"Oh, yes. We always have plenty of excitement. Too much, I fear. Some of us miss the quiet you enjoy out here among the meadows."
The rustic meditated upon this a moment, chewing a straw.
"Speakin" of medders, haow"s hay sellin"?"
"I don"t know, really," answered Emily. She was not informed on this utilitarian side of the subject.
"Just been shavin" my ten-acre lot daown the road. Did most o" the mowin" ourselves, me and Ike, that"s my brother, with the Loomis boy. But he ain"t good for much except forkin" it on. You wouldn"t s"pose there was a clean ton o" hay on this wagon, would you?"
"No, indeed," answered Emily. This was true. She would not have ventured any supposition at all as to the weight of the hay.
"Good medder-gra.s.s, too."
"Do you live in Hillsborough?"
"Aour haouse jest abaout straddles the line, but wife goes to meetin" in Elmwood."
"I suppose she likes the services better?"
"Nao. You see the Elmwood parson takes all our eggs, and wife thinks "twouldn"t do to spile a payin" customer. Woa! Here comes wife"s nephew, Silas Tompkins."
"Evenin" uncle," nodded the young man in the buggy.
"Evenin", Silas. Been down to the pasture?"
"Yaas."
"Well, haow are the oats lookin"?"
"Comin" putty green, Uncle Silas," drawled the other, speeding by.
Emily was wondering if a life of agricultural labor always gives such a vegetable cast to people"s minds, when a clatter of hoofs behind caused her to turn her head. The cavalier was clothed in velvet of a soft, rich bulrush-brown. Just as he pa.s.sed them his eye caught something afar and he shouted to the farmer: "Here"s a runaway! Hug the right of the road!"
They were turning a bend, but across the angle through the bushes a pair of coal-black horses could be seen heading toward them. The farmer"s jerking at the reins was comical but effective. In a twinkling he had his nag squeezed against the wall which bounded the narrow road.
"Get up, Aladdin!" whispered the rider, and the horse, a powerful roadster or steeplechaser, yet with limbs like a stag"s, cantered forward, as if to meet the wild blacks. But suddenly his master turned him about and began trotting gently back, keeping to the other side of the road and turning his head over his left shoulder toward the approaching runaways. As they slewed around the bend their coachman was flung from his seat into the gra.s.s border of the roadside.
"Rosalie!" exclaimed the waiting cavalier, cutting his horse over the flanks. It bounded away abreast of the team. Emily remembered a vague whirl of spangled reins and a frightened face of rare beauty blushing through its silver veil.
"He"s killed!" she cried, dismounting and running toward the coachman. But the gra.s.s was like a cushion in its midsummer thickness, and he had already picked himself up uninjured, save for bruises and a tattered sleeve.
"It was the gobbler frightened "em," he said, starting off at a lame dog-trot after the retreating carriage. Emily turned just in time to witness a rare exhibition of coolness and skill. The chestnut had kept abreast of the blacks with ease. At the right moment his rider, clinging to the saddle and stirrup like a cossack, reached over with his left hand and caught the reins of the foaming pair. Then gradually he slowed up his steeplechaser, jerking powerfully at the bridles. The added weight was too much for the runaways to pull, and all three were ambling peacefully when they faded from sight in a cloud of dust.
"I guess we"ll start for hum," said the farmer. Emily was standing with her finger on her lip, unconscious of his presence.
"Putty slick on a horse, ain"t he?"
"Who?"
"Young Arnold. He kin stick on like a clothes-pin, I tell yew."
"Is that Harry Arnold?"
""Tain"t no one else."
Emily remembered how his expression had changed when he recognized the lady in peril as "Rosalie," and felt like asking the farmer if he knew her. But Griggs (she now learned his name) was prosing on about his new barn, and she relapsed into silence. The rest of their road was an avenue of elms. Through their interstices smiled the calm blue of the late afternoon sky, tempered by contrast with the green of the foliage. It was the first time she had ever observed this rare harmony of colors.
"Woa! There!" said Griggs. "I"ll set you daown here. The Arnolds" house is up yonder over the hill. They ain"t p"ticler friends of aours, but the help come over and buy wife"s cream."
"Have they a girl in help named Bertha Lund?"
"I s"pose wife knows the women-folks. I don"t," replied the old man, energetically reaching for his rake.
"A new servant, this is."
As if to answer her question, there came a loud bark from the little woody knoll on the right of the road, and a great St. Bernard came bounding down. It was Sire, who had recognized Emily. She knew that he had been left in Bertha"s charge and probably the housemaid was behind him.
"Sire! Sire!" her cheerful voice was heard calling through the stillness. How fresh she looked with her soft country bloom and a golden tan.
"Is it you, Miss Barlow?" cried Bertha, opening her eyes in amazement. A cream pitcher in one hand revealed her errand, but Farmer Griggs was already half-way to his new barn, which lay fifty yards off the left of the road.
"Yes, Bertha," answered Emily, fondling Sire, who seemed almost to know that she bore him a message from his master. "I have come all the way out to meet you."
"How is poor Mr. Robert?"
"Not very well contented with his present quarters."
"He is still in jail? Ah, poor young man! What a shame! And Ellen gone, too! It was the beginning of trouble for all of us when the old professor died."
"It wasn"t easy to find you, Bertha. You didn"t leave your address with Mrs. Christenson."
"Indeed I did not." Bertha gave an independent toss of her head. "I had no wish to be chased by her and coaxed to come back, and I"m very well satisfied where I am, with my $5 and light duties and out of the city and as kind treatment as if I was a visitor."
Emily thought she might understand the reason of this bountiful hospitality.
"Mr. s.h.a.garach, the lawyer, who is defending Robert, suggested that I come and see you. You were so near the fire when it broke out, he thought that you might know something that would help our side."
