Late in the night (it seemed to me that it must be nearly morning) I was wakened by Halse coming into our room. He crept in stealthily and undressed very quietly; but sleepy as I was, I heard him first muttering and then whistling softly to himself, in what appeared to me a rather curious manner. But I did not speak to him and soon dropped asleep again.
He was sleeping heavily when I got up in the morning. I did not wake him; and I noticed that his clothes and boots were very muddy and wet, for it had rained during the latter part of the night.
When we sat down to breakfast, he had not come down-stairs; and the Old Squire went up to our room. What he learned, or what he said to Halse, we did not ascertain. At noon Gram said that Halse was not well; but he was at the supper table that night.
As I had heard about the melon money I asked him that evening, after we had gone up-stairs, if he could let me have the money which I had borrowed of Theodora and Ellen, for him. I said nothing about my own loan to him, although I wanted the money. He made me no reply; two or three nights afterwards I mentioned the matter again; for I felt responsible, after a manner, for the girls" money.
"I hain"t got no money!" he snapped out, with very ungrammatical shortness.
"Oh, I thought you had three dollars and a half," I observed.
"Well, I hain"t," he said, angrily.
I said no more; but after awhile, he told me that he had set off to come home from the town-house, but stopped to play at "pitching cents" with some boys at the Corners, and that while there, he had either lost the money out of his pocket, or else it had been stolen from him.
I was less inclined to doubt this story than the one about the seed corn; for I had heard rumors of gambling, in a small way, at the Corners, by a certain clique of loafers there. It was said, too, that despite the stringent "liquor law," the hustling parties were provided with intoxicants. I had little doubt that Halstead had parted with his money in some such way. I recollected how odd his behavior had been after coming home that night; and although I could scarcely believe such a thing at first, I yet began to surmise that he had been induced to drink liquor of some kind.
A few nights after town-meeting, we lost five or six boxes of honey; some rogue, or rogues, came into the garden and drew the boxes out of the hives. The only clue to the theft was boot tracks in the soft earth and these were not sufficiently distinct to avail as evidence. In a general way we attributed it to the bibulous set at the Corners. The Old Squire and Addison had incurred the displeasure of Tibbetts and his cronies, from their avowed sentiments upon the Temperance question. I do not think that Halse knew anything of the honey robbery. I asked him the next day, whether he supposed the honey boxes had gone in search of his three dollars and a half. He saw that I suspected him, and flatly denied all knowledge of it; but he added, that if Gramp and Addison did not have less to say about rum-sellers, they might find themselves watching a big fire some night!
I asked him if he thought that Tibbetts and his crew were bad enough to set barns on fire.
"Well, isn"t the old gent and Ad trying to break up Tibbetts" business, all the time!" retorted Halse.
"But do you stand up for them?" said I.
"I stand up for minding my own business and letting other folks alone!"
exclaimed Halse. "And that"s what the old man and Ad had better do."
"Maybe," said I, for I was not altogether clear in my mind on that point. "But they are a bad lot, out there at Tibbetts"; you say so, yourself."
"I didn"t say so!" Halse exclaimed.
"Why, you told me that you thought they took your money, didn"t you?" I urged.
"I said perhaps I lost it there," replied Halse in a reticent tone.
Addison believed that if Gramp would get a search warrant, a part of the honey might be found in one of two houses, at the Corners; but the Old Squire would not set the law in motion for a few boxes of honey. We young folks, however, were much exasperated over the loss of the sweets.
Two cosset lambs were also missing from our pasture at about this time; and as Addison and I drove past the Corners, on our way to the mill with another grist of corn, the day after the lambs were missed, we saw Tibbetts" dog gnawing a bone beside the road.
"Take the reins, a minute!" exclaimed Addison, pulling up. He then leaped out of the wagon with the whip, so suddenly, that the dog left the bone and ran off. Addison picked it up and examined it attentively.
"It"s a mutton bone, fast enough," said he. "It is one of the leg bones; the hoof is on it and there"s enough of the hide to show that it was s.m.u.t-legged, like ours. But of course we cannot prove much from it," he added, throwing the bone after the dog and getting into the wagon.
On our return, we called at the Post Office which was at Tibbetts"
grocery. The semi-weekly mail had come that afternoon, and quite a number of people were standing about. I went in to inquire for our folks" papers and letters; and as I came out, I saw the grocer emerging from the grocery portion of the store.
"How d"ye do, Mr. Tibbetts," cried Addison. "I"m afraid your dog has been killing two of our lambs."
"Ye don"t say!" said Tibbetts. "What makes ye think so?"
"Why, I thought it might be he; I saw him gnawing the bone of a s.m.u.t-legged lamb like ours," replied Addison, with every appearance of extreme candor. "Cannot say certain of course, but I feel quite sure "twas from one of ours."
Tibbetts looked at Addison a moment, then replied, "Wal, now, if ye can prove "twas my dog killed "em, I"ll settle with the Squire."
