BOOK FOUR

December 6, 1896

33. Gifts

The sound of the a struck Lydia’s nerves; it hadn’t the rhythm one came to expect, and of course she knew, as a parent would know, the effort and pain that went into every stroke. It was not the first time she begrudged Sean for preceding her into the next world; such burdens, such pain and effort, bear better on two pairs of shoulders.

It had been more than a week since Wyck began to work with the ax, and his mother wasn’t sure that he had done anything but harm to himself. He had pushed too hard that first morning, and the second morning he had not lasted long, shaming himself. On the third day he worked a little more slowly and on the fourth day he worked a little longer again. Each day he returned looking pale and used up, and each day Lydia felt a little used up as well.

Mollie Peer was the name of the young woman who had given Wyck the ax, along with the tale of her own father who had brought a shattered knee to life by riding a bicycle, and it was Mollie Peer’s name that sometimes rang in Lydia’s head with every a stroke. Wyckford had plainly fallen for the young woman, and Lydia knew that her son’s feelings unacknowledged, if not entirely unrequited—hurt worse than the near mortal wound.

Bird too had a strong attachment to Mollie Peer, which was more difficult to explain; Mollie’s had been the deed that set all else in motion, but she was also the person most perplexed by his admiration. She had revealed an awkward affection for him the time she had come to the O’Hearn farm by bringing him a toy, the same day she had given Wyck the ax and left with a self-conscious handshake.

The ax blow came again, more the impression of a sound than the sound itself, but loud enough to Lydia’s ears and always out of rhythm. Wyck would swing the ax, then wait for the pain to subside so that he could swing it again; sometimes the pain was greater, and sometimes he got angry and didn’t wait for the pain to die, and sometimes the ax slipped from his hand. The days had grown more difficult, Wyck’s intentions further hampered by several snowstorms, not the least of which had been dying this morning when Lydia rose from bed (having dressed herself under the sheets).

The house was quiet, save for the thunk of the ax. She wished Ephias were home to keep an eye on Wyck from the barn, but Ephias and Emmy had made the trek into church by sleigh and hadn’t yet returned. Lydia’s fat dog, Skinny, lay at her feet, asleep.

Bird stood on the porch, looking cold. Wyckford wouldn’t let the boy near him when he was chopping wood, certainly for safety’s sake, but also so that the little boy would not see him in such pain. Bird had lost interest in helping Ephias with the chores the last few mornings, and Lydia thought Ephias missed him. But Bird wanted only to stand on the porch and wait for Wyckford, to know as soon as the big man returned around the corner of the barn that he was all right. There might be other reasons, less obvious for this, and Lydia had been thinking on them.

She was a practical, God-fearing farm wife who had little use for superstition. Her kitchen had no herbal charms (only remedies), no upturned horseshoe or rabbit’s foot; if she spilled salt, she scraped it off the table and put it back in the bowl, with none wasted over her shoulder.

But she lived in a world of superstition: words to ward off evil influences and prescriptions to avoid hats upon the table or empty shoes beneath it. Even Ephias, who eschewed such beliefs, would stop a chair from rocking when someone got up from it, and few would open an umbrella in the house or whistle past a graveyard. Lydia believed in cleanly scoured surfaces and simple prayer. Ghosts and the remnant intentions of the dead did not enter her philosophy.

Yet she had heard these past few nights some strange sounds that were difficult to pass off as the voice of an owl or the wind in the limb of a tree, and she began to wonder what Bird had brought with him or, rather, what had followed him here.

Or was it simply her own sense of motherly love and sadness? She had lost two children herself and could well imagine that had she gone first, some part of her might have hung about to see that her babies were well cared for. She had little use for superstition, but somehow she was utterly convinced that Bird’s mother was dead and half convinced that some aspect of her, like a sleeping memory, was searching for him but had not yet quite found him.

Lydia could see the little fellow from the parlor where she was knitting, this being Sunday and a certain amount of reflective activity on the Sabbath being part of her upbringing. She was just considering if she should call him in when she saw Bird turn about on the porch and step inside.

At first she was startled, sure that something had happened to Wyck, but then the a blow came again, and she was simply puzzled. Bird appeared at the parlor door, and she told him to come in with a warm note in her voice. He looked out the parlor windows as he passed them, still watching for Wyck.

“When the snow goes,” she said, “we are making more effort to get to church.” She fell to counting stitches and only caught the boy’s quiet reaction to her announcement by the comer of her eye.

He stood in the middle of the parlor floor for some time before speaking. “Are you Wyck’s mother?” he asked. This made her look up. “Yes, of course,” she said. “You know that.”

The reply was not a reprimand, but Bird sat on the edge of a chair and looked down, an unconscious sort of expression she had seen in her own children when they feared another’s displeasure.

“Bird,” she said, “there’s no fault in asking questions.” The retreat inward, so clear upon his face, had struck her fiercely.

“Are you my mother?” he asked.

Now she felt the wind had been rushed from her. There was the space for two or three long breaths. He was looking down at his knees, his feet dangling a few inches from the floor. “Oh, dear,” she said under that third breath. “Do you know Mister Walton sent you something a few days ago?” she asked. “I’ve only been waiting for the right moment to give it to you.”

He looked interested, but vaguely, as if he could not offer more until he knew more, and here was an indication to his character or what had been formed of his character by living in cellar holes with madmen and criminals.

She didn’t know why she hadn’t shown him the picture when it had arrived-ore than a few days ago, to be truthful. The portrait had existed with him in Eustace Pembleton’s strange den beneath Fort Edgecomb, and she suspected that it was a sign of that furtive life, which must have been of equal portions dullness and fear. Partly she worried that it was an object of morbid interest; partly (she must admit to herself) she was somewhat jealous, even of this image that might steal his thoughts from herself and her son.

“You stay here and watch for Wyck,” she said, and she set her knitting aside and went to the front hall closet. The picture was wrapped in brown paper, but she could see Bird’s interest increase severalfold when she returned with it. It was not the original portrait; Mister Walton had that in his own keeping, as he was the person coordinating the search for the woman it represented. The picture Lydia unwrapped was a photograph of the portrait, which Mister Walton had gone so far as to have tinted after the original.

The woman’s face came to the dim light of the parlor, and Bird left his chair to gaze at it closely, his features almost without expression.

Her hair was darker than Bird’s, but they shared the large brown eyes and the full lower lip, which was curved in the portrait into a gentle smile. She looked a little downward and to one side, her hands resting in her lap. The pale green of her dress seemed to melt into the atmosphere of the picture. There was more than the cast of a cheek or the color of an eye, however, that joined Bird with this lovely woman; there was a quality of sweet introspection in both their faces, a natural disposition to smile, however mildly.

“Is she my mother?” asked Bird very plainly.

“We do think so,” said Lydia. She turned her head to one side as she studied him. “Do you?”

He thought about this, then said, “She’s very pretty.”

“Yes, she is,” Lydia agreed, and surprisingly, she had the sudden wish to have the young woman in the room with them.

“Do you know where she is?” asked Bird. In some ways this was more conversation than she had ever had with him.

“We don’t. I’m sorry. But wherever she is, here or in heaven, she loves you, I know.” Lydia considered the portrait again; its very existence seemed to indicate some gentility in its subject, yet how did the boy, who bore such a strong resemblance to this woman of class, arrive in the grimy hands of Eustace Pembleton, living a furtive life along the wharves of Portland?

Bird fairly drank in the lovely face.

“Would you like me to put it on the wall, so that you can look at it when you want?” she asked. She barely registered his nod. “I’ll do that,” she said, then noticed that Wyck stood in the parlor door.

They had not heard when he ceased chopping or when he entered the house. Usually, after his sessions with the ax, he retired to his room, hiding his sweating gray pallor. This morning he came into the room and sat in a chair opposite the picture. He leaned his forearms upon his knees, as if catching his breath, his red hair wet.

“You brought it out,” he said, and sounded, by his tone, as if he thought it should have been brought out sooner.

Lydia said nothing; she was a little angry with him suddenly. She was almost angry at Bird, though he couldn’t be held responsible for the extra burden on her heart.

“Come here,” said Wyck, and the little boy climbed into the big man’s lap. Together they considered the woman in the picture, and quite surprisingly Bird fell asleep.

“Didn’t he sleep?” asked Lydia.

Bird shared a room with Wyck, and Wyck, Lydia knew, did not sleep well, so that he would know the state of Bird’s night. “He snored half the night,” said the man.

“There’s a lot to tire him out, I suppose, poor little fellow.”

“I heard Emmy’s owl last night. At least I thought it was an owl.”

“I heard it too,” said the mother. “I woke up thinking someone had spoken to me, but it was something outside.”

“That was it,” said Wyck. “I thought it was in the room at first. It sort of startled me. Then I realized that it was too far away.”

Lydia thought that Wyck’s color was looking better. Bird looked as if he could hardly be comfortable (and Wyck with him) the way he was sprawled in the big man’s lap; but his face was devoid of worry, and his mouth gaped with the trusting sleep of childhood. It made Lydia glad to see him sleep so completely, so completely trusting. She returned to her needles, her pique gone as quickly as it had come.

34. Advanced Uses for a Hat

Doc Brine had been in an alcohol-deprived stupor for three days. He couldn’t have guessed himself what brought on this sudden determination to resist drink since he had given Lincoln N. Washington the sole coin in his pocket. He had felt remarkably strong until Friday night, and then the shakes and the cold sweats and the horrors had visited him. Last night, St. Nicholas’s Eve, had been the worst. He reeled in his bed, while at the same time he could see the water- and body-logged gully at Fredericksburg. The last part of the night he spent talking to the old saint himself, arguing with him, actually, about the snakes that had crawled into his room and praising the usefulness of St. Patrick in their eradication. St. Nick refused to be offended by the comparison, however, and Doc realized, when the first glimmers of dawn were casting shadows in his room, that he was talking to himself.

