on,
and hear the ring of the rails as they were
dropped on the ties.
The moon, red, lop-sided, and ragged, appeared
over the Cascades. That meant it was
past twelve o’clock. Billy was creeping carefully
by the house to patrol the farther line of
fence, when the hammering below suddenly
ceased; some of the lanterns went out, and noises
of another sort drifted up to him,—angry voices,
the whack of sticks and clubs, and then a shot.
It had come,—the protest of blows! He
could see the confused commingling of forms,
.pn +1
.bn 267.png
hear louder voices, and again the dull crash as of
wooden weapons; and in a moment a detonation—a
blast.
The road-bed—they must be blowing it up!
Yet while Billy strained his eyes to catch the location
of the blast, and the meaning of the turmoil
that seemed a tragedy, he noticed a sudden stilling
of the commotion, and the shifting of the
forms. One by one the lanterns were lighted
again, and soon the hammers rang, now more
rapidly than before.
Billy understood. Mr. Smith had been prepared.
He had seen that the law should be ready
to aid him as soon as assistance was needed. The
work would go right on, and Billy felt sure Mr.
Smith would find a speedy way to repair whatever
damage might have been done. This outrage
so promptly met would surely stop any
others that might have been contemplated.
Relieved, he ran into the garage and picked
up the sandwich and bottle of milk that were to
be his lunch, and went out again where eye and
ear might still be on duty.
He did not eat. As he stepped out, a flame
shot up at the side of the house. He rushed into
.pn +1
.bn 268.png
the garage to call up the fire department;
but the moment he took down the receiver he
knew the wires had been cut,—the telephone
was “dead.”
A cold horror swept him. Whatever was done
he must do himself. He ran to find the garden
hose and soon had a stream of water playing.
The force was good, and he could see that he
made headway against the flame. Ought he to
cry out? Wake the sleepers? If he did, they
would see—hear—No one could tell what
might happen down there in the valley before
the coming of the sun. He was gaining—the
fire would soon be out. He would let them
sleep.
But this might not be the end. Those wires—where
would the cut be? Near the grounds
surely, for anywhere else they were in plain sight
of all passers following the road.
He was looking for the last hidden sparks and
considering it safe to leave when a shot from the
direction of the viaduct proclaimed that malevolence
that night was missing no property belonging
to Mr. Smith. A second shot rang out, and a
third; and presently two men emerged from the
.pn +1
.bn 269.png
forest running, the forward one stumbling and
recovering only to fall again and rise no more.
The second came toward the garage drive, and
Billy knew him to be the tramp.
He ran to open to him, explaining breathlessly
about the fire and the wires as they hurried up
the walk.
“You take the hose and watch while I hunt
where those wires are cut. I believe we shall
need the fire engine.”
“It won’t do any good; you can’t mend the cut
if you find it. Better break into the house and
bring out the women now.”
“Wake them to all this turmoil, when it may
not be necessary? No. I’ll find and splice
those wires someway.”
“You’ll get shocked, crippled, if not killed.”
“Telephone wires don’t shock to hurt.”
Without more parley Billy hurried out of the
enclosure and around to where the line entered
the grounds, finding what he expected. The
wire had been cut near the pole. It was easy to
tie the long end to the fence, but he was puzzled
how to manage the other.
The man—how had he reached the wire so
.pn +1
.bn 270.png
high? He must have had a ladder—that was
where the ladder went! Or—could he have
brought one? Climbers! Of course. Billy’s
heart sank, but rose again when he remembered
that all poles at Tuk-wil-la were of iron.
While thinking, he was hunting, slowly he
thought, yet actually flying from place to place,
diving into the greenery along the fence and
leaving more than one drop of blood as tribute
to the barbs. He found the ladder at last, a
flimsy thing, and placed it against the pole.
Wire! He must have wire. Like lightning
his mind flashed from point to point of his difficulty.
