BOOK ONE

December 3, 1896

1. Not to Be Confused

“Am I very much deceived in thinking that the object above us, just now, a hat?” said Aldicott Durwood.

“If you are deceived,” said Roderick Waverley, “then I am every bit as deceived for thinking you are correct in thinking that that object above us, just now, is a hat.”

“And I equally deceived in my agreement,” said Humphrey Brink.

One would not guess from their indifferent, almost weary tones that a great deal of excitement surrounded these three men. On the upper bank of the Eastern Promenade in Portland, Maine, an army of revelers (not all children) were plummeting the white slope on sleds and toboggans and vehicles unnamable of every shape and size; more figures made the long trudge back to the top, and the air was large with shouts and laughter. The brilliant remnants of a perfect December afternoon seemed willing to linger, even as shadows lengthened and the sun reddened over the western ramparts of the city.

To the south, at the mouth of Portland Harbor, the sails of an incoming schooner caught this radiance, and many at the top of the slope paused to watch this vessel round the northernmost point of Cape Elizabeth. It was identified, at first, as a three-masted vessel, but by the time a tug met her, it was dear to veteran seamen and armchair sailors alike that she was of the four-masted variety, limping into port without her full complement of sails and rigging. Soon a flag was raised at the observatory to indicate the ship’s business connections, and several people spoke the name of the Caleb Brown, which was overdue.

But Durwood, Waverley, and Brink were oblivious of the drama evidenced by these sights, even as they were inattentive to the general gaiety about them. Hands. clasped behind their backs, they peered up at the floating hat so that each seemed to be playing the identical role in a formal tableau. “It does seem to be staying up there a very long time,” continued Durwood, who was darkly handsome, with a pencil-thin mustache. “For a hat,” he added.

“It isn’t some sort of kite, is it?” wondered Waverley, who was lighter, taller, dean-shaven, and every bit as handsome.

“I never saw a kite like it,” asserted Brink, who wore a close-cropped beard and winged mustaches. He was the shortest of them and perhaps the most dashing.

A great shout went up as a toboggan race commenced. More people arrived at the crest of the hill, and voices rose in pleasure and surprised greetings. Durwood, Waverley, and Brink, however, were oblivious of everything but that single object.

“Is it a very nice hat?” wondered Durwood. “I might like to have it if it is a very nice hat.”

“I think not,” opined Waverley. “It looks to me like a very lowly hat.”

“It’s very high for a lowly hat,” said Brink.

“I hope you thank me for making that so easy for you.”

“You meant nothing of the sort, I am sure.”

“Who do you suppose belongs to it?” wondered Durwood.

“I’m not in the habit of recognizing people by their hats,” informed Waverley. “I have enough difficulty recognizing most people, if you must know, and sometimes I confuse the two of you.”

“Confuse the two of us with what?” queried Brink.

“Is the hat descending?” asked Durwood.

“Blast the hat!” said Waverley.

“No, really,” said Durwood, “the hat is coming down.” And so it did, right into his hands.

“And here, I think,” said Brink, “is the attendant—or, as it were, nonattendant—head approaching us now.” Brink snatched the hat from Durwood and stuffed it under the back of Waverley’s coat.

They took note of a hatless fellow who was hurrying along the ridge of the hill and excusing himself as he weaved through the crowd. Just ahead of the bareheaded man, there was a younger man (still in possession of his own headgear) who appeared to be searching the sky for the truant hat. “He has a friend, I think,” said Durwood.

“Ah, yes,” said Waverley. “Perhaps his friend will lend him his hat.”

Durwood, Waverley, and Brink took such interest in these two that the younger man addressed them with a “Good afternoon.”

“Hello,” said Durwood. It was a greeting that had gained some vogue, since the advent of the telephone.

“There was a hat,” said the young man, even as the hatless individual caught up with him.

“A hat?” said Durwood.

“Was there?” said Waverley.

“A hat and no head?” wondered Brink.

“The head is here,” said the bareheaded fellow. Indeed, he was bareheaded in almost every sense of the word, for without a hat he was left with only the slightest fringe of brown hair; a portly man of middle age, he wore round spectacles that sat at the end of his nose. He smiled as he pointed to his bald pate, which shone rather handsomely in the light of the westering sun. “It is a head that must harbor some aversion to hats,” he admitted, “since it does so little to hang on to them.” He laughed as several young children nearly bowled him over in their hurry to reach the hilltop.

“You have lost hats before,” said Durwood.

“The very same, in fact,” said the jolly fellow. He extended his hand and introduced himself. “Tobias Walton.” There was some need to speak above normal tones with such a raucous crowd about them.

“Durwood,” said the man who had caught the hat. “Aldicott Durwood.”

“Roderick Waverley,” said the man who had the hat beneath his coat.

“Humphrey Brink,” said the man who had put the hat where it presently resided.

“I am Mister Walton’s gentleman’s gentleman,” said the young man.

“He is my good friend,” said Mister Walton, indicating good-humored disagreement with his companion.

“Sundry Moss,” said the young man.

Durwood, Waverley, and Brink did not formally beg the young man’s pardon, but their frowns made it clear that further elucidation was necessary.

“My name is Sundry Moss,” explained the young man.

“You don’t say,” said Durwood.

“He did,” said Waverley.

“Do you speak to your parents?” wondered Brink.

Sundry smiled with one comer of his mouth.

“Do you know his parents?” asked Waverley of Brink. He was a little concerned that the shaking of hands, prompted by these introductions, would loosen the hat from beneath his coat.

“I confess to an unfamiliarity with mosses in general,” said Brink, who was wondering how he might actually cause the hat to drop.

“Walton,” Durwood was saying. “The Walton whose family once owned the shoe factory?”

“Yes, indeed,” said that man, who was doing his best to show polite attention to the conversation, though he was still concerned with the whereabouts of his hat and more than a little distracted by the flurry of activity around them.

Sundry had been watching the progress of an odd expression as it crossed Brink’s face, and finally he asked, “Is something the matter?”

“There was a Walton, I think,” interrupted Waverley, “who recently drew the chairmanship of a new society.” He regarded his companions. “A club, in fact. The Beaverwood Guild!”

“No, no!” declared Brink. “It was a bigger animal than that, the White-Tailed Deer Society, I am certain of it!”

“No, no, no!” contradicted Durwood. “It was a moose, I am sure, the Moosejaw Lodge!”

“I have the honor of being the chairman of the Moosepath League,” said Mister Walton, with a bow. “We meet on Thursday nights at the Shipswood Restaurant. You must drop by sometime.”

“We have our own club, actually,” said Brink dryly.

“Do you?” asked the hatless man.

“Do we?” chorused Durwood and Waverley.

“Our club!” said Brink, as if wounded by the question.

“Ah, yes!” said Durwood.

“Our club!” said Waverley.

Mister Walton and Sundry were more than a little suspicious by now. “And the name of your club?” asked Mister Walton.

“The name?” said Durwood.

“The name!” declared Waverley.

“We are the Dash-It-All Boys!” announced Brink.

“Good heavens!” said Mister Walton with a laugh.

“How very right!” agreed Durwood.

“Couldn’t have said it better myself,” said Waverley.

“Not the temperance group?” said Sundry.

“Not at all,” said Brink, “that’s the Dash-Away Boys.”

“And you are?” said Sundry.

“The Dash-It-All Boys,” said Brink again. “Not to be confused.”

“We are very glad to make your acquaintance,” said Mister Walton.

“Are you here for the commotion?” wondered Waverley. He waved a hand toward the activity on the slope.

“Alas,” said the portly fellow with surprising sincerity, “we did not bring our sleds,” and he touched his bare head to indicate that he must continue his search.

“I did think there may have been a hat,”said Durwood suddenly. “It went over the slope, I think.”

“Did it?” asked Mister Walton.

Sundry looked skeptical, but he wandered to the brow of the hill.

“I think Durwood may be right,” said Waverley. “There was something floating about.”

“Thank you for your help,” said Mister Walton, and he reached up to tip his hat before remembering that it wasn’t on its customary perch.

Sundry was considering the busy slope when Mister Walton joined him. “It would be hard to say,” he opined. The hill was alive with swif sleds, overburdened toboggans, and mid-hill collisions. Dark coats peppered the snowy bank.

Mister Walton beamed at the sight of it all. “The breeze might have taken it down there.”

“I’ll go down,” said Sundry. “Someone may have seen it.”

“Look, over there!” said Mister Walton, pointing.

“Your hat?”