Then, as now, he considered his recently acquired hat, which hung neatly on the wall beside the door of his single room. He was lying on his bed with the clothes pulled over him. He wondered what day it was.

I should have looked in on that bay at the livery by now, he thought. It occurred to him that the horse might be dead from his inattention, and he sat up on the edge of the bed. The room was cold. The fire in the grate was almost down, and he wondered why it wasn’t out altogether till he remembered his landlady coming in and stoking it, presumably with her own coal.

Doc reached for the hat on the wall, which was several feet away, and would have cracked his head on the floor if his arm hadn’t been outstretched. The door to his room opened soon after, and Mrs. Plaint, his landlady, and the old salt (Doc couldn’t recall his name) who lived below him hurried in and helped him to the edge of the bed.

Doc took some deep breaths, saying, “I’m fine, I’m fine.” He thought his head was clearing, and he knew it was clearing when the irony of a mind’s thinking it was clear occurred to him. Does a mind need to be clear to think it is clear? he wondered. Or is a mind fuddled that considers the issue at all? “Thank you,” said Doc.’ I must have been walking in my sleep.”

They both knew better-they al knew better-but nothing was said to contradict him.

“I have to see to that bay at Sporrin’s Livery,” he said, more to himself.

“Don’t you think you should be lying down?” wondered the old marmer.

“I’ve been lying down for three days now.” Doc flashed a smile. “I think I’m rested up. Hand me that hat, would you, please?”

He didn’t even know which of them passed him the required article, but when he placed the homburg on his head, he was sure that he could move now and attend to business. He thanked them both again and retrieved his coat. He surprised himself with his vigor as he clomped down the stairs. The old salt and Mrs. Plaint stood in the well above him and watched with concern.

He had just reached the downstairs hall when he was conscious of a child’s sob coming from the room to his left. He knew the young woman who lived there with her little boy, but barely. Her husband was at sea these past two and half years and hadn’t even met his son; her old apartment had burned a month or so ago, and she was left with hardly more than what she wore on her back. Of course finding work with a two-year-old child to care for was difficult, and she had been beholden to the kindness of strangers for their occasional meals and to the landlady for the better part of her rent.

The sobs of the child on the other side of the door seemed to paralyze his legs, and he stood for a minute or so staring at the apartment. There was a voice added to the tears, and he understood that the mother was doing her best to sing to her child. Then, as if his presence had been sensed (or perhaps the young woman had heard him coming down the stairs), the door opened, and she stepped into the cold hall with her child in her arms.

“Doctor Brine,” she said, an unreasonable sort of relief visible on her face, “could you look at Jeremy for me? His mouth is terribly sore, and he has bruises where he hasn’t even hit himself.”

“Ma’am, I daren’t take a guess what is wrong with him. I’m but a horse doctor, you know.”

“Just to take a look,” she said, and he could see that she was nearly mad with worry.

The former chief surgeon-Brevet Major Alexander Brine-of the Second Maine Regiment stepped into the woman’s room feeling the need of a long drink. The young woman laid her son down on an ancient divan, where he gazed up listlessly as Doc Brine settled himself on the edge of the seat. The boy’s eyes had the glassy look of malnutrition and pain, but he gave a small grin to the old man with the handsome hat. The smile revealed bleeding gums, and Doc Brine knew the little fellow’s teeth would be loose. He hardly needed to roll the child’s sleeves up to know what shape his bruises would take.

“Doctor,” said the mother.

“Yes, yes,” said the old man. He heaved a single sigh, turned on the edge of the divan, and realized that the old sailor and the landlady had followed them into the room. He glanced from face to face, finally settling upon the little boy, who had stopped his crying. “You wait,” he said to the child with a wink. Then he allowed something like a smile to give the mother hope. “You wait. I’ll be right back.”

Standing on the street-side steps of the old tenement house, Doc wrapped his coat about him. He needed a piece of rope now that most of his buttons were gone. “The child has secure!” he said to himself. He was a little astonished and (at whom he didn’t know) a little angry.

The day had turned bright and sunny, but the corner he reached looked lonely and cold. The streets were nearly abandoned, and snowdrifts had piled up against the southern and eastern walls. The snow was deep, and he found walking difficult till he fell in behind a small crowd of boys who were pelting the occasional carriage with snowballs. They did not harass him, however, since he had garnered respect among these rascals long ago for saving the life of an old mongrel that belonged to one of them. The boys even escorted him across the street, where he entered a grocery store and was thankful for the sudden warmth.

“Morning, Doc,” said Henry Hamblin, the proprietor.

“Well, good morning,”said the old man. He stepped up to the counter and considered the displays there before venturing forth. “Lemons, or limes, or oranges.”

Hamblin looked a little tentative. “Oranges, just come in on the Grace Bradley last week.”

“Didn’t she have a rough coming in?” said Doc. “They’re not all bruised, are they?”

Doc nodded, and after a moment’s silence, he said, “Wh“No, no. They were in crates, not bags.” at sort of credit have I got, Henry?”

“For oranges?” Henry frowned. “They’re not cheap this time of year. I don’t know, Doc, that last bill took you six months to make good on.”

It was the answer the old man had expected, and he gave a fatalistic shrug of the shoulders. “I know, Henry.” He considered pleading the little boy’s case, but then thought, This is my problem. Henry hasn’t taken the kid on. He looked up at the ceiling as if for inspiration and caught sight of the brim of the homburg.

He was embarrassed at first that he hadn’t taken it off when he came inside, but then a thought came to him. With the hat in his hand, he said, “Henry, this hat is all but new. I acquired it last Thursday, to be exact, and it is a handsome one, as you can see.”

Gemma Pool, Jeremy’s mother, was waiting at the door with her son in her arms when Doc Brine knocked. The old man thought she would pull him off his feet she tugged on the door so hard.

“Oranges?” she said when he placed the bag of a dozen bright balls on her little table.

“Now you give him one of these a day. Chop them up if you have to. He might have some trouble chewing them at first. And his gums might sting a bit. See if you can’t get two into him before tonight. I bet in three days you’ll see him better.” Doc was feeling more in control of himself than he had in years. “Open your mouth, in fact,” he told the young woman, and she obeyed him without thinking. “Share a piece or two with him yourself,” he said with a nod.

“Thank you,” she said in a choked whisper, and he continued to nod as he left the room.

His head felt cold. “I’ll look in,” was all he said.

Henry Hamblin considered his newly acquired hat. It was just a tad small for him, but he didn’t like a hat that rode his ears, and there was something particularly well made and handsome about this homburg. He thought his girl would find it bound to shine!

He hadn’t really needed a new topper, and under the circumstances hala dozen oranges would have sufficed to pay the price for a hat you hadn’t requested. But he knew Doc, and he knew those oranges had been for somebody else, and when-several days later-word got around why the old fellow had wanted the fruit, Henry sent several cans of lime juice down. to Gemma Pool’s.

And when he went to his girl’s that night, he left his old brown derby at the store and proudly strolled the snowy sidewalks with his new hat.

Daniel’s Story (November 1891–April 1892)

There were other concerns in Daniel Plainway’s life besides the Linnetts: The events of town and church occupied much of his time, as well as his practice; his sister came to live with him after the death of her husband. But the Linnetts had been like family to him here in Hiram, and when news of Nell’s marriage to Jeram Willum startled its way through town, he knew that he had to see the girl herself to accept it.

When Daniel braved the Willums’ place again, however, Nell only appeared at their front door, with one of the little Willum girls standing in front of her like a shield. He didn’t really know what to say or how to ask the questions he wished to have answered, most especially with Willums glowering from every window, and Parley himself standing in the very place where the dog had been chained (Daniel wondered what had become of the poor creature); Parley Willum spat tobacco juice as a punctuation to his silent pleasure in Daniel’s discomfort.

It amazed Daniel how much Nell looked like the people about her-he had never seen her hair in disarray; her clothes were her own but not recently washedand yet she was still Eleanor Linnett, and he remembered his first impression of Elizabeth Willum (who even now hovered near) as a comely woman trapped (and won over) by harsh circumstances.

“How are you, Nell?” was all he could say at first.

“Uncle Daniel,” she said, looking stricken, “I am so sorry.”

“Sorry!” came Elizabeth Willums sharp voice. “If you’re so sorry, you can find some other place to take up space!”

“No, no,” Nell was saying. “Oh, please, Mrs. Willum!” The young woman looked desperate to speak with Daniel alone but couldn’t seem to let go of the child who stood in front of her and whose shoulders she held in a grip. “I’ll be fine, Uncle Daniel. Jerams looking after me. He’s gone to town for things.”

Daniel was rooted where he stood, an awkward distance from the door, so that he almost had to shout to be heard. “You can come and stay with Martha and me anytime,” he said. “There’s a room for you there now.”

“Thank you,” she said, though he had to read her lips to catch it.

“Jeram may come too,” he said, after a pause, but there was no response save for a renewed tongue-lashing from Elizabeth Willum.

“You see, you’re not needed or wanted here,” said Parley Willum, “and the next time I see you on this path, I’ll count it a sign of trespass.”

Daniel was going to ask Nell if that was it, or if she was sure, or something anything—that would give him reason to linger and her more time to think, but he could see, though she might want to go with him, there was nothing in his power to make her do so; asking again would only make the moment more painful. “Goodbye,” he said, and he made the long, heart breaking journey back to the road.

It was in April, toward the end of a long and siege like winter, that Daniel saw Nell again for the last time. He had continued to come by the Linnett house, though for all intents and purposes it was already barren of life.

Old Ian was a hulking shell, living in the parlor where a single fireplace barely drove away the chill. He seemed impervious to cold or hunger, and only occasionally was Daniel able to rouse him out of a hibernationlike stupor. Daniel could not interest the old man in coming to Thanksgiving dinner with him and Martha. He visited Ian at Christmas but never mentioned the day.