The clothes-line,—that was copper! He
started back, running and thinking. How could
he cut it? Must he take time to twist it in two,
even supposing he could? It was such heavy
wire. Tools in the garage? Yes, perhaps, and
the chest locked; and while he hunted, precious
moments would be going.
The lawn-mower! Perhaps that would do the
trick. He knew right where it was, and ran for
it. Now he was at the line, pulling the end loose
from its staple, and wishing all the time the
moon would get a move on and shine up
.pn +1
.bn 271.png
brighter. Length by length he tore the wire
from the arms of the clothes tree, each
staple “in harder than the last,” it seemed. He
thought he had never been so weak, so slow.
At last he had enough, and made a bight in it.
Would the lawn-mower “play up”? Yes! It
cut the line in two, and Billy ran up the ladder,
soon making the connection. He got
several light shocks and for a panic-stricken moment
trembled lest he could not let go, and
should be marooned in the air. Yet he came
safely through his task, and ran with his ladder
to the garage to try the wire.
Before he arrived he heard the bell ringing.
The ’phone was alive!
He went in and took the message. It was to
say that Mr. Smith had gone to town and would
be back in an hour. Billy knew this was from
the Tum-wah office; and he told them there
what had happened. He wondered if he should
call the fire department on the chance of what
might occur, but decided against it.
Fatal mistake. He started toward the house
to tell the other what he had done, beginning to
speak at some distance, when a boom shattered
.pn +1
.bn 272.png
the very air around them, lifting and enveloping
them. It came from beneath, almost at their feet
it seemed, and both men staggered back half
blinded.
For an instant neither could understand what
had happened. But for an instant only—less
than a breath. The whole interior of the house
flashed into light. Each window was a red and
angry eye.
“The fire department—South 687—call
them up!” Billy commanded, grasping at the
hand of the man and running with him,—he
was going for the ladder.
But the other pulled away. “The fire department
can’t manage this! We must get the
women out! Come, quick! They’ll be
burned!”
“Do as I tell you!” thundered Billy, breaking
loose. “I’ll get the ladder. Come to me as
soon as you ’phone.”
While he was shouting he had found the ladder
and was hurrying back. Both knew that a
mine had been laid into the house, into the basement.
The fire outside had been but a “flash in
the pan.” They knew the house must go; and
.pn +1
.bn 273.png
such a large fire at that season would endanger
the forest, and many homes near. Tuk-wil-la
was just within the city limits, and entitled to
the services of the department; they must stop
the fire there.
It was but a few seconds from the time of the
explosion before Billy was placing his ladder at
one of the windows where the lights had
twinkled so shortly before, calling May Nell’s
name in tones that rang through the night.
He knew that both stairways were cut off;
whoever had prepared the mine had seen to that.
“May Nell! Come to the east window!” Billy
called again and again as he climbed nimbly,
and plunged into the smoke and heat.
“Yes, I’m here—in mama’s room—she’s
fallen—I can’t lift her.”
Billy heard the suffocation in her voice, the
weakness. He knew the room, and groped his
way on, calling, “Come this way! The ladder
is at the other window! Come quick! I’ll
bring your mother!”
Billy’s own words were choking, sputtering
even though he was holding his head down.
Where was he? Surely he had made no mistake,
.pn +1
.bn 274.png
was going the right way. “May Nell! Where’s
the door? Where are you?” But no voice answered,
and for a breath Billy believed he could
not go on. They were caught, lost!
Yet that thought nerved him. Those two suffocating—burning—The
little girl he had succored
once before, the brightest, loveliest—Yes,
in that instant his soul flashed a clear vision!
She was the one. She had been the inspiration
to the noblest deeds he had ever thought or
hoped. She was the star of his life!
Some instinct guided him,—or was it his own
soul? Something besides conscious volition led
him through an open door, kept him calling,
calling frantically, and crouching around the
room to find the prostrate woman. “May Nell!
May Nell! Speak! Where are you?”
It was enough. Some shock from his soul to
hers galvanized her to consciousness. She
roused, answered feebly, and moved toward the
bed where her mother had fallen.