“No, a very sparsely populated toboggan! Quick, Sundry, we may be able to catch the train!” The portly man was hurrying along the ridge, past several groups of people readying their vehicles, to the place where two youngsters eyed the course of their imminent descent. “Boys!” he shouted. “Young fellows!”

The two children with the toboggan did not at first connect Mister Walton’s shouts with themselves, but as he drew closer, they looked with alarm at his approach and would have fled down the slope if not for the absolutely pleasing smile upon his face. One of the young fellows in fact was a little sister, and after a gracious apology for his error he revealed his purpose in hailing them, saying with a laugh, “I was always told that a toboggan will run faster with more weight in the front. What do you say?”

The children gaped at the portly fellow. Sundry drew up beside his employer. “You want to take the hill?” wondered the brother. He could not have been more than nine or ten, his sister perhaps seven.

“I do, indeed,” said Mister Walton, who was a little out of breath. “I have been told that my hat may have blown down there, and I should like to retrieve it.”

“We’ll get it for you,” offered the boy.

“It is splendid of you to offer,” said Mister Walton sincerely. “But I haven’t ridden a toboggan in years!” Clearly the portly fellow thought this state of affairs had gone on long enough.

“All aboard!” cried out the little girl.

With surprising agility Mister Walton leaped to the fore of the toboggan and sat down heavily. The vehicle tipped a little at the crest of the slope. “Climb on, Sundry!” declared the older fellow. He resituated his glasses upon his nose. Several people in the vicinity shouted with surprise to see him take his place on the toboggan.

“Hang on,” said Sundry to the children, who hunkered behind Mister Walton. Sundry took hold of the rear of the toboggan and gave it a proper shove before jumping on. The snow on the hill was well packed by now, and the toboggan was not long in realizing a startling velocity.

Mister Walton had forgotten the dizzying effect of skimming the ground with one’s head leading in a flying dive for the bottom of the slope, and he let out a great joyful whoop. They were passing sleds and toboggans that had taken off before them, and the crowded slope suddenly seemed a more difficult path to manage. Occasionally they struck a dip in the hill that sent showers of white over their bow and prompted a series of happy shouts from them all, so that many climbing the bank heard them above the general din and leaped aside to clear the way.

Durwood, Waverley, and Brink watched all this from their position at the top of the hill. “They are showing a good deal too much energy,” said Durwood, “when one considers the hour at which I retired last night.” The sight seemed to give them all a headache.

Waverley led the way to their carriage, slipping the hat from beneath his coat. “It’s not such a bad hat.”

“It’s a very wayward hat,” said Durwood.

A cab was trotting past when they reached the road, and Waverley gave the hat a spin in the air. The hat met the head of the horse and bounced between the animal’s ears, then slid to one side, only to catch on the buckle of the animal’s browband. It made the horse, which was otherwise a rather ordinary creature, appear vaguely rakish. The driver, who had been turning into traffic, straightened in his seat and was startled to find his animal sporting a very neat homburg. Durwood looked after the chapeaued equine as if something in the sight made him melancholy.

“We never did find out if Mr. Moss speaks to his parents,” said Durwood.

“The Dash-It-All Boys,” said Brink.

2. Meeting the Caleb Brown

The toboggan continued to gain speed, and Sundry wondered if they would break through the drift of snow at the bottom of the long slope and find themselves merging with the traffic on Fore Street. They came to a hissing halt, however, some yards short of the snow heap but several yards further than anyone else had reached.

The brother and sister were awed with the effect of Mister Walton’s mass on the velocity of their vehicle, and though his hat was nowhere to be found once they reached the foot of the grade, the bespectacled fellow was so very exhilarated by their descent that he suggested a second r. Fast friendships were quickly formed among this unlikely quartet, and soon every child with a toboggan was looking for a portly pilot. Not a few unlikely participants were encouraged by Mister Walton’s example, and despite the lateness of the hour, the revelers upon the slope were galvanized to action.

Finally, at the foot of the hill (was it after the third or fourth r?), the two men bade farewell to the children; by this time the hill’s population and the level of noise seemed to have tripled.

The eastern twilight had softened the brilliant hill to a dusky blue, fiery clouds of pink and orange hung in the west, and this last blaze limned the western ramparts of the city. But Mister Walton and Sundry’s attention was drawn to the waterfront and the arrival of the crippled schooner at this business, and as the fortunes of all seafaring ventures are of interest the Atlantic and St. Lawrence Wharf. They were not a great distance from to those who live in a seafaring town, they joined the crowd gathered there.

Lamp and lantern light was gaining precedence on the wharf, and as the darkened sky drew down and the dockside buildings loomed on either side, Mister Walton and Sundry had the impression of walking into a vast room, the many voices echoing from walls and hulls lending credence to the notion. The damp harbor air formed a frosty mist as the temperature declined with daylight, and the surrounding shapes glinted with condensation.

The tug was easing the Caleb Brown along the wharf as Mister Walton front: businessmen and idle onlookers, old salts and opportunists. The and Sundry walked among the disparate figures common to the water-front: businessmen and idle onlookers, old salts and opportunists. The crowd thwarted their view of the ship from the gunnels to the waterline, but the remaining masts rode by, as well as a mare’s nest of lines and broken spars. a sudden gust blew past the crowd, as if the schooner had brought with her the very storm that had taken her mizzenmast and foresail; Mister Walton, with his bare head, was particularly chilled by it.

A gangplank was raised from the wharf, and as people moved aside to facilitate this work, an older gentleman turned slightly and met Mister Walton’s eye. “Toby!” he said in surprise.

“Mr. Seacost!” replied the jovial fellow after only a moment’s hesitation.

The two men shook hands with great warmth of feeling. Lawrence Seacost was taller than Mister Walton, unbent by his seventy-some years and evidently undaunted by the winter night. He had a grand beard, though no mustaches, and creases beneath his eyes that expressed (and had no doubt been caused by) an immense sympathy with all things. Mister Walton introduced the man to Sundry, saying, “I was a member of Mr. Seacost’s congregation some years ago.”

“I retired many years ago, Toby,” said the older man.

“I am very pleased to meet you, sir,” said Sundry.

“Without the able tutelage of my former parson,” continued Mister Walton, “I would not have known a cedar waxwing from a tufted titmouse. He is an amateur ornithologist of extraordinary learning.”

“We must have our hobbyhorses,” explained Mr. Seacost to Sundry. “Men of the cloth most especially, it seems. I am glad to meet you, Mr. Moss.”

“You will be glad to know, Mr. Seacost,” said Mister Walton, “that Sundry has made a career, these past few months, of keeping me from trouble.”

“Have you?” said the older man, as if this might be an extraordinary thing.

“When humanly possible,” admitted Sundry.

“I shouldn’t be surprised to find you here, Toby,” said Mr. Seacost. “The papers have you everywhere and all about!”

“Oh, dear,” said Mister Walton, abashed at this unintentional notoriety.

“Buried treasure,” continued Mr. Seacost. “Rescuing children. Is Mr. Moss a member of your club then?”

“He is indeed.”

“The Moosepath League,” said the minister, almost to himself.

“Yes, sir,” said Sundry with evident humor as well as pride.

The old man laughed. “Come, come. What I have to offer will pale before your recent adventures, but you will find worthy company in my friends who are just debarking now.”

Several men whose concerns regarding the Caleb Brown were notably monetary had boarded the schooner and were talking with the captain at the rail, but the captain hailed past them to a man and a woman at the head of the plank, saying, “It’s been a pleasure having you aboard, ma’am, sir. I pray our misadventure with the wind hasn’t inconvenienced you.”

The man at the gangplank tipped his hat, and the woman said something to merit a laugh from the captain. The man turned, after a step or two dow the plank, and called out a name, whereupon a dog of fairly large parts bounded over the rail and trotted alongside them to the wharf.

“Here is a man after his own hobbyhorse,” Mr. Seacost was saying as he stepped up to the end of the plank. “And his wife along, thankfully, to keep his feet in the stirrups.”

“Lawrence!” said the man, once he had scanned the crowd and set eyes upon the retired clergyman.

“Frederick!” replied Mr. Seacost. “Izzy!” and he embraced the woman, who was first off the plank. He bent down to stroke the dog’s head. “Ah! It was you, Moxie, dear, that I wished to see.”

“I knew it!” said the woman with mock hauteur.