But with warmer weather bound to come soon, Daniel hoped the old man might regenerate and come to life. Nell was not dead, after all, and it isn’t simply a hollow cliché to say, “‘Where there’s lie there’s hope.”

But one April day at home Daniel looked out the study window from his desk and saw, coming through the cold rain, the herald who would dash hope. Jeram hadn’t the opportunity to knock before Daniel whipped open the front door and nearly pulled the boy inside. The lawyer had a hundred questions and demands for the young man but hardly got the first of them out before Jeram announced that Nell had just given birth.

“Lord have mercy,” said Daniel. Then he took stock of Jerams pale face and realized there was more.

“Dr. Bolster says she’s dying.”

“Dr. Bolster! Why wasn’t I told?”

“He’s been with her all night. I only dared come now myself.”

“Lets go then,” said Daniel, and he grabbed his coat without a hat and hurried out the door.

Jeram called after him, “You had better get the sheriff. My father said he’ll shoot you if I bring you back.”

“I don’t want to take the time, Jeram.”

“Mr. Plainway, I’m really frightened if you go down there alone.”

“I am too, Jeram.” Daniel paused long enough to turn and consider the boys pale blue eyes, his too finely chiseled features, his slender build. “But you braved your father to come here, didn’t you?”

The young mans nod was almost imperceptible. With no choice in the matter, Jeram had learned to be brave.

“Then I take courage standing with you. Lets go.”

Never had Daniel taken such a long journey, the fear of Parley Willum all but scattered by the storm of his fears for Nell.

“Is that all it was?” he said aloud as he drove them along. “Why didn’t she come home with me?”

“Its a boy, “said Jeram. The statement was a sad afterthought since neither he nor Daniel was really concerned about the child just then.

Daniel was reconsidering what he knew about Nell and Jeram and thinking about her reckless summer with Asher Willum. Suddenly he understood why Asher had left town, why Jeram had married Nell, and why old Ian had signed the paper allowing it. “You’re a bit of a knight, Jeram,” he said simply.

“I’m not anything I need to be, Mr. Plainway, “said the young man.

“I would be proud to have a son like you, young man.”

The path from the road to the Willum place was a challenge just to walk, but Daniel took the horse and carriage down it, not willing to waste time on foot and hoping that such an appearance would daunt Parley Willum just a little. He had only just pulled up before the house when Parley stepped up from behind an outbuilding with a shotgun raised to his shoulder and pulled the hammer back.

“I guess your memory isn’t very long, Mr. Plainway, “said the man.

“I guess you don’t know that I have been sent for,” said Daniel, hoping to throw the need of defense back in Willum’s lap. “Detain me, and I will have you up on charges of negligent homicide. Murder, Mr. Willum.”

“Murder?” Parley looked at his son. “What nonsense have you been-”

“If that girl dies because of your neglect, “said Daniel, “I will have you behind bars so fast you won’t have time to blink.” Daniel was letting his anger carry the conviction of his otherwise empty words.

“Get in there then!” growled the man.”And the devil with you! And you,” he said to his son. “You can go with him when he leaves, you and that rich mans daughter and her brat!”

They hardly heard him as they hurried up the steps; they burst into the house without a knock or permission. In a corner by the fire, where Dr. Bolster had insisted on carrying her, Nell lay among dirty, dark-stained sheets, gazing with such lifelessness that Daniel feared they were too late. The doctor, however, nodded when Daniel sent him a frightened look.

“Nell.” Daniel hardly realized he had spoken.

The young womans lips moved, as in a dream, but no sound left them. He felt a little life in her hand when he held it, and she gave him the quietest, weakest squeeze.

“I’ve had twelve of them in that very bed,” said Elizabeth Willum from a doorway at the back of the room. “I don’t know what her fuss is with that measly thing.”

Daniel ignored her, taking note for the first time of the wee creature at Neils breast. Her lips moved again, and he put his ear to her mouth.

“Bertram, “she said.”After Daddy.”

“Bertram,” said Daniel.

“He’s a sweet child,” she breathed.

The sight of tears in Neils eyes hit Daniel like a kick in the chest.

“How will I know if he’s taken care oft” she asked.

“Nell,” he said, his voice choking, “of course he’ll be-”

“You’ll let me know,” she whispered. Tears poured down both her cheeks, and he wondered that she had the energy left in her to weep so. “You’ll let me know,” she said.

“Mr. Plainway,” said Jeram, “I think I should get her grand father.”

“] don’t think that is a good idea, Jeram,” said Daniel.

“She would want him here, I know-just as she wanted you. And he’d want to be here. I know he would.”

“I don’t know, Jeram-”

“He was awfully nice to me the day I came for dinner.”

“Yes, he was. “Daniel felt as if something weighty had been laid upon his chest, and he had trouble breathing. “I’ll go.”

“No. You have to stay here. You’re like a second father to her, Mr. Plainway. You stay here. I’ll go.”

Daniel considered this. “Let me write you a note,” he said. “Get me something to write with.”

Dr. Bolster produced a pen and Jeram handed Daniel a copybook. Flipping through it in search of a blank page, he could see where Jeram had been practicing his writing, his spelling, and his grammar. He scribbled quickly:

Your granddaughter has just given birth, and I fear she will not linger as long as her mother. If you do not come, and quickly, this will be the last communication you will ever have from me.

Perhaps, he hoped, this will rouse him, and he signed the note.

“Take the carriage,” he said, and Jeram scrambled out the door.

Then Daniel felt another squeeze from Nell’s hand. He leaned close to her lips once again, and they brushed the side of his face like a kiss. “Every day,” she said below a whisper, “I thank God for you.”

When her grand father appeared, she still had enough lie in her to know him and that he had received the baby from her like a gift. Daniel left them, hearing and seeing nothing of what passed there.

The doctor came over to tell him she was gone and advised that the child be gotten from the Willum household as quickly as possible. “We need to find a wet nurse. Mrs. Cutler over by the mountain has a baby three or four months old now, and a little extra money would help out over there.”

Daniel hardly heard any of it but registered the man’s words on a peculiar level of consciousness he had rarely experienced before. Ian Linnett was standing before him with the baby in his arms.

“Where is Jeram?” asked Daniel, something like ice touching his spine.

“The boy?” said Linnett. “I never saw him.”

Two days later Jeram Willum’s body was found among the reeds of Clemons Pond. Daniel’s note was not to be found upon him.

35. The Last of the Wawenocks

I’ll never understand why she did it, thought Daniel. He had been dreaming.

The day dawned bright behind the heavy drapes of the room, so that knives of light pierced even the dark confines of his broken curtained bed. His breath was plain before him when he turned onto his back. He was not a young man to be adventuring over the countryside, and the rigors of the day before spoke in his muscles and bones so that he lingered for a while before braving the cold chamber.

He stumbled into his clothes, wishing he had taken his bag from the sleigh when they walked off. Had anybody come after them? He doubted it, or they would have found their tracks or at least called upon nearby houses looking for them.

The room where he had spent the night was of a completely different character now, though only slivers of day found their way around the perimeters of the dark hangings. The room itself was cleaner than Daniel would have credited, if there were only the five elderly sisters to tend to household duties: no dust, or cobwebs, or kittens beneath the rocker by the curtained window.

But everything was nearly ancient and faded with age: the wallpaper (particularly where daylight leaked from behind the hangings), the carpet, which was once (no doubt) a deep red behind an oriental design of vines and flowers and switchbacks, the prints upon the wall, and the painting of a moonlit river above the bricked-up fireplace. Daniel suspected that nothing had changed since Father had died and perhaps since long before the man’s demise.

He gazed around the room in search of his boots, then remembered leaving them outside the door. With a yawn he leaned into the hall for them and thought to search each boot with a hand before putting them on, smiling to find several wrapped sweets tucked into the toes. He peeked into the hall again-first at the heavily carved door across from his, then down the hall to Miss Burnbrake’s door. Her boots were gone, meaning, at least, that she was up and possibly that she was waiting for him downstairs. He heard the sound of plateware clinking below and realized that he was famished.

By daylight he was able to raise the bed back up on its slats, and though there was a broken one, he thought the new configuration might hold a body. He would warn the sisters of it. He was not long getting downstairs, where he found a cheery fire in the parlor, and followed voices to the back of the house and the kitchen.

“Good morning!” he offered as he entered the room, and the Pettengill sisters chorused a cheery greeting in return. They sprang from their chairs and bustled about, though everything was nearly done in the way of making breakfast. They had it all laid out before he temporarily declined in hopes of breakfasting with Miss Burn brake.

“Of course!” shouted Lavona. “What could we be thinking?”

“And here she is!” announced Larinda. “Oh, dear, you look lovely!”

Charlotte Burnbrake looked no different from last night, unless she looked a little better rested, which was to say she looked lovely indeed. Daniel stood as she entered, and they greeted one another with a sense of awkwardness. The unexpected comradery of the day before seemed strange, even a little silly, in the morning kitchen with straightforward daylight streaming through the windows. Daniel was sorry not to sense the intimacy that had enveloped them so easily when the train was stopped, when they fled Mother Rose’s, and when the sleigh was overturned.

“How are you this morning, Mr. Plainway?” asked Charlotte, and he thought there was not nearly the warmth in the address that there had been when she said good night some hours before.

“Pretty well, I guess, Miss Burn brake,” he returned, feeling formal. “I trust you slept well.”

“Thank you, yes,” she said.

There were glances exchanged among the sisters, and Alvaid even pulled a sigh, as if some beloved verity had come into question.

“What you need is breakfast,” said Lavilda, as if there really were some problem besides the practical light of day, and a good meal could solve most anything.

Daniel was almost mollified by the presence of so much good food when he was so hungry, and Miss Burn brake herself looked ready to make a proper meal of it: toast and jam, rashers and pan-fried potato, eggs and biscuits and gravy and milk and coffee gathered like a week’s reserve. The sisters helped dish out the servings and never allowed their guests to touch a ladle or a serving fork. Daniel felt his courage rise with every ounce gained by his plate, and his wits gathered as well.

