"Is--is--anybody here?" Peter asked, his voice shaking. There was no answer, nothing but silent, enveloping darkness.
Peter groped behind him for the old piece of broomstick which propped the window open, and with this in place, he leaned far out and gazed toward the little graveyard where his father and his grandfather and all the simple forbears of the lonely neighborhood had gone to their rest.
Not a sound was there in that solemn little acre. He strained his eyes and tried to identify the place by Deacon Small"s tall, white tombstone, but he could not make it out.
Suddenly, just above that silent, hallowed little area, a tall gray thing appeared, then disappeared as suddenly.
Peter trembled, yet gazed in fascination. He was fearful of he knew not what. Yet he could not withdraw his eyes from that spot. Had someone--some _thing_ from that little graveyard come to his window and gone back again to its musty rest? Was it--_could_ it be--?
Hardly had he the chance to think and conjure up some harrowing fear, when the dusky column appeared again, then disappeared, then appeared again. Then darkness.
Whatever put it into Peter Piper"s head he never know, but quick like those very flashes occurred to him the very words that he had been saying over and over to himself but a few minutes before--saying over and committing to memory. "Three dots or flashes--S, three dots or flashes--three dots or flashes--"
Again it arose, that ghostly apparition, and filled the dark sky above the little graveyard. This time it remained, for one, two, three, four seconds.
Peter"s hand trembled now from a new kind of excitement, as he groped behind him for his one poor scout possession, the handbook. Then he reached for the lamp, but the night wind blew it out just as the tall thing came again, and stayed for several seconds.
Peter groped for the little box of safety matches which always lay near the lamp. These were the chief ornaments of his little room, the lamp and the safety matches. He held a match close over page two hundred and eighty-four while he divided his gaze between this and the next lingering visitation of that strange, long, shadowy thing over the graveyard. He struck match after match, as each blew out. Yes, that was what three short flashes meant--S. And one long flash meant T.
Suppose--_suppose_ there should be three _long_ appearances now? That would be O. Were these signs, expressed in ghostly strangeness, just the figments of Peter"s excited imagination? Just the Morse Code haunting him and coloring his fancy? He put his finger on the black symbol on the page and waited.
--Two--three--then a pause.
S--T--O
His finger held upon the page trembled as he lighted another match and still another and moved his finger to another printed symbol on the page. And the long, dusty column over beyond the graveyard, came and went, now for a second, now for several, now for several again, then for one short second.
"STOP!" said Peter, his voice shaking as if indeed some ghostly spectre were upon him. Somebody, somebody was talking to him! Some scout, in real khaki attire, out in the great world?
Peter did not know where to place his waiting finger next. A mighty hand had been raised in the black, solemn night, and had said _Stop_. Had sprawled it across the open page of the heaven. Peter waited, as one waits for a spirit to give some sign. He kept his eyes riveted upon the general service code, lighting match after match and throwing them on the floor as the fickle things went out. Some day, _some day, maybe_, Peter would have a _real_ flashlight with a switch b.u.t.ton, a flashlight of shiny nickel that he could polish, such a flashlight as he had seen a picture of in _Boy"s Life_. A flashlight that would not blow out.
Sometime he would--maybe....
CHAPTER XXI
SEEIN" THINGS
Stop-blue-car-five-o-seven-nine-two-eagle-on-front.
Out of the solemn darkness, someone, somewhere, had called to Peter Piper of Piper"s Crossroads; had stolen like a silent ghost to his little window and bidden him watch.
Far away that arresting voice may have been, away off in the big world, and none could say how far or near, or where or how it spoke, calling in the endless wilderness of night. But it spoke to Peter Piper, of Piper"s Crossroads, to Peter Piper, pioneer scout.
And Peter Piper, with the aid of the only scout companion that he had, read it and was _prepared_, as it is the way of a scout to be.
He did not dare to hope that he was being drawn into the actual circle of scouting; he would not know how to act among those natty strangers.
Wonderful as they were, with their pathfinding and all that, they could hardly penetrate to his humble, sequestered little home. Peter Piper of Piper"s Crossroads was not going to allow himself to dream any extravagantly impossible dreams. The nickel flashlight and a correspondence with some unknown "brother," that was as far as his hopes carried.
He had still a lingering and persistent feeling that this whole amazing business was unreal; that he had been dreaming it or at least reading a meaning where there was none. He knew that he could see trees and the stars in Hawley"s pond when there were none there. Might not this be the same? He had expected sometime or other to make a signal fire and give this scout voice a try-out with some simple word. He had not expected to be aroused and called to service by its spectral, mysterious command.
What should he do? Set it down to his own deceiving fancy and go back to his handbook? Return to the wholesome realities of stalking and trailing which filled those engrossing pages? Poor Peter Piper felt that he had made a sort of bold excursion from Piper"s Crossroads into the realm of miracles and that he had better not let that weird apparition over beyond the graveyard dupe and mock him. Perhaps he had been "seein"
things." Yet there were the long and short flashes and they had spelled that warning message, or else he had gone out of his senses or been dreaming. He hardly knew what to think, now that he had time to think.
His credulity soon gained the upper hand, he began to doubt his own eyes, and he was just a bit ashamed of what he was resolved to do. At all events he would have the delight of doing it, and no one would know.