Mister Walton introduced himself when the man from the ship nodded to him, and the man took Mister Walton’s hand, saying, “Frederick Covington, sir.” He was of medium height, and his movement and firm grip evidenced some athletic ability and physical strength. He was somewhere between Mister Walton and Sundry-that is, between forty-nine and twenty-seven years in age. He wore a short round hat, but his clothes, including a fine cape, were black, with something of the cavalier about him that was contradicted only by the clerical collar at his neck. His eyes were dark, and when he took his hat off to greet Mister Walton and Sundry, he revealed curly dark hair and disclosed a good-humored, dean-shaven face from beneath the shadow of its brim. “This is my wife, Isabelle.”

Mrs. Covington thrust out her hand and proved to have a strong grip as well, much practiced no doubt in the receiving lines outside church every Sunday. She had a humorous way of lifting her chin when she regarded a person, and Mister Walton found himself beaming back at her. Isabelle Covington had wide-spaced blue eyes and a nose that turned up handsomely at the end. Her complexion was fair, and her hair that darkened blond that accompanies near middle age, but her eyebrows were dark and expressive. “I am pleased to meet you, Mister Walton,” she said, “and trust you are here to see someone other than our dog.”

“I had no idea that I was going to see a dog,” he admitted.

“That is all you need to say, thank you, sir.”

Sundry was introduced to the Covingtons then, but it was clear that he was interested in their dog.

“And this,” said Frederick Covington, “is Moxie.”

Moxie was a large collie like creature with a beautiful white face and expressive black-lined eyes. She had regular markings of tan and black, though she was predominantly white from her spotless breast to her shining pantaloons. She sat and offered a polite paw to her new acquaintances. Sundry, whose family was famous for its numerous dogs, realized how much he had missed these animals, and he made a great deal of her.

Frederick meanwhile embraced Mr. Seacost and declared how pleased he was to be there.

“Let us help you with your bags,” said Sundry when these arrived at the end of the plank.

“A rough passage?” Mr. Seacost inquired.

“We had our troubles,” said the younger clergyman. “A squall off Cape Ann, the day before yesterday, carried away the mizzenmast at the masthead. Then, as soon as they had the rigging cut away, the rest of the mast between the masthead and the deck went. Captain Matthews put her before the wind, and we thought we were done with the damage till the foresail was carried off later in the day.”

“Frederick thought a poor cook was the worst of it,” said the woman.

“I will warn you, Toby,” said Mr. Seacost, “that Frederick’s prime hobbyhorse rides on a dining table.”

“Hobbyhorses are we talking?” said Mrs. Covington. She pretended to pinch Mr. Seacost’s shoulder.

“Man does not live by sermons alone,” said the husband with an attempt to look serious.

“Then we are in accordance as regards our needs, sir,” said Mister Walton, “since Sundry and myself are meeting friends at the Shipswood Restaurant within the hour.”

“We wouldn’t want to interrupt your club’s arrangements, Toby,” said the older man.

“Nonsense!” said Mister Walton. “I can’t overstate what a pleasure it would be to have you as our guests!”

Mr. Seacost turned to his friends and apprehended, in the husband, a hesitant expression. “You had other plans perhaps.”

“Not a plan of my own, actually, but a task I promised to fulfill, and perhaps I can further put upon Mister Walton to help me with it.”

“Why, certainly,” said Mister Walton, with only a brief glance toward Sundry. “I would be more than happy, whatever it is you need.”

“I hadn’t thought to get this done the moment I stepped from the wharf,” said Mr. Covington, “but it seems a shame to lose the opportunity. There is another passenger on the Caleb Brown just now, quite an elderly man by the name of Mr. Tempest. His original destination was Portland, but for reasons he prefers to keep mysterious, he has decided to stay aboard and return with the ship to Rhode Island. That is all that I know of his story, but he has charged me with finding someone who would write a short letter for him, which he will dictate in his cabin.”

“Why, certainly,” said Mister Walton again, though he was a little confused that Mr. Covington himself could not carry out this duty, and the thought was as clear as if he had spoken.

“Frederick offered to help the man in this capacity,” explained the wife with some delight, “but it seems Mr. Tempest’s tolerant nature could not forbear the disrepute of my husband’s vocation.”

“Oh, my!” said Mister Walton.

“So it is no use your volunteering, Lawrence,” said Mr. Covington to Mr. Seacost. “He’ll have absolutely no truck with the clergy.”

“Good heavens!” said Mister Walton.

“Bad habits will catch up with you,” said Sundry. He maintained a bland expression as he reached back to adjust his own collar. “My mother used to tell me that.”

“She is a wise lady,” said Isabelle.

“He doesn’t like the captain either,” said Frederick.

“Every man with his own hobby,” said Sundry.

“He sounds a challenge,” said Mister Walton with more humor than trepidation.

3. The Man Who Would Not Come Ashore

The first mate of the Caleb Brown paused before a low door at the bottom of the companionway and knocked softly.

“Yes!” came a craggy voice.

“Mr. Tempest?” said the first mate.

“I haven’t changed my name.”

The sailor glanced at Mister Walton to see if he appreciated the seriousness of his endeavor. “There is a Mister Walton here to see you.”

“I don’t know a Mister Walton.”

“Mr. Covington asked me to come,” said the portly fellow, his voice clear and untroubled.

After some moments, during which the first mate and Mister Walton exchanged shrugs, the voice called out again. “Are you waiting for an invitation?”

The mate shot daggers at the door, but Mister Walton lifted a hand to indicate that he was up to the test. The bespectacled man’s expression was mild as he opened the cabin door and stepped inside. “I was, actually,” he replied, and seeing the mate’s hesitation, he said, “I’m fine,” before he pulled the door shut.

The room was small and dark; a lantern swung from the low ceiling. In a berth against the outer bulkhead sat an old man who glowered fiercely. “So what did the preacher send? Not one of his cronies?”

“I met Mr. Covington only ten minutes ago,” said Mister Walton.

“You are not a preacher then?”

“I have not answered that calling, no.”

“I couldn’t bear people thinking I had some sort of conversion,” said the old man testily.

“I will be pleased to inform anyone who is interested that that is not the case,” said Mister Walton with a sort of steely humor. a his eyes grew accustomed to the dark quarters, he became aware of some tn beneath the bunk, a writing table hinged to the wall to his left, a small mirror and personal tackle hanging in a net on the right. The lantern swayed and shadows shifted with the ship at anchor; there was the sound of movement on the deck above and the occasional rub of the hull against the wharf.

Mr. Tempest too was revealed in the lamplight. He was a large-boned man with outsized hands and feet. His features had been roughened by time and cast by temperament into perpetual night. He was well dressed; a tailored coat hung at a bunkpost. “You needn’t fear me,” he said. “I may be dying, but I’m not diseased, if that’s what you want to know. It’s just that my hand won’t remain still.” He raised his right hand, and Mister Walton saw it agitate the air.

“I don’t fear you at all, Mr. Tempest.”

“You will take a letter that I dictate,” said Mr. Tempest, his tone only slightly less combative.

“That is why I came,” said Mister Walton with a small nod.

“And you will deliver it.”

“Here in Portland?” Mister Walton was wise enough to know the details before he made a promise to deliver personally some letter to Shanghai.

“The City Hotel,”said Tempest.

Again Mister Walton nodded, his curiosity up. He went to the table, which was designed to accommodate a person sitting at the bunk; there was a hard-cased trunk beneath the berth, however, and for a seat he upended this, then lowered the hinged tabletop from the wall. Tempest had a small case of writing things at the foot of his berth, and soon Mister Walton was poised with pen and ink above a sheaf of paper.

“To Ezra Burnbrake, City Hotel, Portland,” said the old man. Mixed with the creaking of the ship and the comings and goings of the crew above, there came the sound of a pen nib scratching its way through Tempest’s words.

You were surprised when I searched you out for the purposes of securing certain holdings, and in fact I have been less than candid with you as to why those holdings are of interest to me. Suffice it to say that in the intervening days my interest has waned, and I should ask your pardon for causing you an unnecessary trip; you do have my assurance that this transaction was the makings of a queer deal.

There are others unnamed who will take up my intended mission and press you, when you might have needed no pressing before this letter, but from one whom you have never knowingly met, save by post and telegram, to one who has no reason to think of the sender as anything but a weak-minded old man, I suggest that you resist all overtures on the subject. There are many, unknown to you and me, who would benefit from your firm stance, and likewise lose if these other people acquire what they want.

If you find my motives elusive, I shall simply say that I tire of those unnamed and that your niece once did me a kindness that she will not remember. I am not interested in hearing from you and shall consider all business between us to be terminated. For all intents, and to all your purposes, I am dead.

What trepidation Mister Walton had not felt when he entered Tempest’s cabin descended upon him now, and he wrote the last sentence hesitantly, as if it would only come out of the pen by way of gross labor. The words I am dead in particular fought his intentions, and the final letters shivered as they reached the paper.