He looked up at his fellow guest with a twinkle in his eye and said, “Was St. Nicholas good to you, Miss Burnbrake?”

Perhaps he purposely caught her with her mouth full-she was very hungry-for she was first surprised and then amused at his question, but it took her a moment to answer, during which time the twinkle in his eye seemed to cast a like reflection in hers. “Yes,” she said, “he was very kind. I ate a chocolate in bed before I came down.”

The thought made Daniel smile, and she raised one of her pretty eyebrows in either amusement or warning. “I should have done that,” he said quite sincerely.

“I rather thought I was a child again,” she said, considering herself wise for having done it herself.

The sisters were hugely amused by all this, not the least because they had played St. Nicholas at three in the morning (and giggled a great deal too, so it was amazing they hadn’t wakened their guests).

But Daniel had looked absolutely sincere in his humor and goodwill, and had so cleverly refused the pragmatic light of day with his whimsical question, that Charlotte had been encouraged (however unconsciously) to lower the self-conscious bastion she had constructed.

“I was in a third crash last night,” said Daniel.

“Were you?” she said, a little bemused.

“Yes,” he replied. “My bed fell,” whereupon he laughed at the cries of horror from the sisters. “It was a small thing after our previous adventures, I assure you,” he said.

“And where are you going today?” asked Louella when he had explained what happened and the sisters had calmed down.

“We each have people to meet in Hallowell,” said Daniel.

“Hallowell!” said Lavona. “You didn’t say so when we were going on about Mother and Father’s elopement!”

“It was quite a storm they blew up there,” said Charlotte.

“Not as big a storm as they blew up later!” declared Lavona.

“Oh? Did they?”

“You would have thought so if you had seen the five of us running about the house!” declared Larinda, and her sisters joined in with laughter, and “Land sakes!” and “My, we were bad!”

“But it was only the second storm in Hallowell’s history that bears speaking of,” said Louella.

“Was it?” Daniel had so liked the tale of their parents that he hoped for another one like it.

“What storm?” wondered Lavilda.

“The storm that ended the Wawenocks, dear,” said Louella, and Lavilda remembered this with a reverse nod.

“My word, yes,” said Larinda, “the Smoking Pine and all that.”

“Smoking Pine?” said Daniel.

“Oh, yes, Mr. Plainway,”said Louella, “and it does smoke, I assure you, Father used to say.”

“I’ve seen it myself,”said Charlotte, “though I doubted what others told me when they brought me there. ‘It doesn’t always smoke,’ they said to me, and this sounded like a good hedge against the certainty that it wouldn’t. But that day a storm was on its way-which is said to be favorable for sightings of the pine’s smoke-and a sort of vaporous column did seem to be rising from the topmost branches. It was very strange, and I don’t believe I have ever heard a proper account of it.”

“Oh, my,” said Louella. “It’s a sad story, really. It is a strange phenomenon, Mr. Plainway, and difficult to perceive for some people. The eye, you know, often wants to make still things move and to make other things to exist where they aren’t at all. Father used to say that a person might convince himself of what he saw simply by straining his eyes long enough, but Father was sure that he had seen it-trusted his own eyes, in fact, because he hadn’t been looking for it in the first place.”

“And it is simply a vapor rising from the tree?” asked Daniel.

“It is a disturbance in the air, a fluctuation. Have you ever seen the shadows the air itself can make against a building on a hot day? It is like that perhaps, though you might see it tomorrow, if you look, with snow on the ground and the north wind blowing. And it rides above a towering pine among a great grove, as many pines as people who lived on that spot before that other awful storm.

“They were the Wawenocks, a tribe decimated by their own warlike nature, driven out of Pemaquid, and hunted like animals by the surrounding clans-the Passamoquoddies and the Penobscots and the Tarratines. But the Wawenocks came, in their ramblings, to Hallowell (known then as Keedumcook) and the banks of the Bombahook, which empties into the Kennebec. The great river teemed with salmon and bass, the Bombahook itself was a legendary trout stream, and the surrounding forests were filled with game.

“The Europeans who had settled in those parts were alarmed to have this tribe of warlike reputation camping so close to their homes; but Assinomo, the chief of the Wawenocks, met with the elders of the local settlement and asked for land and protection, and though the Wawenocks had ended many another life with their slaughter, they swore never again to raise their clubs or notch their arrows, except in defense of the small against the large or the weak against the strong. ‘Even as water flows in the Bombahook,’ said the chief, ‘we shall surely smoke the pipe of peace,’ which words would prove prophetic.

“And the elders of Hallowell granted the Wawenocks land to pitch their tents on the southern banks of the Bombahook.”

“It may have been the very same stream from which Father saved his future in-law,” suggested Lavilda.

“It may. It may,” said Louella. “But the Wawenocks were granted the land, and they were granted the protection of the town, and there were scarce a hundred of their tribe remaining.

“But if the neighboring tribes could not attack the Wawenocks outright without making war also upon the town of Hallowell, there were other ways to avenge their dead, and one muggy August night a terrible storm was conjured up-a storm that could be heard at the center of the European settlement itself, though it never so much as turned a. weathercock there-and the Bombahook rose up in flood and swept every last Wawenock into the Kennebec, and since the days of the Judges there never was a tribe so completely abolished from the face of the earth in one terrible blow.

“It was not many summers later before nature had reclaimed the washed-out banks of the Bombahook, and near its uppermost reaches, where hard wood would expect to take hold, there grew up a long rank of pines. One of the elders, who had been present at that first meeting with the Wawenocks, went out and walked one day among the young trees, and when he came back in the evening he claimed to have counted them to the exact number of people who were lost in that terrible flood. And that elder was the first to see the unearthly smoke rising from the tallest of the pines, so that they were reminded of what Assinomo had said. ‘Even as water flows in the Bombahook, we shall surely smoke the pipe of peace.’”

Daniel and Charlotte were quite charmed by the story, and Louella might have been telling it to a roomful of children, her sweet, aged voice was so animated and her eyes were filled with such daydream and illusion.

“Those trees did grow with unnatural speed”-she ended her tale—“and people let them be, for they began to think that the trees were the Indians themselves, come back to fulfill their vow.”

36. The Battle of the Smoking Pine

As Eagleton had predicted, the day was bright and clear, so that folk squinted against the glare of the snow and the south-facing eaves began to drip. Snowbirds flitted and called in the bushes.

As the hour before noon approached, Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump were more secure about the approaching contest, having attended services at their respective denominations. Had they compared the messages they received that morning, however, they could not have been blamed if they derived some measure of ambiguity from their collective lessons. Ephram, for example, had heard from the Baptist preacher sentiments regarding the Golden Rule, while Eagleton had listened attentively as the Methodist minister fixed a hard eye upon his congregation and proclaimed the wisdom of God’s vengeance. Thump’s guidance had been the strangest, since the Episcopalian service had been upon Job, 39:25-“He smelleth the battle afar off.…”

But men will find comfort where they may, and the Moosepathians considered themselves properly encouraged for the task ahead. The younger boys met them upon the appointed ground, before the hotel, arriving in three or four distinct groups. There were nigh onto fourteen of the little chaps, for tidings of their newly acquired leadership had encouraged enlistments and their ranks had grown accordingly.

The Dash-It-All Boys had not been sighted that morning, and it was supposed by the Moosepathians that their counterparts had gone further afield in quest of worship.

“They did seem a little troubled about the snowball fight,” said Thump, who hoped that Durwood, Waverley, and Brink had slept well despite this concern.

“Where is this encounter to take place?” wondered Eagleton.

“They’ll be coming to the field at the corner of Winthrop and Pleasant,” said one of the boys-Brian by name. He was a game little fellow, with the look of hazard in his eye.

“Let me go!” came a voice from the steps of the hotel. “Let me go, I tell you! How am I to look to the troops if you’ve hold of my arm like an old nanny?” The members of the club were startled to see Colonel Barkoddel struggling through the front door of the hotel and tussling with the manager.

“But, Colonel,” the manager was saying, “the steps are slippery, and the road is far from clear.”

“The devil!” declared the old man, and he waved a stick about him, so that the manager must suffer harm or put some distance between them, of which choice he split the difference by contracting two or three blows before retreating. “Come up here and get me!” shouted the fellow to Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump, and they managed three or four steps before Eagleton slipped into Ephram, who fell against Thump, and they finished where they began, though in less order. “The devil!” shouted the colonel, and they were surprised to find him standing with them at the bottom of the steps when they regained their feet.

A horse and sleigh pulled up before them, and Colonel Barkoddel took occupation of this, his stick waving erratically above him as he let the throws be tucked over his knees. Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump wondered if they were supposed to join him till he used his stick to keep them at bay, shouting, “To the field! Onward!” And though he kept the driver to a slow pace, the men and their troop of seven- and eight-year-old boys were hardly able to keep up with him. “We must be there to choose the ground!” the old man called back at them. “No dallying now!”

The day was glorious, and the Moosepathians were sorry to be so out of breath when they met folk coming home from church; they raised their hats but were able to express their greetings only with the simplest of grunts. The boys, on the other hand, seemed to gather energy with every yard, shouting and whooping with excitement, not the least because the colonel exhorted them to do so. They were laughing uproariously by the time they reached the chosen field, but their laughter died at the sight of several older fellows manning the snowy ramparts of a fort that had been constructed halfway across the meadow.

“Look!” shouted one of the older boys from the fort wall. “It’s a bunch of old men!”

Colonel Barkoddel couldn’t be expected to hear the details of this taunt, but he caught the tenor of it and shook his stick at the opposing ranks.

Those ranks were gaining force at every moment; figures hurried from the neighboring woods or the adjacent streets to fill the garrison, and one of these boys stood in plain sight, like Hector upon the wall of Troy.