"That I"ll tell heartily. They sha"n"t tie my tongue."
"You don"t believe Robert set the fire?"
"No more than I did or Sire."
Emily looked at the dog, who was crouched before them. He had lifted his head at the mention of his name.
"Ah, Sire, you know the solution of all this mystery, don"t you? And you"d tell it if you could."
Sire barked an answer to this appeal and turned his head away, blinking, as old dogs do.
"But who could have done it, Bertha?"
"n.o.body in all the world. It just happened, like the other fire before."
"Was there another fire before?" asked Emily, all eagerness.
"Two or three years ago we had a fire in the study."
"Tell me about it."
"Oh, the professor had just gone upstairs a minute and when I went in the big waste basket was blazing up."
"There wasn"t much damage then?"
"If I hadn"t opened the window and thrown it out on the sidewalk the whole house might have been burned. Why, the study was nothing but a tinder-box with the books on the shelves and magazines and papers always thrown about."
"After the fire had once started, I can see how it would spread. But the mystery is, how did it start? You never followed the first fire up?"
"Indeed we did. The professor was careful to follow it up, but they could find n.o.body then and they"ll find n.o.body now. It was just the will of heaven."
"I wish you could have told about this other fire at the examination, Bertha."
"I had it in my mind to tell, but the little thread of a man made me so cross with his nagging, it all flew out of my head."
"Robert--was Robert in the house when the other fire happened?"
"Yes. I remember calling him, and he flew downstairs four at a time and stamped out the sparks on the carpet."
"What time of day was it?"
"I"m not good to remember time. It was daytime, I know."
"Forenoon or afternoon?"
Bertha"s knitted forehead brought no clarity to her recollections.
"I"ve forgotten, Miss Barlow. I know it was the hot summer time, but forenoon or afternoon, that"s all gone from me now."
"But you will try to bring it back, Bertha? It may be important. Mr. s.h.a.garach is a wonderfully wise man who could build up a great explanation out of a little thing like that. You will tell him all you know if he comes to see you?"
"I"ll be as free-spoken as I choose, and forty inspectors won"t stop me."
"Could you describe the study again, Bertha, just as it looked when you were dusting it, with Robert standing over the hearth?"
"Why, you know the room, Miss Barlow--square, high-studded, with two windows, the professor"s desk at one and the bird cage before the other. Shelves and books all round, hundreds of them, and magazines and papers scattered about. Chairs, pictures, the safe and the professor"s things just as he left them--his slippers on the floor, his spectacles and bible on the desk, his dressing-gown over the back of the arm-chair----"
"And a waste-basket?"
"Oh, yes, the big waste-basket always beside his desk. The professor had so much writing to do."
"Was it full?"
"All full of black wrapping paper that came off of his books. The professor got so many books."
"And his safe with the papers in it?"
"n.o.body ever touched it but the professor. At least, I never meddled with it."
Emily noticed the emphasis Bertha laid on the first person, but an unwelcome interruption prevented further disclosures.
The knoll which Bertha and Sire had descended made a grade like the pitch of an old gable roof. Toward the top a tempting tussock of clover lay in sight, scenting the atmosphere and t.i.tillating the nostrils of the horse attached to Farmer Griggs" hay-cart. Dobbin was ordinarily a staid and trustworthy animal, who might be left alone for hours; but on this occasion his carnal appet.i.te overmastered his sense of duty and led him gradually higher and higher up the grade toward the odorous herbage. The first hint the two girls had of the peril which was imminent was when they heard the voice of the farmer shouting from the barn.
Turning in that direction, they beheld him running toward them, hat in hand, as if racing for a guerdon, and brandishing a pitchfork. Whether they or some one else were the object of his outcries they could not in the confusion of the moment determine. But the doubt was speedily settled by the occurrence of the very catastrophe which Farmer Griggs was hastening to avert.
Dobbin had just climbed within reach and was relishing the first morsel of his stolen supper, when suddenly the top of the hay load, which was tipped up to an exceedingly steep angle by his ascent of the knoll, slid down like a glacier and deposited itself at the feet of the startled girls.
But this was not all. From the midst of it the figure of a man, badly shaken but unhurt, arose and straightened itself out.
Both girls gave a shriek in unison. Emily recognized, to her astonishment and dismay, the face of her train companion, the supposed Bill Dobbs. But Bertha"s surprise was quickly converted into merriment.
"Why, Mr. McCausland, what a tumble!" she laughed, just as Farmer Griggs arrived.
CHAPTER XVII.
REPORTING TO HEADQUARTERS.
"McCausland!"
Emily bit off the exclamation just a moment too late. This, then, was the interesting convict who had tried to worm himself into Robert"s confidence. This was s.h.a.garach"s vaunted opponent, the evil genius arrayed against the good, in mortal combat for her sweetheart"s life. With Sire worrying his heels, Bertha holding her side in unchecked laughter, and Emily eying him with an expression of amazement gradually turning to scorn, the detective looked for a moment as if he would have resigned his whole reputation to be elsewhere. But suddenly he righted himself and led the horse around to the road, s.n.a.t.c.hed Griggs" pitchfork and was tossing the spilled hay back into place before the fuming farmer realized what he was about.
"This is Miss Barlow," said Bertha. "But I suppose you don"t need an introduction."
"We were fellow-pa.s.sengers on the train coming down."
"Don"t tell me, after that, we servants are the only keyhole listeners."
"Mr. McCausland makes eavesdropping a science," added Emily, who was not at all disposed to spare him.
"There!"
The inspector had finished his task. As the old farmer led his recovered property back to the barn he never relaxed his hold on the bridle and vented his wrath all the way on the offending beast. When he had disappeared inside his barn, they could still hear him scolding.