.if h
.il fn=i275.jpg id=i275 w=409px
.ca
“Give her to me; I am fresh,” he said, attempting to take\
Mrs. Smith from Billy’s arms.
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.in 8
.ti -4
[Illustration: “Give her to me; I am fresh,” he said, attempting to take\
Mrs. Smith from Billy’s arms.]
.in 0
.if-
Billy lifted the insensible woman, turned
swiftly back, and called encouragingly to May
Nell. “Hold fast to me, girlie!” And when
.pn +1
.bn 275.png
.bn 276.png
.pn +1
.bn 277.png
he felt her grasp relax from his arm, “Brace up!
Be game, Nell! We’re getting there!”
Then he lost sense of time, of rational movement.
Even the dead weight of his burden did
not signify. He felt no emotion. He seemed
only to be plodding on stolidly, while behind
him flames roared and floors crashed. He felt
the timbers sag suddenly, knew the fire was close
upon them, yet he could not hurry.
But while smoke and heavy burden and heat
dulled his mind, he was actually making incredible
haste. He felt the clearer air before he saw
the open window, and arrived there to find the
tramp waiting, the only one who had dared to
enter the furnace. He had broken out the window
for them, sash and glass.
“Give her to me; I am fresh,” he said, attempting
to take Mrs. Smith from Billy’s arms.
He was a small, slender man, and Billy dared
not trust him. “Not her; here!” He pushed
May Nell forward.
But the little girl shrank back. “No, no!
Mama first.”
“Go!” Billy commanded, and thrust her into
the awaiting arms. His brain was clear
.pn +1
.bn 278.png
enough now. The lighter pair must go first; the
ladder would certainly bear them, if not the
heavier two. Well, he must see that his own
charge was somehow safely landed.
They obeyed. People did obey Billy when he
used that tone. Those who had gathered from
the nearest houses steadied the ladder while the
first two came down, and held out glad hands
to receive them.
But to Billy the rescuer below him seemed to
creep. Would he never reach the ground? The
floor trembled with a new shock. Billy heard
the crash of another wall, saw the fire leap
through the gap behind him, and daring the
lesser danger he climbed out on the ladder.
Even as he passed to the first rung a sheet of
flame burst upon them shrouding them, reaching
for them like some red, cosmic tongue that
would lap them into the mouth of destruction.
But they emerged. Billy felt the spring of the
wood that announced its release from the weight
of the other two, and hurried on with his precious
freight, knowing the danger, yet hoping
the ladder would hold. Midway between fire
and earth he heard a crack, a splintering, and
felt the sag.
.pn +1
.bn 279.png
“Catch her!” he shouted hoarsely, and
reached her down.
His cry fixed attention on the descending
woman, and she was safely caught and carefully
borne to coolness and friends. But for Billy
they were too late. Relieved of responsibility
for others, he made no attempt to direct his fall—perhaps
he could not have done so—but
landed heavily in an inert heap.
They lifted him tenderly. Almost at once he
regained consciousness, and asked anxiously of
May Nell and her mother. It was not till he
was assured by his own eyes that both were safe,
and that Mrs. Smith’s hurt was from a light fall
that temporarily had stunned but had not harmed
her, that he realized the meaning of the limp
arm at his side.
.pn +1
.bn 280.png
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch17
CHAPTER XVII || BILLY WINS
.sp 2
.dc 0.25 0.7
THE beautiful house and its contents vanished
before their eyes. The fire department
arrived only in time to prevent the fire
from spreading. Yet Mr. Smith said that the
timber that would otherwise have gone was
worth twenty times the value of the house, save
for its sentiment. And even that was not what
it would have been for an older home; the
family treasures were at the town house.
It was enough, the magnate said, to receive
into his arms when he raced out from town, his
loved ones safe, and except for shaken nerves,
unhurt.
It was not possible in the long trial that
followed to find the “man at the top.”