He raised his face, feeling beads of sweat on his brow; his hand had cramped.

Tempest sat unmoving in his berth. His hand shivered before him. Mister Walton considered that he was observing some atavistic force, self-perpetuating and self-sustaining, yet barren.

“I have acquired an imagination in my age,” said Tempest quietly, “and that has been punishment enough for anything I have done.”

After a silence Mister Walton leaned toward the man slightly and said, “A I to write that?”

“What?” said the man, as if he had not heard himself. “Let me sign it.” He shifted his feet, which thumped upon the deck, and bent over the table. His shivering hand took the pen from Mister Walton, and with some effort he scrawled an unreadable signature. “He will know who it is.”

Mister Walton had never written anything so extraordinary, and though they were not his words, they had physically come from his hand, and they troubled him. Mr. Tempest troubled him as he leaned back in his bunk with a dark sigh. “Is there anything else I can do for you, Mr. Tempest?” he asked. He felt as if he had one brief moment to offer Tantalus a drink of cool water.

“Sympathy for a crazy old man?” said Tempest. “I can imagine that too.”

Mister Walton took off his spectacles and peered at Tempest with great dignity.

“I can imagine it,” said Tempest, “but I can’t feel it.”

“It is a beginning.”

“Is it? One without the other is simply confusion. There is an envelope in the writing case there. You don’t need to address it if you give it to Burn brake personally.”

“I understand.”

“I was going to offer you recompense for your trouble.”

“I wouldn’t take it.”

“That occurred to me. I trust Covington wasn’t too offended.”

“More amused than offended perhaps.”

“Then I did him an injustice.”

Mister Walton replaced his spectacles, then took an envelope from the little box and folded the note into it. His curiosity was not entirely assuaged; the note, though plain in its unhappiness, was yet cryptic in its details. But if the unhappiness of the man before him might linger, the letter of his words were all but forgotten before he reached the door.

“Didn’t you have a hat?” asked Tempest.

“It was the loss of my hat that brought me here, sir,” said Mister Walton.

Tempest’s eyebrows raised. Curiosity, as Mister Walton could have told him, is not a low sensation. “I can’t imagine that, but you look cold without it.”

“I am Tobias Walton, Mr. Tempest,” said the portly fellow with a cautious bow. “I live on Spruce Street, here in Portland, and I am at your service.”

“Good-bye, Mister Walton. I trust we shall not see each other again.”

Mister Walton was almost surprised that it was night outside. Then he remembered that Sundry, and Mr. Seacost, and the Covingtons were awaiting him in a carriage just off the wharf. The cold air above decks was welcome, even on his bare head. The stars were out.

4. The Assembled League

Mr. Pliny, owner of the Shipswood Restaurant on Commercial Street, was always happy to see Mister Walton and the members of the Moosepath League, for a single jolly customer is like the bit of sand around which the oyster grows the pearl. Most who knew him thought Mister Walton was himself a pearl, and good things did seem to surround him.

The members of the Moosepath League were unaware of the interest they had caused in the public at large. The papers had outlined their exploits, both in the “Aff air of the Underwood Treasure” and in the mysterious “Gunfight on the Sheepscott River,” and the small size of their club (which was imagined by many to indicate a sort of exclusivity) only increased the notoriety of each of its constituents.

Neither were they aware of bringing fame to the Shipswood Restaurant by making it their meeting place every Thursday evening at seven. Mister Walton, who was perhaps more cognizant than the three charter members, would not have presumed to imagine, and perhaps only Sundry Moss wondered at the increasing crowds and the moments of silent eavesdropping from nearby tables.

The unannounced purposes of the Moosepath League served only to heighten the mystery, and truth to tell, this lack of an express mission continued to be an issue of some trouble for the membership. Theirs was not particularly a sporting fellowship, though years ago one of their number had gone fishing in the Presumpscot River and very fortunately was pulled out of the stream just above the falls below Pleasant Hill. They did not share political persuasions, nor did they attend the same churches. They were not tradesmen or merchants. What they did share was a great goodwill, an admiration of Mister Walton, and unbounded curiosity.

This, as it happens, was enough.

Mr. Pliny, then, was pleased to see Mister Walton arrive some minutes before seven with Sundry Moss, two new gentlemen, and a lady, all of them as cheerful as they could be. a pretty air was singing from a pair of violins in the back of the main room as their coats and hats (discounting Mister Walton’s, of course) were taken and they were escorted to the club’s usual table. “I’ll be back with more chairs and your menus,” said Mr. Pliny with a bow.

Frederick Covington pulled out a chair for his wife, then sat down with a satisfied noise. The restaurant’s atmosphere was redolent of good food as well as sweet music, and he had made no pretense regarding the state of his stomach.

“Then you are Portland’s answer to the great detective himself!” Isabelle was saying. Mr. Seacost had been describing to her what was public knowledge of Mister Walton’s recent adventures.

“Good heavens, no!” said Mister Walton, blushing. “We were very much accidental in our involvements, believe me.”

“How do you like to snowshoe?” asked Frederick ofhandedly as they received menus from Mr. Pliny, but the question remained in the air unanswered as other conversation was forwarded.

“I trust the remaining members will be here,” the owner was saying hopefully.

“It is their plan, I believe, yes,” said Mister Walton.

“I am anxious to meet these gentlemen,” said Isabelle.

“They will be agog to have such a lovely addition at our gathering tonight,” said Mister Walton.

Mrs. Covington did not blush, but she raised her menu before her, looking as if she had thought better of Mister Walton.

He laughed because she had no idea how accurately he had spoken.

It was Matthew Ephram who arrived first, and he was agog. a single male guest would have warranted great enthusiasm on his part, but to meet three new people and one of them a female raised the night’s gathering to the level of the historic.

If the Covingtons and Mr. Sea cost had expected a man of heroic aspect, then they were not disappointed in Matthew Ephram, who was tall and well-proportioned. He had dark hair and fine black mustaches, and he wore an impeccably tailored suit of gray herringbone. He held the day’s edition of Portland’s Eastern Argus beneath his arm. He carried three or four watches on his person at all times, and he consulted one of these, even as he shook Isabelle Covington’s hand, which she had offered. “Three minutes past the hour of seven,” he announced, as if to mark the very instant.

“Izzy’s very interested to meet you and your colleagues, Mr. Ephram,” said Frederick.

“Is he?” said Ephram. “I am sorry, I wouldn’t know.”

The clergyman hesitated. He and Ephram considered each other for a moment: Frederick with a look of near laughter, Ephram with honest wonder. “I’m sorry, I don’t know either,” said Frederick.

“Oh, please, don’t apologize,” said Ephram.

Smiling, Mister Walton had cleared his throat as preamble to sorting this out when there came another voice. “Good heavens!” it said, and the men stood again and Mrs. Covington watched with amusement as Christopher Eagleton was introduced. He shook hands with everyone, including Ephram, at least once, and Ephram was inspired also to shake Mr. Covington’s and Mr. Seacost’s hands again.

Though the oldest of the three Moosepathians (he had already celebrated his fortieth birthday), Eagleton looked the youngest, owing perhaps to his full blond hair and lack of beard or mustache. a was usual he wore a tan suit, and he held his customary copy of the Portland Advertiser in one hand as he shook with the other. He himself was agog at the sight of a woman at their table and expressed to her how unprecedented and how welcome was this circumstance. “Continued clear tonight,” said Eagleton. “Overcast tomorrow, with possible flurries. Moderate temperatures foreseen.” He was something of an amateur meteorographer, and it was not unusual for him to inform others of expected weather patterns.

“Five minutes past seven,” said Ephram.

There was a sudden crash nearby, and all tables halted to see Joseph Thump (of the Exeter Thumps) pick himself up from the floor. There did not appear anything in his immediate vicinity that might have tripped him, so he may simply have been upended by the sight of Mrs. Covington. He was not a tall man, but very broad of shoulder, and his expression was difficult to read, since it was hidden behind a remarkable profusion of brown beard and mustaches. Wearing his habitual black suit, he carried with him the latest issue of the Portland Courier Clearly he too was agog.

Another round of handshakes began, joined by Eagleton and Ephram; Frederick Covington thought he must have shaken Ephram’s hand five times and could foresee doing so several times again before the night was out. The thought made him laugh.

“High tide tomorrow morning at five-fourteen,” said Thump at a juncture that did not strictly call for this information. Weather prognostication and the exact moment in time (eight minutes past seven) were also repeated by Eagleton and Ephram, to the mystification of Mister Walton’s guests.