“We are outnumbered as well as outweighed,” observed the colonel.

The Moosepathians were aware of this discrepancy and a little concerned about it.

“Should we leave our hats?” wondered Eagleton, who well remembered yesterday’s imperiled headgear.

“The devil, you say, sir!” roared the colonel. “Wear your hats and draw fire, I say!”

Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump flinched at the old man’s colorful locutions.

“Colonel,” suggested Ephram, “with the young fellows about-”

“What!”

Ephram looked to his friends for help.

“What Ephram is trying to say, Colonel,” attempted Eagleton, “is that a certain intemperance of speech-”

Thump stepped forward and cleared his throat. “If you wouldn’t swear in front of the boys, Colonel,” he said quietly.

“Very good, Thump,” whispered Eagleton.

“Bravo, my friend,” said Ephram quietly.

“What?” shouted the colonel. He glanced about with a wild eye but was somewhat abashed as he took in the boys. “Yes, of course!” he added. “Where is my glass?” He glared at the men and boys, then realized that he had possession of the requested item and produced from the folds of the throws about him a telescope that he put to one eye and applied to the snowbank beyond.

They watched as Colonel Barkoddel took in the terrain, and they could hear him grumble and growl to himself. The sun gave a blinding glint from the end of the spyglass as he veered it from one side to the other, and when he lowered the piece, he seemed satisfied.

“Ah!” he vocalized. “There’s the fatal mistake, I tell you. They have the high ground, but I warrant there isn’t much to stand on atop that bank, and a well-placed hit or two will likely knock some of those defenders from their place.” He looked down at his small army, which had grown by two or three boys since they arrived. “What are you doing?” he declared. “Arm yourselves, gentlemen! The hour is at hand! Fill every pocket, and occupy every crook and elbow!”

At this command the younger troop fell into a flurry of action, and ammunition was gathered and packed accordingly. The edge of the field took on the pockmarked look of a bombarded course, and the small figures in their dark winter coats shouted encouragement to one another or called the discovery of a particularly fine patch of damp snow.

A clamor of taunts came from the snowbank, and one of the taller boys, impatient for battle, let fly with a missile that nearly covered the distance between the forces.

“Let them wear themselves out,” said the colonel, with a gleeful laugh.

Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump watched the proceedings, feeling very much the fifth, six, and seventh wheels. “How are we to dispose of ourselves?” wondered Eagleton aloud.

“You’re each to take a column across,”said the old man, and he explained to them the plan that he had devised.

“What are they doing now?” wondered Waverley.

Harold, the unofficial leader of the older boys, stood at the rampart and considered the smaller troop on either side of the field’s southern angle. “They’re getting ready for something,” he said, shielding his eyes against the glare. It had been an even choice, it seemed now; they occupied the high ground, it was true, but they also faced the sun.

“Something is good,” said Durwood. “I believe something indicates that things will be commencing forthwith.”

Brink took off his hat and peered over the bank. “They are gathering, and in good order, by the way. And there, I am pleased to inform you, are the members of the Muskrat Lodge.”

“Badgertail Club,” corrected Durwood.

“Beaverwood Society,” suggested Waverley.

“At any rate, our friends are taking the field,” said Brink. “Unarmed, I might add, if appearances are to be believed.” his hat of Waverley was encouraged by this report to look for himself. He took and peered over the wall. “How are we for ammunition?” he asked.

Harold indicated the several pyramids of snowballs that lined the tops of the ramparts. The older boys had not revealed the extent of their numbers or the presence of the three men, but there were at least twenty of them lying in wait, and a great deal of snickering rose from behind the fort walls. The boys were amused as well.

“Who is the codger with the stick?” wondered Brink.

“Some local hero of the late war, I shouldn’t wonder,” suggested Waverley. “He is a little magnificent, don’t you think?”

“I’m just glad he’s not coming with them,”said Durwood.

“Or even by himself,”said Brink. “He reminds me of my grandfather, who would like to catch up with me someday.”

There was then a cry rising from the opposite field, and all heads behind the rampart lifted in anticipation.

“‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,’” quoted Waverley.

“It’s our breach,” contended Brink.

“It is, isn’t it.”

The huzzahs and roars from the oncoming horde grew louder.

“They are coming on swiftly, for little fellows,”said Durwood.

Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump had learned quite a lot about cheering the home team while observing Portland’s baseball team on the Eastern Promenade with Mister Walton, but exhortations to “knock him down at first” and “kill the umpire” had never seemed very sporting (and certainly had never fallen from the lips of their chairman) and besides seemed not entirely relevant to the present circumstance. Unenlightened as to the proper words for the present occasion, they met the challenge with irregular outbursts that sounded rather like the shouts of men who are being pinched from behind.

They each led a column of about five boys-Eagleton along the left lank, Thump along the right, and Ephram up the middle, with seconds in-command being a Peter, a John, and an Alvin respectively. The young boy named Brian, who himself had some fame as a pitcher, jogged along the middle column and was to be held aside as something of a sharpshooter. (A headhunter, the colonel had dubbed him.)

The attacking army was not halfway across the field of play before missiles began to land among them, and as these were not the softest snow younger boys had their commands, and they did not attempt to return fire balls that had ever been thrown, there were shouts of dismay; but the from a position that would certainly not honor their weaker arms. They could hear the colonel and his driver shouting from the street.

Thump lost his hat almost immediately but did not venture back for it. “Forward!” he cried, and slowing his pace only slightly as he gave out this call, he was nearly run over by his own boys.

The snowballs came thick and heavy, and Eagleton was astonished, when he looked up Gust before losing his own hat), to see a small horde of older boys manning the walls. a second projectile burst upon his head and dazed him somewhat. He did not stumble, however, but plowed along through the deep snow to their intended confrontation.

Ephram was holding his hat to his head and felt three or four hathating snowballs thunk upon his worsening headgear; at one instance half a dozen of these projectiles collided with his chest and his jaw, and he performed a backward somersault that was much admired by his troops as they rushed by. Shaking his dazed head, he clambered to his feet and found himself bringing up the rear of his column. He had longer strides than his boys, but they had youthful energy on their side and besides did not sink so far into the snow; the result was that he found it difficult to regain his position in the van. Alvin took one look back at his leader, waved him on, then was nearly knocked onto his back by a rain of snowballs.

Thump and Eagleton meanwhile had reached the point where the next course of their plan came into play. Their columns formed up in the face of a blistering fusillade, and with the fire of battle hot in their veins, the small boys poured forth a return volley that did everything the colonel had predicted: a good three-quarters of the rampart’s defenders were knocked loose of their moorings and disappeared behind the snowbank.

Brian was the first in fact to mark a casualty, by picking Harold Marsh from his position.

A few leaps brought Thump and Eagleton to the foot of the ramparts, where they handed their boys onto the walls (Thump accidentally threw the first one completely over the side), and here the third part of the colonel’s plan took effect.

The older boys-not to mention Durwood, Waverley, and Brink could not have imagined that they had been stocking ammunition for the employ of their enemies, but that is how it fell out, for the younger boys began to make good use of the admittedly depleted pyramids of snowballs that awaited them upon the walls of the fort, and with so many of the larger fellows on their backs or just recovering their feet in the precincts of the snowy garrison, it was not unlike shooting the proverbial fish in the barrel. (The younger boy who had been thrown over the side managed somehow to use the force of his trajectory to roll himself out of harm’s immediate way.)

Durwood, Waverley, and Brink were shocked at this turn of fortune, and it was no doubt their own fresh arms that kept it from turning altogether. Several of the younger boys were knocked from the walls, and Eagleton, Thump, and Ephram (who had caught up with them) ran about catching the fellows with extraordinary precision.

In the confusion the attacking force hardly noticed how tall were the three boys who led a foray out and around the palisade. Suddenly the younger boys and their leaders were forced to retreat-not south toward the street, but northwest, in the direction of a line of trees. Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump had never lifted their feet so quickly or so high. Snowballs-quickly formed and less compacted-sped past their ears and burst upon their backs, and there was a great roar from the older boys.

“To the pines!” shouted one of the younger fellows, and the retreat lost some of its haphazard quality as it formed toward a single goal.

Durwood, Waverley, and Brink exhorted their troops forward at first but then cautioned them to slow their pursuit long enough to rearm themselves. The older boys quickly had their arms and pockets loaded with white spheres, and they pressed doggedly on, following the tracks of the younger boys.

The sound of a stream became apparent as they reached the edge of a pine wood. Their quarry fled among the trees. “No surrender!” cried the older boys. “No quarter!”

Ephram thought his lungs would burst, and he was the first to stumble to a halt; Eagleton and Thump quickly backtracked to their friend.

“Eagleton?” said Ephram between breaths.

“Yes, my friend?” said Eagleton.

“Thump?”

“I am here,” said Thump.

“I believe that I will stand this ground and do my best to slow the pursuit so that our boys can make it safely home.”

“Good heavens, Ephram!” declared Eagleton.

Thump could hardly speak, he was so moved. He cleared his throat and did manage to mumble, “Where you stand, there stand I as well.”

“And I!” agreed Eagleton.

They realized then that Brian and John and several others of the younger troop had backtracked themselves to see what was up, but when the plan was explained, Brian first and then the others refused to budge and were willing to take their lumps rather than leave their leaders behind. The truth was, they were exhilarated with their temporary victory and had faith that the Moosepath League would lead them forth successfully.

Alternatives were growing fewer; the older regiment was sighted stalking through the pinewood. The snow among the trees was not so easily compacted, since the shadows there had kept at bay the direct light of the sun, but the younger boys used their breaths and the warmth of their hands to form a few snowballs before the hounds were upon them.

A general sort of chuckling rose out of the woods as the pursuers closed in, moving from tree to tree and informing their quarry with an ever deepening dread.