The poor ignorant foreigners who had been
inflamed against Mr. Smith, and, while he
slept, had entered his house and laid the train
to its destruction, paid the penalty; while the
one who tried to blow up the viaduct died
.pn +1
.bn 281.png
from the tramp’s bullet. Billy’s evidence decided
the coroner’s jury, for none of them ever
saw the tramp after that night.
The Tum-wah people could not be directly
identified with the outrages, but investigation
proved enough to cause the revocation of their
franchise, and incidentally Alvin Short finished
his career in stripes.
Billy was taken to the hospital where his injuries—except
the broken arm—were soon
healed. Here Mr. Smith came and more than
once poured out his gratitude.
“This ends it, Billy. We’ll have no more
nonsense about working till you’ve taken aboard
your tools, your equipment of education and
travel. It’s school now; you begin with the
term. Hear?”
Billy smiled his thanks. Later, when he was
on his feet, would be time enough to explain
that his life must be lived according to his own
idea of duty.
.hr 30%
A few days after the fire Mrs. Bennett was
surprised to receive an urgent call at the telephone
in an unknown voice begging for an immediate
.pn +1
.bn 282.png
interview; and a little later an excited
young woman was at her door.
“I’m Erminie Fisher,” she explained. “I’ve
come about Billy. How is he?”
“He’s doing well; will soon be out of the
hospital.”
“And he won’t be crippled, scarred?”
“No. In a few weeks he will be quite recovered.”
Mrs. Bennett could not throw cordiality
into her tone. Loyal as Billy had been to
Erminie his mother divined far more than he
suspected of the part this girl had played in his
life.
“Oh, Mrs. Bennett, he’s the best boy in the
world. He’s done so much for me. I saw in
the paper what a hero he was at the fire, and I
came right home. I—I—was so afraid I
couldn’t clear up everything, but now that I’ve
seen Mumps—Sydney Bremmer—and heard
a lot from him, I think I can.”
“Sit here, where it is cooler,” Mrs. Bennett
invited, pushing a chair to the open window.
“Now tell me what you wish,—only that don’t
distress yourself.”
The kinder words and tone cheered Erminie.
.pn +1
.bn 283.png
She told the story of her acquaintance with Billy,
of the picnic, of the attitude of the school bully,
of the letter, the money, and of her growing conviction
that the letter was a forgery, and the
taking of the money a theft.
“And I came back to tell you, Mr. Wright,
Professor Teal,—anybody who can help tell the
truth for Billy. I’ve been a fool, I know it now;
but Billy sha’n’t suffer another day for that.”
Mrs. Bennett took Erminie’s hands in her
own. “You are a brave girl. It has not been
easy for you to do this, nor has it been easy for
me to look on helpless, and see Billy’s life so
early burdened.”
“He could have put himself right any day if
he had told on me.”
“How is it you dared come home, since your
father was so—so angry—” Mrs. Bennett
hesitated.
“I would have dared anything. I had made
up my mind to set Billy right, no matter what
happened to me. But my Uncle Henry fixed it.
Anyway, after what Mr. Short did to dad, he
was glad I didn’t marry the man, and dad’s as
pleased as ma to have me home again.”
.pn +1
.bn 284.png
“You—wish Mr. Wright to know—what
you’ve told me?”
“Yes, yes! I want Billy to be cleared of
everything, to go back to Fifth Avenue High respected
as he deserves to be.”
“Yet if—if you do this it will be hard for
you. It’s past, and a pity for you to be exposed
to censure when you were only the victim of circumstances.”
“Mrs. Bennett, Billy never hesitated to bear
censure for me; now it’s my turn. Besides—”
She stopped and for the first time showed embarrassment.
“I want you to know this,—Billy
taught me some of the best things I know; and I
loved him—I love him still. But now I know
that it is not the kind of love a girl—a girl
should have for the man she marries. I—I’m
not going back on Billy, Mrs. Bennett. It’s—it’s—”
Mrs. Bennett reached over and gently stroked
her hair. “You need not hesitate. I quite comprehend.”