Eagleton had no more than sat down (again) when he announced, “I met a dog outside the restaurant.”

“As did I!” exclaimed Ephram, somewhat astonished at this coincidence.

“A dog!” stated Thump. He nodded emphatically, and after some discussion (which was so involved that others at the table had not the heart to break in) they decided that they had all seen the same dog, and this appeared to raise the coincidence (in the Moosepathians’ eyes) to the altitude of the near miraculous.

“I suggest the pine bark soup,” Mister Walton was saying, “for anyone starting with a hearty appetite. There are three kinds of freshwater fish in it!”

“I wonder what her name is,” said Thump about the dog. Among his friends, his questions were known for their gravity.

“Moxie,” said Frederick Covington finally. He happened at this moment to be lifting his water glass for a drink.

Thump directed his attention to the clergyman and thought about this. He knew that Moxie was a beverage-a nerve tonic, actually-sold at soda fountains and advertised in the Portland Courier with the picture of a man pointing assertively and declaring, “Drink Moxie!” (Thump had actually tried the drink once and liked it very much two or three weeks later.) The word had also recently come to mean “indomitable pluck and spirit,” and now Thump thought it was being used as a toast, which he liked very much. He raised his own water glass to Mr. Covington and said, in his deep voice, “And to you, sir!”

“Moxie!” said Eagleton, who raised his own glass.

“Moxie!” said Ephram, following suit.

Mister Walton thought he heard a bark from outside.

5. The Hat and the Hack

“That creature is better dressed than you are,” said Pearly Sporrin, of Sporrin’s Livery, on the western end of Commercial Street. He stood in the gateway, the stem of his pipe half an inch from his lower lip, and observed Charley Hatch’s horse and rig in the lamplight.

“It’s none of my doing,” said Charley Hatch, leaning forward in his seat to eye the object in question. He had made no move to detach the hat from Violet’s crown since discovering it that afternoon but continued to view the homburg with vague suspicion. “I turned to shake the leads, and there it was.”

“What? Did she grow it then?”

“For all I know.”

“She’ll be a hat factory next.” Pearly patted the animal’s muzzle. a breath of cold wind blew from the harbor; Pearly could glimpse the glint of light upon water between the buildings across the street. “Better than a glue factory, isn’t that so, girl?” he said to the horse.

“What do you have there, Charley?” asked an aged fellow, stepping from the stable.

A Charley didn’t immediately answer, Pearly spoke up. “He’s foolish about that nag of his, Doc. Bought her a hat. It’ll be a dress and petticoats tomorrow.”

“That’s a pretty fine hat,” said the shaky old fellow as he approached the horse and cab.

All that anyone knew about Doc Brine was that nobody knew if he was a doctor of anything, but he could cure a sick horse as surely as any man in the city. He had been seeing some poor creature inside; now, as usual, he was in need of a drink. He had a way of laying hands on a horse or a dog, or even a cat-why, he’d cure a cat, if you asked him!-and that animal would let him do anything he needed to bring it to health. It took the stuff out of him, though-that’s what he’d told Charley once-and he always needed a drink afterward. Someone had told Charley that Alexander Brine had been a horse doctor during the war and that he’d had to put so many disabled creatures down that it had ruined him.

“Don’t know where it came from,” said Charley about the mysterious hat. It was a nice hat, but he was not overfond of it. a body couldn’t trust such a thing. He’d learn to wear that hat and learn to like it, and someday it would just up and be missing as quickly as it had appeared.

“How’s the bay?” asked Pearly.

“Terrible congested,” said Doc. “I got her up and moving. Only thing for it. Up and moving.” Clearly whatever he had done, it had cost him. He was shaking badly, and Pearly knew that the owner of the bay was not at hand just now to pay the old man.

The liveryman fished in a pocket and came up with a coin. “I’ll talk to Mr. Cleaves in the morning,” said Pearly. He laid the coin carefully in Doc’s palm so that the man would not drop it.

“Wish I had another of these,” said the old man to the horse, waving the coin before him. “I’d buy that hat from you.” He reached up to scratch her nose. Old Doc Brine didn’t own a hat, and the few gray hairs left to him could hardly warm his head on a night like this. He thought no more about it, however, and wandered off in the direction of the nearest tavern, where cheap beer (or any beer) was sold against the law of the state.

The streets were shiny with snowmelt, and the sidewalks were spotted with white. Lamps and lighted windows along the street made halos in the low-lying bank of sea smoke that crawled from the harbor. The foggy atmosphere made strange shadows, and looking after Doc Brine as he moved against the light from a store, Charley and Pearly could almost swear they saw his bony form through his clothes. He shook, and he looked cold, even if Charley Hatch did know it was the demon shakes.

“Doc!” said Charley, and he leaped down from the cab. He was not a young man himself, but he was spry, and he snatched that hat from Violet’s brow and hurried after the old fellow. “Doc,” he called again, “you could use this a good deal more than Violet. If she wears that thing, she can’t see out the corner of her eye. It makes her nervous.”

Doc Brine laughed. “What? No, Charley, I was just having fun, is all.”

“Well, I’m not,” said Charley, and he thrust the hat at the old man. There was a brief impasse; then Charley said, “You got Violet back on her feet a couple years back, Doc. I haven’t forgotten.”

“Yes, but you paid me, Charley.”

Charley Hatch laughed under his breath. “Violet didn’t. It’s her hat, you see.” And he and Doc both laughed when Violet let out a sudden nicker.

“Well,” said Doc Brine, “if she insists, I won’t insult a lady.” With obvious pleasure he took the hat and placed it on his head. It was a little large for him, but all the better to cover his ears on a cold night.

“If your feet are cold, put your hat on,” observed Charley. “That’s what my old pop used to say.”

The peculiar thing was, Doc looked as if he’d lost the shakes; he stood before Charley like any other man, almost festive with that homburg on, and he took a deep, steady breath. “Thanks, Charley. It sure is a nice hat,” he said. “My toes are warming already.” But the truth was, his heart was a little warmed.

“Merry Christmas, Doc,” said Charley. They both were old enough to remember when the old folk-the old Dutch folk-celebrated St. Nicholas Day on the sixth of December, only three days hence.

“Merry Christmas, Charley,” said Doc Brine.

Feeling a little awkward, Charley scuffed back to his horse and rig and proceeded to lead them through the gate and into the stables.

Leaning against the gatepost, Pearly Sporrin let out a puff of smoke from his newly kindled pipe.

Doc Brine had not shuffled very far down Commercial Street before he met and greeted several people he knew, including the matronly figure of Dotty Brass, who ran a house on York Street that Doc had neither the money nor the inclination to patronize. He had cured her cat a year or two ago, and she gave him a sweet smile and happy regards as she hurried past. He tipped his new hat and breathed a sigh of relief when she was gone; he was a little afraid of her and her establishment.

He had just turned back to recommence his progress down Commercial Street when he caught sight of a dissolute-looking fellow who stood in the recessed doorway of an abandoned storefront. The old man took two or three furtive glances before he stopped again and said, “Is that you, Lincton?”

“Good evening, Doc,” said the man in the doorway. He stepped down to the street, and Doc Brine could see he was in a bad way. Lincton was a young fellow, not yet twenty-five years old, who had until recently worked on the wharves, landing cargo. a injury had left him without work, and he had become a common sight lately walking the streets.

Lincton wasn’t the young man’s real name; his father, Jacob Washington, an imaginative and zealous veteran of the War Between the States, had christened the boy Lincoln N. The middle initial stood for nothing but itself and served only to unite his christian and surname in a sort of patriotic prayer whenever they were pronounced together. The boy was not very old, however, before some wag decided to shorten the whole moniker The first syllable from one president and the last syllable from the other were combined, and the young man was dubbed Lincton, a nickname that adhered.

Doc Brine was already fingering the coin in his pocket when Lincton came out of the shadows. The hat on the old man’s head was still working its warmth, and the look of hunger in the young man’s eyes touched his conscience; here was a fellow in need of a sustaining meal. These days Doc could get by on crackers and canned herring, with the occasional bit of beef thrown in. Young folk, he told himself, required more.

“No work yet?” asked the old man. He suspected that Lincton had given up the search in a stupor of hunger and cold.

“I think the foot is getting better,” said Lincton, though his limp was as pronounced as ever.

“You need a meal, young man,” said Doc Brine, and before the other could reply, he had taken the single coin from his pocket and pressed it into Lincton’s hand.