The younger boys arranged themselves about Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump; Custer himself might have wished to have such brave company, and they did in fact look something like the popular image of that general and his beleaguered regiment. The larger boys fanned out on either side and paused only when they formed a line of about thirty yards. Three of the tallest of these boys-and tall indeed they were!-half hid themselves, with scarves about their faces, beneath the largest of the pines in sight.

Eagleton, ever the weather watcher, had an eye on the robin’s-egg blue that was visible in patches between the pointed heads of the lofty pines, and above the tallest of these trees (behind which crouched the three tall boys) he caught sight of a peculiar disturbance in the air. Eagleton forgot the immediate danger and peered with his much-praised sight at what seemed to be a vapor or a waft of smoke rising from the topmost branches of the noble pine.

“Good heavens!” he said. “I do believe it is the Smoking Pine!” Quite unconsciously, he fingered the little cross beneath his shirt.

“Really?” said Brink from behind his scarf. He and his fellows peered up the trunk of the tree.

There was a peculiar stillness in the air.

And there was a great roar as the Smoking Pine and its immediate brethren chose that exact moment to let loose the great wet burden they had been carrying since the blizzard of the day before, and the entire line of older boys-and most completely the three tall “boys” beneath the Smoking Pine itself-disappeared beneath an avalanche of wet snow.

37. Curier and Therefore

“Haloo!” came a voice from the front of the house, a male voice, which seemed to Daniel out of place, where he had only heard the voices of women. “Haloo!”

“That’s Curier,” said Larinda.

“In the kitchen, Curier!” called Lavona.

The door swung open, and two men were revealed. The first was a man as elderly as their hostesses; a large, raw-boned fellow with huge hands and feet, he had a nose and ears to match and great, sad eyes. He arrived with unmistakable familiarity, with both the surroundings and the Pettengills. He wore overalls and a long coat that looked warm enough for brisk fall rather than the morning after a winter’s blizzard, and Daniel wondered how warm the day had grown.

The second man was of middle age, a little taller than Daniel, with whisk-broom mustaches and matching eyebrows that furrowed down over his nose to complete a serious mien. He was coated and furred more in keeping with the season, and when he lumbered his broad shoulders into the kitchen his bulk seemed to soak up as much room as all five sisters. He looked less certain as he followed the first man. Both of them tracked melting snow behind them.

“Morning, morning,” said the elderly man, who was Curier. He bobbed his head at everyone, betraying obvious interest in Daniel and more than obvious interest in Charlotte. “Morning, morning.”

“How are you this morning, folks?” said the second man, his stentorian tones shivering the woodwork. He cast his eye about the room and stopped at Daniel. “Morning, sir.”

“Looks to be less weather than yesterday,” said Daniel.

“It is,” said the man. “I’m Ergo Define.” Daniel’s eyes widened slightly, but the man was ready for this. He nodded, adding, “Folks call me Therefore.”

“Do they?” said Daniel, whose expression, for a brief moment, was perhaps more amazed than polite. He recovered himself quickly, however, and offered his hand, saying, “Daniel Plain way, Mr. Define.”

“Please, Therefore.”

“Therefore,” said Daniel, dipping his head.

Curier hooked a thumb at Mr. Define. “Met him coming in,” he said to one of the sisters, who were watching everything with great interest. “I trust you are the people who were left in the sleigh last night,” said Define.

“We are,” replied Daniel, his expression unreadable.

“I am certainly happy to find you and also that you found shelter. I am profoundly shamed and angry that a man in my employ would leave you in such a predicament.” Mr. Define turned to Charlotte and made a curt bow. “I am profoundly sorry, Mrs. Plain way.”

“This is Charlotte Burn brake,” said Daniel.

“Oh? I beg your pardon.”

“We are traveling companions by accident,” explained Daniel. “Well,” he amended, “by several accidents, actually.”

“I only found out about the sleigh turning over this morning,” said Mr. Define. “Didn’t even realize a sleigh was gone, and when I finally found the scoundrel, he admitted to leaving a man and his wife out in the snow.”

“Did you spend the night?” said Curier to Daniel.

“Of course he spent the night!” said Lavona. “Do you think we left them on the porch?”

“Didn’t think that, really,” said Curier.

“The driver is well, I take it,” said Charlotte.

“He is without employ at the moment, ma’am,” declared Therefore Define.

“He didn’t break his neck at least,” said Daniel.

“It is a wonder, drunk as he was,” said the livery manager. “Beg your pardon, ladies,” he added, sorry to have raised such an unrefined subject.

“Whether with our pardon or not, Mr. Define,” said Charlotte, “he was quite drunk, as it happened.”

“Therefore, Miss Burn brake.”

“Yes?”

“Therefore.”

“Oh, of course. Thank you, Therefore.”

The man squared his large shoulders and said, “I have come to put myself and my best team and sleigh at your disposal,” said the man.

“That’s very good of you,” said Daniel. “We were hoping to get a start this morning. Perhaps you could take us as far as the next station toward Hallowell.”

“I will take you to Hallowell, sir.”

“It’s not necessary, I assure you.”

“For myself I beg to differ.”

Daniel thought about the offer. It would be colder in a sleigh than on the train, though he was pretty sure that Mr. Define (he could hardly get used to calling the man Therefore) would have geared the vehicle with more than enough blankets and throws; on the other hand, the prospect of an extended ride with Charlotte was not unpleasant. He exchanged glances with her.

“It looks like a lovely day,” she said quietly.

“It is settled then,” said the liveryman.

“I suppose it is. Thank you… Therefore,” said Daniel.

“St. Nicholas’s Day,” said Curier in his same prosaic manner.

“We know that, Curier,” said Louella.

The man made a small sound to indicate he heard.

“If you’d left a pair of boots in the hall yesterday,” Larinda scolded Curier, “you would have gotten sweets this morning.”

“Would have been cold walking home without my boots,” he said. “You ladies are sweet enough for me.” He was smiling now, and he winked at Daniel as he turned away from the sisters. There was a great deal of clucked tongues and exasperated gasps from the elderly women. “Probably would have married one of them,” said Curier, in a tone only Daniel could have caught, “but couldn’t decide which one.”

“What was that?” said a suspicious Larinda.

“What did he say?” said Louella.

“My land, Curier!” declared Alvaid, though it was not clear what she was expressing.

“I have the things you left in the sleigh,”said Therefore Define.

“Thank you!” said Charlotte. “Could I beg you to bring my bags in?”

“Ma’am,”said Therefore. He followed Curier out into the hall with Daniel close behind.

Curier seemed to be explaining to Therefore how close he came to marrying one of the Pettengills. “It would have caused a row, I can tell you. They were all pretty fond of me, you know.”

“Curier?” said Daniel, and the old man stopped in the hall while Therefore went on to retrieve Charlotte’s things. “It is Curier?” said Daniel, his hand out. He hadn’t understood yet whether Curier was the man’s first name or last.

“It is,”said the man, which clarified nothing.

“You help to take care of things here, do you?”

“Oh, yes,” said Curier. He nodded his heavy features, standing over Daniel like some big, awkward bird. “The ladies wouldn’t get on without me.”

“I can believe it.” Daniel stood with his hands behind him, unconsciously slipping into his lawyerlike deportment. “Took a liking to Lavona for a bit, but she shouted even then,” said Curier. “I think she was the prettiest of them, though, was Lavona. Nice girls. And that Alvaid, you know.” Curier gave a low whistle.

“They get on pretty well then?” asked Daniel.

“They do fine, most of the time,” said the man.

Charlotte came out of the kitchen with two or three of the sisters in close tow. “I’ll shovel the porch,”said Curier matter-of-factly.

“Thank you, Curier,” said Lavilda.

Therefore came through the front door with Charlotte’s things, but she stopped suddenly and wondered aloud if the elderly fellow should be shoveling.

“Curier?” said Larinda. “He’s been shoveling all his life.”

“That may be as good a reason as any to stop,” thought Charlotte, though her voice hardly carried beyond Daniel.

“I’ll go out and see if I can give him a hand,” said Daniel.

The sisters tried to put a stop to this plan of action, declaring that Curier fended for himself very well and it wasn’t like their household to allow a guest to apply himself to chores; but Daniel was good at countering these claims with his own, and the upshot of it was that he and Therefore followed Curier onto the porch, where Daniel found the opportunity to question the man further about the Pettengills, their late father, and Mr Edward, whose instructions regarding the locked room had been so assiduously obeyed.

“Do you know the Pettengills very well?” asked Daniel of Therefore Define before they were very long on the road to Hallowell.

“I don’t know them at all,” said the driver without looking back. “In fact I’ve only seen them rarely, though I certainly know about them, or what common wisdom knows.”

“And that is?” asked Charlotte.

“Common wisdom? They’re a curious lot, but well-liked for all that. Mr. Pettengill was a curious man, they say, but tended business and was generous when the hat was passed around at Christmas. Their mother was a sociable lady and less peculiar than the rest of them.”

“And were there no sons?” wondered Daniel.

“All girls.”

“Do you know a Mr. Edward?”

The driver thought on this. “Doesn’t sound familiar.”

“He’s a lawyer, I guess,” said Daniel, “in Gardiner.”

“Edward,” said Therefore. He seemed stumped. Then he brightened up, saying, “Not Edward Grimb?”

“They called him Mr Edward. Curier did too.”

“Well, they might.” Mr. Define chuckled. “Who knows? I don’t know a Mr Edward.”

“HI weren’t afraid of losing the Moosepath League again,” said Daniel to Charlotte, “I’d take the time to look for Mr. Edward and inquire after this locked-room business.”

“A their lawyer he wouldn’t have to tell you a thing, would he?” wondered Charlotte.

“He wouldn’t, of course. But I’d see the cut of the fellow’s coat. I’ve never heard of such a stipulation in a will and can’t imagine it would hold up under any sort of scrutiny.”

“Do you think the lawyer is keeping something from them?”

“He has the key, we’re told.”

“It is a little strange.”

“It is.”