He would act just as a _real_ scout would _really_ act if the message was _real_ and _true_.
Stealing down the creaky, boxed-in stairs, he got a lantern from the kitchen and lighted it. The actual performance of this practical act made his experience of the last few minutes seem fanciful, unreal. He was no longer under the spell of that ghostly column and he was not so sure that he believed in it. To bestir himself upon the authority of such an uncanny warning seemed rather foolish. He almost found it easier, now, to believe that he had seen some spectral thing in the graveyard.
As he emerged from the house the familiar things about him seemed to mock his vision of a warning message in the sky. The startled chickens in the little hen-house resettled themselves comfortably on their perches as if not to be disturbed by such nonsense. The calf resting at the end of his pegged rope arose, looked about him and lay down again as if he would not be a party to poor Peter"s absurd nocturnal enterprise.
The darkness and the vastness of the wooded country seemed to chill Peter"s hopes. Now that the gripping spell was over he hardly knew what to think....
With his jack-knife he cut a piece from the rope which held the calf and moved the peg nearer to the animal which looked curiously on at this unexpected abridgment of its sphere of freedom. It almost seemed to Peter that the calf was laughing at him.
This piece of rope he stretched across the road, fastening one end to the rotten gate-post, long deserted by its gate, the other to a tree.
Then he hung the lantern midway of this line. This seemed as much as his waning hope justified, but on second thought he stole into the house, took a black tomato crate marker from the kitchen shelf and on a paper flour-bag printed the words DANGER ROAD CLOSED. This he hung upon the rope near the lantern. Then he sat down on the old carriage block where they used to stand the milk cans and waited. He felt rather foolish waiting there and he wondered what he should do if a big car with the number 50792 and an eagle on it should really come along....
The night was pitch dark; somewhere in the lonely woods hard by the screech owl was still calling, and the brisk autumn wind, freshening as the night advanced into the wee hours, conjured up strange noises in the loose hanging sticks of the old ramshackle fence along the roadside.
Dried leaves, driven by the fitful gusts of wind, sounded like someone, or some _thing_, hurrying by.
Now, indeed, Peter"s fine hopes melted away as he waited there in the darkness. To be sure, this was a main road, as likely a route as any thereabouts for autos, and in the daytime many pa.s.sed there. But as he waited now in the deep, enveloping night, and heard no sound save the haunting voices caused by the wind and the low, monotonous singing of the forest life, it seemed unthinkable that any thrilling sequel of his singular experience in his little room could occur. Everything was the same as usual, the crickets chirping, the owl calling, the little graveyard down the road wrapped in darkness.... Glory was not going to knock on the humble door of Peter Piper of Piper"s Crossroads....
Peter glanced down the dark road toward the graveyard; he had always hurried past that spot when coming home from the crossroads at night.
Once he had seen a ghostly figure on the stone wall, which, on more careful inspection the next morning, proved to be the s.e.xton"s shovel with his hat on top of it. The little church was around the bend of the road, within the hallowed acre.
Suddenly, as Peter glanced in the direction where the old leaning gravestones were wrapped in darkness, he saw something which harrowed his very soul and made his blood run cold. One of those stones was bathed in a dim, shadowy light. It was startling to see just one stone and no others. It was not a light so much as an area of gossamer brightness that enveloped it, a kind of gauze shroud. Peter gazed, unable to stir, his breaths coming short and fast. Then this dim shroud left the tombstone and glided slowly through the graveyard, shedding its hovering brightness upon a small area of the stone wall as it crossed, and came steadily, steadily over toward Peter Piper.
CHAPTER XXII
HARK! THE CONQUERING HERO COMES
"What the d.i.c.kens is this, anyway; a cemetery?" said Mr. Swiper, poking the finding light this way and that as the car of a thousand delights came slowly up toward the bend. "It"s some rocky road to Dublin, all right."
He cast the light along the dark road behind them and looked apprehensively back as far as he could see. Evidently there was no cause for fear there and he dropped the car of a thousand delights into second gear and picked his way along the narrow, rocky way, below the bend. "I guess it will be better when we get around here," he said; "we have to watch our step in this jungle. Nice place to build a church, huh?" He threw the finding light upon the little edifice ahead and brightened the small stained-gla.s.s window, casting a soft reflection upon Deacon Small"s slanting marble slab nearby.
The small figure in a gray sweater with a rather tough look, cap drawn over his round face, who sat huddled up alongside the driver seemed not to partake of the delights which the big car claimed to furnish. He seemed chilled and very much worried. He looked wistfully ahead at the graveyard where the strange, soft, reflected light shone.
"The people around here haven"t got any "phones," he said. "Anyways what"s the use "phoning Mr. Bartlett because he"ll only be in bed. If we"re going straight to Bridgeboro, gee whiz, what"s the good of "phoning? What"s the use waking people up around here, even if they have got "phones? Gee whiz, you"re acting awful funny. Why didn"t you ask me to "phone when we were pa.s.sing through a village?"
"You"re going to get out and "phone when I tell you to; see?" said our friend, the manual training teacher. "And you ain"t going to give me no sa.s.s neither, understand? I don"t let kids tell me my business."
"You just want to get rid of me, that"s what," said Pee-wee. "Gee, you might as well say what you mean, I"m not scared."