Lincton hardly registered the gift at first but stood in the wet street while Doc hurried off in awkward silence. Finally the young man blinked at the coin, which glinted dully in the gleam of a distant lamp. “Thank you, Doc!” he shouted. He could not see the old man, but he heard a response rise from the shadows.

Lincton was not a drinking man; but living along the wharves, a person learns quickly where a drink can be had, and contrary to his natural disposition, this is where he took himself. He had enough in the one coin for three pints of watery beer. In his rickety state, however, even this dilution instilled a sense of false courage. He began to contemplate his late father’s government-issued navy Colt, lying cold and heavy beneath his threadbare coat.

6. The Covington Goal

“But the hat was not to be found,” said Mister Walton when he and Sundry had finished telling how they happened to meet with Mr. Seacost and the Covingtons that evening.

“It was quite a hill,” allowed Sundry.

The charter members could hardly get their imaginations past the point in the tale at which the toboggan had been commandeered.

“It’s tremendous!” said Ephram. The meal before him and his attendant appetite were all but forgotten; even Mister Walton’s lack of a hat vanished in Ephram’s mind before the vision of the grand fellow standing at the bow of the runner and pointing onward, like Washington crossing the Delaware.

“I’ve never ridden a toboggan,” said Eagleton. “And I would very much like to meet these fellows who came to your assistance,” he added. “Durwood, Waverley, and Brink. The Dash-It-All Boys!” He liked the ring of the name.

Thump had ridden a toboggan-once. (Or had it been a sled?) At any rate, he had been a lad then and had slid down a short slope and run into a stone wall. His mother had called him in. Gazing over his empty plate, he felt nostalgia for this otherwise forgotten moment.

“I am sorry we did not meet you at the top of the hill,” said Isabelle, who thought the adventure sounded gay.

“Good heavens!’said Mr. Seacost, who was trying to imagine himself on a toboggan.

“It is a fine season, there is no doubt,” said Mister Walton. He looked out the restaurant window and admired the snowy scene as it was illumined by lighted lamppost and carriage lantern. “And in these days, particularly, when we anticipate Christmas and the Yuletide blaze, there is a delectable sense of mystery in the air.”

“Mystery!” said Eagleton in a hushed tone. He had always sensed something about Christmas, beyond the obvious religious and secular festivities, but he had never realized that it was simply mystery.

“We tell ghost stories on Christmas Eve,” said Sundry about his own family tradition.

“It is a British custom that you may be following, sir,” suggested Frederick Covington. “Mr. Dickens himself put it to good use. The Christmastide has traditionally been rife with spirits.”

“And the animals speak at midnight,” said Isabelle, with childish delight in her eye.

“I wish now that I had gone to the barn to hear them,” said Sundry.

“The genuine mystery of Christmas,” expressed Frederick, “is that no one can partake of it all. Some of its prettiest pleasures are those that just graze our fingertips.”

“But Mister Walton will try his best,” said Isabelle, for she had gotten the cut of the portly fellow and thought he was a man who could keep Christmas well.

“Well, I have the toboggan behind me now,” he admitted with a happy smile. “But there are many pleasures to be had when snow flies.”

“I suppose we will be up to our waists in snow soon enough,” said Isabelle, looking to her husband.

“My wife,” explained Frederick, “is referring to our ultimate destination, which is Skowhegan.”

“Are you expecting more snow than elsewhere in Skowhegan?” wondered Mister Walton.

“More snow in the woods than on the streets,” said Isabelle. She was clearly having fun at her husband’s expense, but Sundry, in particular, wondered if Mrs. Covington’s energy and badinage was a means to cover something deeper-or even troubling.

“Is it a sporting expedition then?” asked Mister Walton.

“Sport of sort,” she replied.

“I told you, Toby, that Frederick is pursuing his own hobbyhorse,” said Mr. Seacost.

“Yes, you did.”

“I am on a very important point of business,” said Frederick with a glint of humor.

“My husband has been making it his business,” said Isabelle, “to preempt Columbus’s claims of discovery.”

“Frederick’s specialty of study,” continued the older clergyman, “outside of his seminary concerns, is Old Norse.”

“The Vinland Saga!” declared Mister Walton. The thought obviously pleased and excited him, and Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump were accordingly fascinated, though they were not sure yet about what.

“Yes, indeed,” said Frederick with a smile. He could not hide his delight in knowing a fellow enthusiast.

“And you have found proof of Viking presence in the New World?” wondered Mister Walton.

“I have been called on several times to identify an artifact or to translate supposed runes.”

“You are the expert then.”

“I am the ‘great disprover,’ Mister Walton,” said Frederick, with his distaste for this self-imposed title showing clear upon his face.

“Oh, dear.”

“For myself, the Vinland Saga is proof enough-its descriptions of geography, of nature, of the native peoples.”

“Skraelings, they called the people,” said Mister Walton, refreshing his own memory.

Frederick nodded. “But it is important that I be harder on the evidence than anyone, if you understand.”

“Of course. There are those waiting to ridicule any claim.”

“You understand the problem then and the delicacy with which I must approach any possible evidence.” Frederick sighed a little, for it was a subject of some dearness to him. “If there is any question-and so far there has always been, at the very least, a question-but any question at all, I must say no.”

“It isn’t easy for him, is it, dear?” said Isabelle, and there was a very real sympathy (and again, a little trouble, thought Sundry) beneath her soft smile.

“So you are going to Skowhegan,” said Mister Walton, who himself sensed more to this story than was readily told.

“We will make a short stop at Augusta,” said Frederick, “where the man who found the artifact has photographs of it. He discovered it in the woods near Skowhegan last summer but only recently got around to finding out who might tell him something about it. The artifact is too large to remove from the site, and he has no desire to return to the place where he found it while snow is on the ground. There is, as it turns out, some urgency to my mission, and I wish I had another contact in Skowhegan. Maps and directions are all very good, but it is better to have someone who knows the territory and whom you can trust.”

“I know someone in Skowhegan!” said Mister Walton. “Someone who certainly knows the woods nearabouts, for he is a great hunter and fisherman.”

Frederick Covington’s expression brightened with this declaration. “Would he have any interest in such a harebrained business?” he wondered.

“I wager he would,” said Mister Walton, amused by the clergyman’s phraseology, “once it was properly explained. I could write a letter of introduction, or”-and here Mister Walton’s own aspect glowed with sudden inspiration-“or we could go with you!”

“What a capital idea!” declared Mr. Seacost. “Frederick, you would have the benefit of two experienced adventurers, I promise you.”

“I couldn’t be such a nuisance…” began Frederick.

“Nonsense!” said Mister Walton. He was leaning back to make way for his bowl of pine bark soup, which had been ordered by everyone at the table upon the strength of his recommendation. The waiter placed the steaming bowl before him, but he was lost in the consideration of another expedition. Then his expression altered slightly, and he said, “But I have promised to deliver this letter tomorrow.” He patted a coat pocket.

Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump had been as excited as Mr. Walton about the proposed trip, and each hoped that he might be included in the plans to accompany the Covingtons. (The notion of trekking about in the snowy woods had thrilling implications.) Now they realized, however, that they had a further duty to fulfill.

It was Ephram who spoke first. “Mister Walton, we shall be pleased to deliver the letter for you. The members of the club.”

“Hear, hear,” said Eagleton.

“Hmm?” said Thump. He was brushing back his beard in anticipation of his soup. Spoons were poised; the table napkins had been unfurled upon their respective laps.

“Thank you, Mr. Ephram,” said Mister Walton. “But I hesitate to burden you with an errand that I took for myself.”

“No burden at all, I assure you,” said Ephram, who felt quite adamant about the issue now that the suggestion had been made. “What is our great pleasure could never be a burden.”

“Bravo, Ephram,” said Eagleton.

“Hmm?” said Thump.

It occurred to Mister Walton that the members of the club would have liked to accompany them on such a journey, but also that a smaller party would surely be less trouble for the Covingtons. “I thank you again then,” he said. “The letter is to go to a Mr. Ezra Burnbrake, who is expected at the City Hotel.” He lifted Mr. Tempest’s letter from his coat pocket and solemnly passed it to Matthew Ephram, who very solemnly placed it in his own coat.

“It shall be delivered on the morrow,” pronounced Ephram.

“Now,” said Mister Walton, “I hope I haven’t taken anything for granted, but we are at your service. And I will be there to explain to my friend, who would have probably jumped at the chance to accompany you in any case.”

“Wonderful!” said Mr. Seacost.

“Isabelle?” said Frederick to his wife.

“Good company speeds the hour,” she said, and again moved the entire table with a very pretty smile.