Charlotte’s eyes were bright with the day, and her cheeks red with the wind of their movement. “You are a bit of a knight, Mr. Plainway,” she said.

Daniel waved this away, but her insistent expression, which was equal parts earnestness and humor, would not brook complete disagreement. “Don Quixote perhaps,” he said finally. It let him out of everything but a blush.

She looked away then, for his sake.

“They are a curious lot,” said the liveryman again, as if he had not heard any of their talk.

They passed over the road to Gardiner and soon found themselves within the outer limits of that town. Church spires rose up from behind the advancing hills, and the scattered farmhouses grew smaller in their yardage, the homes of businessmen or store owners more frequent as the center of town drew close.

“Will your uncle be in Hallowell long?” wondered Daniel. It was the first mention of her plans between them, and as common and even polite as the question sounded, there was also about it a hint of intimacy.

“A few days perhaps,” she answered, precipitating a nod from Daniel. “It has been an odd affair,” she offered. “A man communicated with us just last week about some land Uncle Ezra has owned for years. The man-Mr. Tempest, his name is-said he was in the process of buying the equipment from a lumber mill that was closing up north and that he hoped to relocate it nearer Augusta, where there is much building expected. He was in a prodigious hurry to settle on a piece of land, and Uncle Ezra’s acreage fitted his needs perfectly.”

“He said.”

“Yes, exactly.”

“But that was not the case?”

“We received a letter the day before yesterday-the Moosepath League delivered it, in fact-a strange sort of communication, calling off the deal and warning us of others who would try to make the same deal in his place.”

“This is singular.”

“We thought so.”

“But your uncle went to Hallowell anyway?”

“To see his lawyer. He wanted to discuss the whole business and learn if Mr. Toll back knew any more than we did.”

“Mr. Tollback being your lawyer.”

Charlotte nodded.

“I guess I’m not the only one with peculiar events motivating me,” said Daniel, “though it seems your story has ended before it began. I have yet to lay eyes on the principal players in my tale, or recent eyes in the case of the boy.”

“Will you go to meet him then?” wondered Charlotte. Since hearing of his search, she had wondered a great deal about the orphaned child.

“I do hope to meet him,” he said.

There was enough of the romantic in Charlotte to wonder what the boy’s mother had meant to Daniel Plainway. “What was she like, his mother?”

“Nell? She was a sweet girl. I never knew a gentler soul, I think, than Eleanor Linnett.”

Charlotte thought that this was meaningful praise from such a gentle soul as Daniel Plainway. Though he watched a small settlement outside the main village of Gardiner go past, she guessed he was seeing something else entirely.

“The Linnetts were an important pillar in Hiram, and it was their great fault to be a little proud of it, and their great tragedy that one of their number would mix with the least of Hiram’s folk.”

“The prince and the milkmaid,” said Charlotte.

“More like the princess and the poacher,”said Daniel, then thought better of it. “No, because Robin Hood was a poacher, I suppose. The Willums were-are, I should say-the lowest and the meanest, though they have been able to produce the figure of an upstanding man, if not the soul of one.” Daniel considered this then and corrected himself again. “That’s not altogether so either, for they did produce one good soulbesides the boy, of course-though none of us took much notice of Jeram at the time.”

“None of this sounds very happy,” said Charlotte.

“Ah,” he said, as if tossing the memory away.

“So,”said Charlotte, “it was not the good soul with whom the boy’s mother mixed?”

“Yes,” Daniel said, “and no.” He smiled at her confounded expression.

She looked away then, afraid that she had been too inquisitive; she hadn’t known this man any longer than the day before, after all.

For Daniel’s part, this was one day-perhaps the first day in recent memory-that he might have left the tale behind, the day before him was so bright and the woman beside him so pleasant and beautiful. But after a moment, in which he feared she was going to apologize for her curiosity, he said, “I should like to tell it to you, but I may have only the one rendition left in me.” He was a little startled when she reached her hand over and touched his briefly.

“Perhaps when you tell Mister Walton,” she said.

38. -Athians and -Ashians in Flux

“Good heavens!” said Ephram.

“I concur, my friend,” asserted Eagleton. “Thump?”

“They are my thoughts as well,” said that worthy.

“Good heavens!” said Ephram again; it was remarkable how often they were in concert.

Their young company had flown beyond the forest of pines and across the field of battle like the shadows of crows and felt themselves victorious simply by dint of escaping the vengeance of the older boys. Campaigns have turned on smaller events.

Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump lingered to be sure that no one had been injured by the startling avalanche, and the older boys rose from the unexpected heaps of snow, laughing and calling out to one another; never were ambushed soldiers so happy in their circumstances. The boughs of the pines above them waved in the breeze, as if glad to be rid of their burden. Eagleton gazed up to the top of the tallest tree, hoping to see again that odd disturbance in the air.

The portion of an hour struck from a steeple in the village, and Ephram consulted one of his three or four watches. “Half past twelve,” he an nounced. He was beginning to feel hungry.

Eagleton, still craning his neck, considered the immaculate blue between the pine caps and said, “Continued fair and seasonable. Winds in the west.”

“High tide at-the Dash-It-All Boys!” declared Thump, a declaration that Ephram and Eagleton found difficult to interpret. Ephram thought his friend had experienced a sort of linguistic hiccup (he had suffered them himself from time to time) and inquired after Thump’s well-being with an “Are you-the Dash-It-All Boys!”

“Good heavens!” declared Eagleton, not because he had sighted the men but because he had been so startled by Ephram’s shout. But upon actually seeing Durwood, Waverley, and Brink, he said instead, “Dash-It-All Boys?”

Durwood, Waverley, and Brink rose from the largest heap of snow. Durwood had entangled himself in his scarf, and it was wrapped about his forehead. All three of the Dashians had become separated from their hats, and snow had been driven down their necks and up their backs.

“That was not to be expected,” suggested Waverley.

“I didn’t, in fact,” said Brink.

“Good heavens, gentlemen!” said Ephram. “How did you get beneath that pile?”

“I was standing there,” said Waverley.

“I was standing beside him,” said Brink.

Durwood was more dazed than his fellows (it was ascertained afterward that part of a branch had struck him on the head), and he was a little crosseyed.

“Bad luck,” said Waverley.

“In the wrong place at the wrong time,” said Brink.

“Bad luck,” said Waverley again.

“What a shame that you happened to come by just then,” said Thump concernedly.

“It was,” agreed Waverley.

“War will inevitably strike the innocent,” said Eagleton.

“That’s very good, Eagleton,” said Ephram.

“Thank you, Ephram.”

The Moosepathians were apologetic, though they had not been responsible for what the trees had shed. They marveled at the coincidence.

“Circumstances are peculiar,” agreed Durwood.

39. Several Parties Not Necessarily Looking for One Another

PORTLAND TELEGRAPH COMPANY
Grand Trunk

DECEMBER 6 AM 10:25

C/O SOMERSET COUNTY SHERIFF

MR. TOBIAS WALTON

MR. A. TEMPEST NOT ON CALEB BROWN THOUGH KIT REMAINS.

CAPT MATTHEWS PERPLEXED. FURTHERS?

DEPUTY CHIEF FRITH

“This news makes me sensible of Mr. Burnbrake’s situation,” said Mister Walton when he received the telegram from the Portland constabulary.

“I hope he doesn’t find himself snarled in this business,” said Frederick.

“Surely they have found what they wanted,” said Isabelle, “and will be gone, now that Arthur and Edgar are out on bail.”

It was true that the members of the mysterious Broumnage Club had found something on Council Hill. Earlier that morning Capital Gaines and Paul Duvaudreuil had led Frederick Covington and a small expedition of Paul’s cousins back to the tor, where upon further investigation the remains of a second set of runes was discovered on the underside of a large flat rock opposite the first. Someone else had found these new runes before them, however, and had disfigured them till they were unreadable.

Frederick had fallen back upon the first runes (the copies of it already circulating throughout the town had saved it perhaps), and studying them more closely, he was the more frustrated by their cryptic nature. Arthur’s final words of the night before rankled him.

You haven’t translated it, have you?

The sheriff had been wakened early that morning by a letter from a judge in town, who demanded that Arthur and Edgar be released. Darwin had stuck to form, however, and waited till bail was set and someone had physically put the money in his hands before he let them go.

The state of things did not seem simpler when the telegram arrived, and it was decided that Mister Walton and Sundry should return to Portland and find Mr. Burnbrake.

“He deserves to know what this is all about, at any rate,” said Isabelle.

Moxie, still basking in the glow of her heroic behavior at the tor, was without opinion on the matter. Sundry made much of the dog at the station, ruffling the long fur behind her ears; he laughed when she licked his chin.

The tracks were still closed between Iceboro and Richmond, so they had decided to stop at Hallowell, where Mister Walton could look in on Phileda McCannon’s house as he had promised. They hoped the line would be opened again by afternoon. “We will wire you if Mr. Burnbrake is still in Portland,” said Mister Walton.

“Let me know if Mr. Tempest is found,” said Frederick.

“Let us know if you translate those runes,” said Sundry.

“I think we will stay in touch,” commented Isabelle with a smile.

And so they waved to one another as Mister Walton and Sundry Moss found their seats and the train took its first lurch from the station. “Another adventure done, Sundry,” said Mister Walton. “What do you think?”

“I think it isn’t over till we understand what happened,” said Sundry.

Mister Walton laughed, but a moment later he was peering out the window and he sighed, saying, “I wish I’d gone to church this morning.”

Hinkley, Shawmut, Fairfield, Waterville, Sidney, Augusta: These places fell past Mister Walton and Sundry, offering the sights of their villages and settlements and, between, the undisturbed intervals of snowy fields and treeless hills. Mister Walton saw little of it. He was thinking of Phileda McCannon and rather wished he could pass by Hallowell while she was not at home; looking in on her home, knowing she wasn’t there, seemed a melancholy thing to do.