"I"m afraid we cannot prove it," replied Addison and drove off.--"I thought that I would blame it all on the dog," he said, laughing.
Two or three days after that, Theodora, Ellen and Kate Edwards went out to the Corners to purchase something at the store and, instead of returning by the road, came home across lots, following the brook up through the meadows. They often took that route to and from the Corners; both enjoyed going through the half-cleared land along the brook.
Beside an old log in the meadow, where evidently someone had recently sat, they picked up and brought home with them, the bottom and about half the side of one of our lost honey-boxes; bits of fresh comb were still sticking to it. The rogues who took it had manifestly sat on that log while they regaled themselves.
After dark that evening, Addison and I carried the fragment out to Tibbetts" grocery and stuck it up on his platform. Addison also wrote on it with a blunt lead pencil, "To whom it may concern. This honey box was picked up on a direct line between the hives from which it was stolen and this place."
"Even if we cannot prove anything," he said, "I want to let them know that we"ve got a good idea who did it."
We thought that we had done a rather smart thing; but when the Old Squire heard of it, he told us that we had done a foolish one.
"Better let all that sort of thing alone, boys," he said. "Never hint, or insinuate charges against anybody. Never make charges at all, unless you have good proof to back you up. Tibbetts and his cronies are too old birds to care for any such small shot as that. They will only laugh at you. The less you have to say to them the better."
As Addison and I were talking over this piece of advice, later in the day, I asked him whether he believed that Tibbetts or any of his crew would set our barns afire, if the Old Squire took steps to enforce the liquor law against them.
"I guess they wouldn"t dare do that," said Addison.
I then mentioned what Halse had said. Addison was greatly irritated, not so much from the covert threat implied, as to think that Halse sided against the Temperance movement.
"Now you see," said Addison, "if we do make a move against Tibbetts, Halse will be a traitor and carry word to him ahead. We shall have to watch him and never drop a word about our plans before him." He then told me, confidentially, that the Temperance sentiment had grown so strong, that its advocates hoped to be able to get Tibbetts indicted that fall and so close up his "grocery."
Addison and Theodora, as well as the Old Squire, thought that if the Corners clique could be broken up, Halstead would be a far better boy.
Liquor was the only bond which held the clique together there. If the illicit sale of liquor could be stopped at Tibbetts", not only Hannis, but several others would leave the place; and probably Tibbetts himself would move away.
I do not think that it occurred to either Addison or Theodora that there was anything in the least reprehensible in conspiring to drive grocer Tibbetts out of town. I am sure that I then deemed it a good idea to drive him away, by almost any means, fair or foul.
CHAPTER XXIV
GOING TO THE CATTLE SHOW
About this time we began to hear racc.o.o.ns, in the early part of the night. There were numbers of these animals in the woods about the farm; they had their retreats in hollow trees and sometimes came into the corn fields. I first heard one while coming home from the Edwardses one evening; the strange, quavering cry frightened me; for I imagined that it was the cry of a "lucivee," concerning which the boys were talking a good deal at this time. One was said to have attacked a farmer on the highway a little beyond the Batchelder place. The animal leaped into the back part of the man"s wagon and fought savagely for possession of a quarter of beef. Repeated blows from a whip-stock failed to dislodge it, till it had ridden for ten or fifteen rods, when it leaped off the wagon, but followed, growling, for some distance. As nearly as this man could judge, in the dim light of evening, the animal was as large as a good-sized dog. The "lucivee," or _loup-cervier_, is the lynx Canadensis, which ordinarily attains a weight of no more than twenty-five pounds, but occasionally grows larger and displays great fierceness and courage.
I made haste home and calling Addison out, asked him whether that strange cry which still issued at intervals from the woodland, over towards the Aunt Hannah lot, was made by the much dreaded "lucivee." He laughed and was disposed to play on my fears for a while, but at length told me that it was nothing more savage than a "c.o.o.n. The wild note had struck a singularly responsive fiber within me; and to this day I never hear a racc.o.o.n"s hollow cry at night, without a sudden recurrence of the same eerie sensation.
About this time we all became much interested in the approaching Cattle Show, which was to be held at the Fair Grounds, near the village, during the last week of September. Thomas bantered me strongly to raise two dollars and go into partnership with him in an old horse which he knew of and which he desired to buy and enter for the "slow race." The horse could be purchased for three or four dollars and was so very stiff in the knees as to be almost certain of winning the "slow race," thereby securing a "purse" of ten dollars.
What with Thomas" enthusiasm, this looked to me, at the time, to be a very alluring investment. Tom had also another scheme for winning the "purse" of the "scrub race," where every kind of animal took the track at one and the same time. The Harland boys--where we went to mill--owned a large mongrel dog that had been taught to haul a little cart. He was known to be a fast runner; and Tom had intelligence that he was in the market, at a price of two dollars. If we could secure him, there was little doubt that the scrub-race purse would easily drop into our hats.
I had to confess to doubts whether the Old Squire would consent to my embarking in such speculations.