Erminie caught her hand. “It’s perfectly
lovely of you to say that. I’ve been feeling so
mean—untrue to Billy—even while I’ve been
.pn +1
.bn 285.png
loving him all the time. But I’ve met a—a
man, a good man, much older than Billy, and—and—”
“Yes, a man. Billy’s only a boy, but you are
a woman.”
“It was Billy who set me to thinking. He
told me many things you have said, and I began
to see that even if I had loved Billy as—in the
right way, it would have been wrong for us to
marry.”
“That is over now. Look to the future, and—I
hope you will be very happy.”
“And may I bring Will—Mr. Harrington,
to see you? He’s anxious to meet you, and
Billy—all the family. And I want him to
before—before I change my name.”
Mrs. Bennett made the girl happy by her
sympathy. Erminie summoned Sydney by telephone
to meet them at Mr. Wright’s office, and
there the two told their story. Mr. Wright sent
a command to Jim Barney that brought him
while they waited. He soon found his small
knowledge of law and trickery no match for the
astute lawyer, and he was very glad to accept
immunity from prosecution on more than one
.pn +1
.bn 286.png
charge by a full confession of his misdeeds, and
the payment to Billy of the money he had induced
Erminie to take.
When the interview was over Erminie and her
lover went to the hospital, where she saw Billy
first alone.
Never had she seemed so dear and sweet to
him as when she stood beside him telling the
story of what she had done for him. And when,
after a moment’s absence she brought her Cousin
Will, looking so happy, and proud of him, Billy
felt his heart bound with a great joy, the joy of
freedom.
“Here’s the dearest man in the world, Billy,
and the best, next to you.” She looked sidewise
at the well-made but rather short man beside
her, with a trace of her old coquetry lurking in
voice and manner.
Billy shook the firm hand with his left one.
“She has it twisted, Mr. Harrington. You’re
the best man; I’m—I’m just a kid.”
“I wonder she ever looked at a man, then,”
the other returned generously, waving his hands
apart in recognition of the six feet of muscle and
vigor that surmounted even the background of a
hospital cot.
.pn +1
.bn 287.png
Two weeks later the great day came; the day
when the City of Green Hills paid court to her
young citizens; when the Scouts marched by the
reviewing stand, twelve hundred strong, and
later performed their feats of skill in the competition
for honors; when the Young Citizens’
Clubs, boys and girls, each club led by its own
band, in song and speech celebrated some great
event in the history of their city, or prophesied
her future greatness.
Mr. Streeter told the multitude that this was
but the beginning of a campaign for the promotion
of civic pride, a pride that should foster art
and beauty and civic honor, to the end that the
City of Green Hills should be known throughout
the land as the best as well as the most beautiful
city in the world.
“These things will make it the greatest. Do
you think when it is known that this is the cleanest,
the most beautiful, and the best governed
city in America, that any power can withhold
people from coming here? The American city
that makes commercialism second to these three
things will in ten years outgrow all others. Humanity
hungers for such civic ideals and doesn’t
know it.”
.pn +1
.bn 288.png
Then came the explanation of the flag competition
and the announcement of the winner.
Billy thought the highest possible note of joy
had been sounded,—for his design had won.
There above them all, at the moment of Mr.
Streeter’s announcement, the banner was run up
the tall pole and beneath the Stars and Stripes
flung out to the breeze, the official flag of the
City of Green Hills.
Cheers upon cheers! And Billy was called.
When he stepped to the platform, his arm still in
the sling, but otherwise rosy with health and joy,
the audience rose, and cheers from the men, and
fluttering handkerchiefs from the women, made
Billy wonder if this was just plain earth or some
other more glorious planet.
After an almost imperceptible silence came
the yell of his school, given with a gusto that
told him he had been reinstated in their favor.
He made his bow and a modest speech. In
the crowd near the platform were May Nell and
Erminie. And as he finished, it was into May
Nell’s eyes he looked, and knew who held his
heart.
The exercises were over, the crowd began to
.pn +1
.bn 289.png
move. He went down and took her hand. And
at that moment came again a ringing cry,
“What’s the matter with Billy To-morrow?