“Moxie!” said Thump, and Ephram and Eagleton raised their water glasses to join in his cheer.

“I should tell you,”said Covington, hoping to avoid further misunderstanding and possible embarrassment. “Moxie is the name of my dog.”

“How very wonderful!” said Eagleton, his glass raised. Ephram and Thump too thought it a fine name.

“Moxie!” shouted Thump again, and now they all raised their glasses and said, “Moxie!” amid much laughter.

“It’s a wonderful toast,”said Ephram, “though I’ve never heard it before tonight.”

“I think it has been freshly coined,”said Isabelle with a sympathetic smile.

The members of the club, who loved nothing better than to be at the cusp of new things, were delighted.

“Are you coming, Mr. Seacost?” asked Sundry.

“I think not, Mr. Moss, though I will be waiting, of course, to hear of your new adventures or read of them in the papers perhaps. Don’t let them lead you into kidnappings and gunfights, Frederick.”

“We will be very cautious,” promised Sundry.

“I am nothing if not stimulated by the prospect of our chairman’s expedition!” exclaimed Christopher Eagleton as they collected their hats and coats in the foyer of the Shipswood Restaurant.

“And that is not to mention the anticipation of delivering this letter!” said Ephram. He patted his coat pocket meaningfully.

“To say nothing!” agreed Thump. “To say nothing!”

“Hear, hear!” said Eagleton.

“Is Moxie coming?” asked Sundry of the Covingtons.

“Oh, yes,” said Frederick.

Outside the restaurant the members of the club were amazed to discover that the dog they each had seen on the way in was in fact the Covingtons’ dog. Coincidence was rampant!

Moxie shook hands with them all, delighting them, and once the Moosepathians bid the others good-night, they strode into the night with a cry of “Moxie!”

“Moxie!” came the nearly hilarious reply.

The dog let out a happy bark.

7. The Members Were Disarming

Lincoln N. Washington had been a steady, if not overly ambitious, worker during his days on the wharves. He had ingratiated himself with his fellow laborers rather than his employer, so when a crane rope broke and a crate of machine parts crushed his foot, he had been given an extra dollar by a sympathetic foreman and let go. a few days later some of his fellow workers had raised almost three and a half dollars among them and left it with Lincton’s landlady, who kept it against the next month’s rent. Two months later he was on the street.

Now, standing in an alley that emptied onto Commercial Street and the waterfront district of Portland, with the warp of three pints convoluting his judgment, young Lincton held his father’s pistol shakily before him and considered the old man’s self-proclaimed military glory.

The late Jacob Washington had been, if anything, less steady and certainly less ambitious than his son and had parlayed patriotic declarations and a minor wound into a life of homebound idleness. Lincton’s mother, dead these ten years, had supported the family as a laundress, and Jacob had failed his children as an example, even as he railed against their inadequacies in the shadow of his ever-enlarged military accomplishments.

Lincton hardly understood what he was going to do till he heard footsteps and conversation growing out of the right-hand shadows of Commercial Street. He leaned around the corner of a brick building, just enough so that he could see three figures moving toward him, silhouetted against the streetlamp that stood across from the Shipswood Restaurant.

He pondered the heavy piece of iron in his hand, raising it a little to peer down the narrow blue gleam of the barrel at a window across the way. He felt oddly calm, for the moment, and though desperation lurked nearby, fogged slightly by drink, he had no real murderous intentions. It is significant that he did not cock the pistol.

He wanted to look out at the approaching men again, but forced himself to wait in darkness, trusting his ears to tell him when they were almost upon him. Then the realization of what he planned to do struck him from the top of his spine to the forward edge of his scalp; it jolted him like the touch of a cold piece of steel or a bucket of seawater.

The first of the three figures stepped into sight.

Among the Moosepathians, Ephram walked with the longest stride, and he occasionally outstripped his friends by a yard or two before holding back a step so that they might catch up with him. He was just halting for this reason when he reached the mouth of the alley and a shout came out of the darkness. What Lincoln N. Washington was saying, in the harshest tones he could muster, was “Give it over, now!”

What Ephram, who was in the midst of hitching back his stride, did was double hitch his stride. What Thump and Eagleton did was collide with their friend, and what they all did was slip upon the snowy sidewalk.

Ephram clutched for the only thing within reach, which was the young man who had stepped out in front of him. All that he managed to grasp, however, was a length of cold metal, which (quite by accident) he tore from the newcomer’s hand. With nothing else to hold him up, Ephram fell to the sidewalk with a very loud exhalation.

The unseasoned bandit was in this process pulled from his own feet and forward, and Thump, who was reaching for Ephram’s shoulders as a means to keep his own short stature upright, caught hold instead of Lincton’s.

To Lincton’s uncoordinated senses, one man had snatched his gun away from him, and the second was throwing him to the ground.

Eagleton managed somehow to step over the newly developing heap, but he placed his heel upon a bit of icicle that had fallen from the eaves above and slid two or three feet before landing on his most padded portion. He possessed a certain innate athleticism in his otherwise untrained limbs, however, and, by catching at the edge of a door stoop, was able to use the impetus of his slide to lever himself back into an upright posture. The effect, had anybody been watching, was not unlike that of a runner sliding into a stolen base, and no one could have been more surprised than Eagleton himself.

Young Lincton knew that he had flushed the wrong birds, and leaping to his feet, he turned about and ran into Eagleton, who had come into contact with another portion of the fallen icicle and who gripped Lincton’s shoulders with a little more fervor than would a man grasp the rail who had been washed overboard. Lincton was caught, since he was utterly terrified by these men of action and could not at the moment move a muscle.

Ephram in the meanwhile was unconsciously imitating the progress of his Darwinian ancestors as he attempted to stand erect. With one hand he administered aid to Thump’s similar postural campaign, and with the other he leveled the pistol toward Lincton’s back, or rather, he leveled the pistol’s grip to Lincton’s back, since he was gripping the weapon by the barrel.

“Good heavens!” declared Ephram. He had never handled a gun before, but he knew enough to swap ends with the revolver by transferring it to his other hand. “Good heavens!” he said again. “Is this yours?” he asked of Lincoln N. Washington.

The young man closed his eyes and seemed ready to fall on his knees. “Oh, please!” he shouted. “I beg your forgiveness!”

“Good heavens!” said Ephram again. He found the grip of the revolver very awkward in his left hand and thought how best to get it by the grip in his right hand. The operation was not as complicated as he feared it might be, and a very pleasant smile lit his face.

“Oh, please!” said the young man, turning to face Ephram and Thump. “I never meant harm!”

“Never meant harm!” said Ephram. “Good heavens, lad! It was I who ran into you!”

“An unfortunate accident,” rumbled Thump.

“Are you injured?” inquired Eagleton. There was enough combined illumination from streetlamps along the way that he was able to notice the young man favoring one foot.

“I beg your pardon?” said Lincton.

“I beg your pardon,” said Ephram, who realized that he had been pointing the gun at the young man. The mandate against pointing anything at people had been ingrained in him since his earliest memories, and he quickly transferred the pistol, barrel first, to his left hand again. Thump, who had seen Ephram relocate the pistol-barrel in right hand to grip in left to grip in right to barrel in left-thought his friend awfully clever. “I do beg your pardon!” said Ephram again with great emphasis.

“I beg your pardon?” said Lincton again, who wasn’t sure why his own pardon had been begged. He was confused, and not a little frightened by this mysterious solicitude.

“Not at all,” insisted Ephram, not elucidating matters for the erstwhile bandit.

The next few moments were a blur to Lincton. Eagleton helped dust him off, while Ephram pressed the pistol back in his hand and Thump handed him several bills of generous proportions. Then Ephram saw some dirt on the fellow’s sleeve and brushed that off, while Eagleton, who had been a little shocked at the condition of the fellow’s coat, pressed several bills of generous proportions into Lincton’s hand that was not occupied by the pistol. Then they all begged the young man’s pardon again several times over, and while Ephram put into the young man’s already well-moneyed palm several bills of generous proportions, Thump passed Lincton his card and assured him that they were looking for help at his family’s shipping firm if he was in need of employment.

“Are you sure you are not injured?” asked Eagleton again.

“Terribly clumsy of me,” said Ephram.

“Good evening,” said Thump.

And they each raised their hats to him and continued on their way, Ephram showing particular care whenever he approached the mouth of an alley or the corner of a building.

Lincoln N. Washington sat down on the nearby stoop. He had counted more than twenty-nine dollars when the events of the past few minutes caught up with him. He was shaking again. He looked up the street, after the three gentlemen, but they had disappeared beyond the next streetlamp. He considered Thump’s card through a blur of tears, realizing that he had just tried to rob three men, and in return they might have saved his life.