Billy To-morrow’s Billy To-day! He’s all
right! Rah, rah, rah, Billy!”
.sp 4
.nf c
THE END
.nf-
.sp 4
.pb
.pn +1
.bn 290.png
.nf c
SOME OPINIONS OF MRS. CARR’S FIRST SUCCESS
.nf-
.hr 10%
.nf c
BILLY TO-MORROW
.nf-
.hr 10%
“It is a powerful story, the scene of which is laid in
California after the great earthquake. It is admirably
told, and makes a strong appeal to all that is best in a
young person’s nature.”—Philadelphia Public Ledger.
“A splendid story of a boy’s love and courage.”—Hartford
Courant.
“This is a good story of a California boy who learned
lessons of manliness and chivalry from a little refugee girl
received by his mother after the great fire. The boy reader
may be trusted to enjoy it and without having his pleasure
spoiled by the suspicion of a moral.”—The Argonaut.
“All in all it is a splendid story for boys.”—Education.
“Sarah Pratt Carr has invented a lovable young hero in
her bright story, ‘Billy To-Morrow.’ So full of incident is
the story that it will hold the interest of boy and girl readers
from the first chapter to the last.”—Des Moines Capital.
“The story is full of life and action and good sense.”—Spokane
Spokesman-Review.
“Should appeal to every full-blooded youngster.”—San
Francisco Bulletin.
.hr 10%
.nf c
A. C. McCLURG & CO., Publishers
CHICAGO
.nf-
.pn +1
.bn 291.png
.pb
.sp 2
.nf c
PRESS OPINIONS REGARDING MRS. CARR’S
Billy To-Morrow in Camp
.nf-
“Here are a crowd of real boys in a delightful vacation camp. The
interest is sustained fro6m the beginning to the end. The publishers have
done their part to make the book attractive, paper, type, binding and
illustrations are all of the best, and the picture of Billy on the cover
almost equals our ideal of him. Mrs. Carr is to be congratulated on
having given to American young people one of the best books which has
been written for them since the death of Miss Alcott and one which
places her in the very front rank of writers of juvenile
fiction.”—The Week-End (Seattle).
“A good, exciting, and wholesome story of a group of boys who
‘camp out’ on the shores of Puget Sound, and have lots of fun and
some troubles.”—Cincinnati Times Star.
“It gives in an interesting style the adventures of a boy with a big
heart and unusual courage. The fascinations of camp life are well
portrayed. A good wholesome story for boys.”—The
United Presbyterian.
“A boy’s book, full of all the exciting incidents that belong to a
camping-out life by a group of bright lads who are bent on enjoyment of
the freedom of the woods. There are many things which would naturally
happen to a bright young lad in camp and which many bright young lads
not in camp will delight to read.”—Journal of Education.
“A lively and vivacious story which will gladden any sort of
boy.”—The Post Intelligencer (Seattle).
“Here is a new hero in boy literature, though not entirely new, as this
is his second appearance between book covers. The popularity and success
of the earlier book, ‘Billy To-morrow,’ and its adoption as the title of
a series indicates that this manly, full-blooded, lovable young
character is to be with us some time. The story has much life, action,
and withal, good sense, and it carries the best sort of moral along with
an enjoyable story without the reader the least expecting it. ‘Billy’
has a promising career ahead of him.”—The Normal Instructor.
“The story is a jolly one of outdoor camping experiences, with the
boy’s practical devices for comfort which young readers may find helpful
for similar occasions.”—The Continent.
.nf c
A. C. McCLURG & CO., Publishers
CHICAGO
.nf-
.pb
.sp 4
.ul
.it Transcriber’s Notes:
.ul indent=1
.it Missing or obscured punctuation was corrected.
.it Unbalanced quotation marks were left as the author intended.
.it Typographical errors were silently corrected.
.it Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only\
when a predominant form was found in this book.
.if t
.it Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_); text in\
bold by “equal” signs (=bold=).
.if-
.ul-
.ul-