8. The Portrait and Apple Pandowdy

Mister Walton was thinking of Phileda McCannon when he and Sundry arrived home at Spruce Street that evening, which is not to say that there was anything very different in his thought processes just then. He had hoped for the opportunity to see Miss McCannon again since escorting her to the Hallowell Harvest Ball nearly two months ago, but Phileda was in Orland now, tending an ailing aunt, and letters from her had been short and direct.

Phileda was a direct sort of person, to be sure, but Mister Walton had hoped to glean from these communications some sense of attachment beyond friendship. He had been encouraged by their time (and the pleasantness of that time) spent together, and twice his (admittedly tentative) courtship had been cut short by happenstance and calls for help in other quarters. Their association was left unresolved; he had not heard from her in more than a week, though he had written twice.

A expected, Mrs. Baffin (the elderly cook who, along with her elderly husband, continued to watch over Mister Walton and his home) had left something in the warming oven: two large helpings of apple pandowdy. Mister Walton and Sundry could smell it the moment they entered the front hall; shaking the snow from his boots, Sundry volunteered to venture forth to the kitchen so that they might fortify themselves before packing.

Mister Walton hung his coat upon the hatrack in the hall and, returning to the front door to be sure it had been pushed to, caught a glimpse of light reflected against the portrait in the parlor.

Anyone who had observed Mister Walton in the past several weeks might have predicted what came next. He stepped into the darkened parlor and ted up the lights. The portrait standing against the opposite wall by the bookcase troubled him. The lovely young woman with the soft expression gazed back. It wasn’t proper somehow to relegate the picture to a closet or turn it against the wall, yet the notion of actually hanging the painting somewhere seemed presumptuous.

He had received three or four letters from Mrs. O’Heam, written at her farm in Veazie, where she and her son Wyckford and other members of their immediate family were taking care of the little boy. Bird had “grown an inch,” she wrote, and though he remained a silent child for the most part, she believed that he was coming out of his shell a little bit at a time. The child had gone through much hardship, and among the O’Hearns he was truly safe for perhaps the first time in his young life; Mister Walton was disquieted by several elements in the affair, but none more than the haunting suspicion that Bird might be better of not knowing his origins or anything about this beautiful young woman.

But the possibility that Bird’s mother—and Mister Walton was certain that the portrait represented just that person-was alive and suffering for the fate of her child was enough to counterweight his apprehensions.

It had been a month and a half, or nearly so, since Editor Corbell of the Eastern Argus advertised an engraving of the portrait and printed three articles about the events leading to the picture’s discovery. (These pieces were purportedly written by one Peter Mall, though Mister Walton suspected this to be a pen name for Mollie Peer, who was directly, if accidentally, responsible for Bird’s rescue in the first place.)

In uncharacteristically (for the newspapers of the day) quiet prose these items related how Wyckford O’Heam had snatched Bird from Eustace Pembleton’s underground lair, how the criminal elements of Portland’s waterfront had believed the boy knew the whereabouts of a wealthy cache, and how Bird had been rescued from further hazard. There had been the tale of the tunnels beneath Fort Edgecomb, to which Bird led them, and in which that troubling picture had been found. a reward had been offered for information about the woman, but in a month and a half, though several hopeful leads had been presented, they were no closer to knowing where (or even who) she was.

Mister Walton was a little transfixed (and not for the first time) by the large brown eyes looking out at him, the loveliness of the oval face, or perhaps simply the mystery behind it all. Sundry found him there when Mister Walton failed to show in the kitchen. The younger man was standing in the doorway, hands in his trouser pockets, leaning with a shoulder against the jamb, when the portly fellow realized his presence with a start.

“I was just wondering whom I most feared for,” said Mister Walton, “the mother or the child.”

“We know the boy is safe,” said Sundry, echoing his employer’s thoughts, “but the mother is perhaps beyond our concern.”

“It is true.” Mister Walton turned down the light in the parlor, and even then he could discern the outline of that face in the portrait. “I wish I could let her know that her child is in good hands.”

“Perhaps you will yet,” said Sundry.

Mister Walton moved into the hall and the younger man lingered briefly in the doorway. Sundry had spent some meditative moments himself, considering that enigmatic face.

“From the size of these portions,” said Sundry when in the kitchen he opened the door to the warming oven, “Mrs. Baffin expected the members of the club to come home with us.”

“There’ll be cream in the icebox,” Mister Walton reckoned aloud. Mrs. Baffin’s apple pandowdy was a source of great comfort to him.

“Another expedition!” said Sundry happily.

“Indeed!” said Mister Walton, who realized that he was in want of distraction. “It has been quite an evening, what with the Covingtons’ mission and Mr. Tempest’s letter.”

“Not to speak of the Dash-It-All Boys,” added Sundry.

“I had forgot,” said Mister Walton. “And what did you think of those gentlemen?”

“I think that club was invented for our benefit,” said Sundry.

“I think you are right.”

“My father would say that Messrs. Durwood, Waverley, and Brink could be trusted about as far as you could throw the lot of them at once.”

“A wise man, your father.”

“I was a little surprised,” said Sundry, “when Mr. Covington mentioned that his trip to Skowhegan was urgent somehow.”

“I took note of that as well,” said Mister Walton. “Considering an object that may have remained in one place for several centuries, it is surprising that any urgency should be attached to reaching it.”

“It did make me curious,” admitted Sundry, “though it didn’t seem polite to inquire.”

“Perhaps he only meant that it was urgent he get back to his church,” thought Mister Walton.

“That was probably it. I liked Moxie,” said Sundry, as if he were ready to forgive the Covingtons for any mystery for the sake of their dog.

“She is a beautiful animal,” agreed Mister Walton.

“It is too bad we didn’t meet the Covingtons at the top of the hill,” said Sundry. “I once had a dog that liked to go sledding.”

“Did you?” Mister Walton was pleased with the image this raised.

While they indulged in Mrs. Baffin’s apple pandowdy, Sundry reminisced. “Yes,” he said. “I called him Plummet, he liked sliding so much. He wasn’t a big dog, but he was all for it! He would take the front of the sled and stick his nose out, and his ears flapped behind him like flags in a wind.” Mister Walton was chuckling now as Sundry warmed to his tale. “When we got to the bottom of the hill, that dog would take the rope in his teeth and pull the sled up, he was so eager to go it again.

“One day, in the middle of January, I happened to notice my sled had been moved, and there were dog prints all around it, which made me suspicious. The dogs all sleep in the barn, and that night I went out to feed them, and sure enough, Plummet wasn’t among them. I went out and found the sled missing from behind the woodshed, and I followed a set of dog tracks and the marks left by the runners to the big hill behind our house.

“What do you think!” said Sundry, “but Plummet was out there sliding the hill all by himself. There was a bright moon out, and I watched him for half an hour from a stand of trees. He’d take that sled down the hill, drag it back up, and go it again.

“Well, it was a cold night, and I knew he would put the sled back more or less where he found it, so I left him and went inside.”

Mister Walton thoroughly enjoyed this narrative, the more so since he understood that Sundry was purposely drawing his mind away from more melancholy concerns. These days thoughts of Phileda McCannon were never far away, nor did many hours pass before he glimpsed once again (in his mind) the portrait of the unknown woman standing by itself in his parlor. “You’ve said there were many dogs at your parents’ farm,” observed the bespectacled fellow. “Did none of them take up the sport once they saw what fun Plummet was having?”

“That’s a story in itself,” said Sundry, as Mister Walton might have guessed. “One night some neighbors showed up at our house, kicked their feet at the stoop, and came in to gather at the stove. There were sleds and toboggans missing at several houses nearby, and all tracks led to our farm, as it turned out. I knew immediately what had happened and led everyone up to the hill, where every dog for three miles was on the slope and having a sledding party.”

“Plummet had been talking, it seems,” said Mister Walton with something like a straight face.

“Word had gotten around, I guess. Everyone kept their sleds locked up, after that, which I thought was too bad. This is fine apple pandowdy!”

“It is indeed.”

“My aunt put out a fire with a kettle of the stuff once.”

“Did she!”

“It’s where that old saying comes from, I think,” Sundry was saying.

“I don’t believe I know that ‘old saying,’” said Mister Walton, and this time he laughed heartily.

Sundry’s expression remained almost bland, but the light in his eye gave him away. “Well,” he replied, “my uncle was always saying it. ‘Great smoldering apple pandowdy!’”