Sundry was deep in thought himself, though his mind was taken up by other things, most notably the pictograph on the rock at the Council Hill. He had no expertise in runic language, or languages at all outside his native one, yet he felt as if the meaning of that single figure-be it an ox or a plow-were on the tip of his tongue, like a half-remembered melody. He thought of his father plowing, then mused upon a neighbor, who plowed with oxen.

One passenger did beguile a few miles for them; it was the man whose duck had been stolen and whom they had met on their trip to Skowhegan.

“That man was a German, I think,” said the man with the duck. The bird sat in the bag beneath his feet and ate peanuts that the man shelled for it.

“I beg your pardon,” said Mister Walton.

“The man who stole my duck,” said the fellow, as if the conversation of two days before had never stopped. “He was a German, I think.”

“I don’t know that they are,” said the man, “but there are Germans in “Are Germans prone to stealing ducks?” wondered Sundry aloud.

Woolwich, I think.”

“I’m German,” said a man who sat behind Mister Walton and Sundry. He did not look up from his newspaper. “I’ve never stolen a duck.”

“I beg your pardon,” said the man, but he picked up the duck and set the bird on his lap. Nothing more on the subject of ducks or Germans was offered, but Sundry thought it was a fortunate business for it made Mister Walton laugh softly to himself.

The sun was past the meridian when they stepped onto the platform at Hallowell. The shadow of the hill behind them was conquering the town, though the slopes on the opposing bank of the Kennebec were brilliant to the eye. The wind rallied the surface of the river into whitecaps, and sleighs rather than carriages were the order of the day among the streets and avenues; there were several such vehicles out, filled with bundled folk who braved the nippy air.

The man with the duck joined them on the platform, though he had indicated that he was going as far as Gardiner. The German fellow had unnerved him.

“Perhaps we should get something to eat at the Worster House,” said Mister Walton, “and then I can take a stroll up to Phileda’s.” to take them to the hotel, where they had spent some days the previous They left their baggage with the stationmaster and soon hired a sleigh fall. The man with the duck seemed to think he had been invited to accompany them and climbed into the sleigh as well. Mister Walton and Sundry graciously accepted his company.

Their first sight, upon approaching the Worster House, was that of a bundle of blankets in a sleigh below the hotel steps. The sound of snoring that arose from the blankets was so loud that Sundry wondered it didn’t startle the horses.

“I don’t have the heart to wake him,” said the other sleigh driver, who stood alongside, lighting a pipe.

Mister Walton and Sundry peered into the sleigh but could see only the red nose of some elderly person peeking from between the heap of throws and a red stocking cap. “It’s Colonel Barkoddel,” said the driver. “He’s had a vigorous morning.”

“Has he?” said Mister Walton.

The duck in the bag gave out a honk, which puzzled the driver. He returned to his train of thought, however, and explained, “He dispatched troops after a superior force and was uncommonly successful.”

“Was he?”

“One of the finest set-tos I ever witnessed.”

“Good heavens!” said Mister Walton.

“What? What?” came a voice from the blankets. There were two or three grunts, related somehow to the previous snores.

“Are you awake, Colonel?” said the driver.

“Of course I’m awake! Where are the men?”

“They have been victorious and retired the field,” explained the driver. “They sent us ahead of them,” he explained to Mister Walton and Sundry. “Finest scrap I ever saw, I promise you. Here they come now.”

Mister Walton and Sundry were interested in the arrival of the colonel’s troops and further interested to see a company of young boys and several grown men descending Winthrop Street. Three of the men conjured particular memories for the portly fellow and his young friend, and Mister Walton was ready to say that they reminded him of their fellows of the Moosepath League when he realized that they were their fellows of the Moosepath League!

“My word!” said Mister Walton, and that well-loved voice reached up the street and tugged at the ears of Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump. These three worthies were strolling with uncharacteristic confidence alongside the boys and three other men, and that self-possession was raised to the level of the ecstatic at the sight of their chairman. “Good heavens, Thump!” said Eagleton.

“Good heavens, yes!” agreed Thump.

“Ephram!”

“Yes, Eagleton! I am in concurrence.”

To Mister Walton and Sundry the three members did have about them the look of successful contestants: Their faces beamed, their cheeks appeared red with happy exertions, their clothes were stained with dampness, and their hats were the worse for some physical aggravation. Their strides lengthened and became brisker.

“Mister Walton,” said Sundry, for he was looking past the Moosepath League at three other men.

“My word!” said Mister Walton again.

“Truth to tell, Mister Walton!”

Bringing up the rear of the column were the Dash-It-All Boys, looking less like success and more like philosophy and sodden to the skin.

“Mister Walton!” declared Ephram. “Mr. Moss! How remarkable to see you! How very gratifying!”

The nearer they got, the worse for wear they al looked, but Ephram, sure writ large upon their faces. Eagleton, and Thump approached Colonel Barkoddel’s sleigh with plea“We have participated in the most amusing melee, gentlemen!” asserted Eagleton.

“Melee?” said Mister Walton; it sounded entirely too warlike, coming from the peaceable members of the Moosepath League. Several people, including the colonel and his driver, began to discuss the battle. The younger boys gathered about, still excited.

“Wasn’t it wonderful, Thump?” said Eagleton.

“I will remember it fondly,” said that man. His eyes glowed with delight. He let out a startled shout, however, when the duck in the bag made itself known again. “Great cats! What was that?” he wondered, and the duck squawked even louder when Sundry attempted to explain.

“It’s a what?” asked Eagleton.

“Duck!” called Sundry over the general hubbub, and the Moosepathians immediately crouched with their hands over their hats. Durwood, Waverley, and Brink did not shrink but looked about for incoming snowballs.

Mister Walton’s already large eyes were like saucers behind his glittering spectacles, and he looked as delighted as his friends before he even realized what had occurred. The Dash-It-All Boys tipped what remained of their hats to Mister Walton and Sundry.

“Our fates are entwined,” said Brink.

“That’s rather poetic,” said Durwood.

“Was it? I didn’t intend.”

“Caught in the crossfire,” said Durwood, by way of explanation.

“The downfall, actually,” corrected Brink.

“A hot bath,” said Waverley like a toast. He raised his hat again as he passed the crowd at the bottom of the hotel steps.

“Me too,” said Durwood as he followed his fellow inside.

“I hope there’s more than one tub or it will be crowded,” said Brink.

Another sleigh was pulling up before the hotel, and Mister Walton hardly had a moment to bid good day to the Dashians before a new commotion was begun.

“It’s Miss Burn brake,” said Eagleton as a lovely woman stepped from the third sleigh. The duck was giving out a terrific roster of quacks.

“It is a duck!” said Thump. He had only raised his head again when the name of Miss Burnbrake was pronounced.

He and Ephram and Eagleton were all three telling their versions of recent events while shaking hands vigorously with Mister Walton, Sundry, and their driver, who thought he had much to tell his wife when he went home for dinner.

“Charlotte!” came a new voice from the top of the steps, and Ezra Burnbrake stood there, waving to his niece. He was puzzled to see a strange man handing her down from the sleigh with an air of familiarity.

“It’s my uncle,” she said to Daniel Plainway. “And, my goodness, the Moosepath League!”

“The Moosepath League?” he returned.

“Someone get me down from here!” shouted the colonel. He was struggling in the tangle of throws. The duck got itself out of its bag with a couple of flaps and landed beside the old soldier. “What?” he shouted. “Highly irregular!”

“Miss Burnbrake!” said Ephram, followed closely by similar assertions from his fellow members. All eyes turned, if not all voices stilled, for the woman as she reached them.

“How good to see you gentlemen again,” she said.

Mister Walton and Sundry had doffed their hats, and the Moosepathians quickly (and proudly) introduced these two to Miss Burnbrake.

The duck was stalking the back of Colonel Barkoddel’s sleigh like a sentry. “Does he think he’s a pigeon?” asked the old man. The man who owned the duck was attempting to retrieve the bird.

“Mister Walton?” said Daniel Plainway when this name was pronounced. “Mister Tobias Walton?”

“Why, yes,” said the portly fellow. He reached his hand out.

“Mr. Daniel Plainway,” said Charlotte as the lawyer approached them, and there was something remarkable about the moment and about the two men as they shook hands. Even Sundry would say, years later, that here was a man to rival Mister Walton in several happy instances of character.

Here, thought Daniel, is the man in possession of Nell’s portrait.

“Mister Walton,” he said, “I have come far and long to meet you, and I believe, for the sake of people you have never met, I have much to thank you for.”

Daniel’s Story (April 1892–April 1893)

If not for his suspicions regarding the death of Jeram Willum, Daniel might have had some hope for Ian Linnett when the baby came to his house. The old man appeared sensible of his responsibility and was acquiescent and even interested when Mrs. Cutler arrived to help with her own child in arm.

Linnett expressed his wish that Nell be laid to rest in the tomb that had been built for himself, but he did not attend the funeral. Aunt Dora, dark and stern, returned for the service, though she stayed in town; she said that the old man was watching the graveside service from the woods above the cemetery, but Daniel did not look back. It was a windy day in April with the sun waking to the earth between running clouds. Leaves of the previous fall moved among the tombstones.

“That’s not her,” Daniel told himself as the casket was carried in among the dark stones.

The day after the funeral the sheriff came to ask Ian Linnett what he knew about Jeram Willum. The young man had drowned after suffering a blow to the head, but the coroner could not be sure that Jeram hadn’t fallen down a bank. Daniel’s horse and carriage were found wandering half a mile or so up the road from the Linnett drive.

Ian was not helpful. He had not seen the boy. How did he come to the Willum place that day? He’d had a bad feeling about Nell and simply came. The sheriff tried to trick Ian by asking him what he had done with the note Daniel had written, but the old man only looked at him indignantly. He’d had a bad feeling.

“It seems to me,” said the sheriff to Daniel, “that he would have had plenty of bad feelings before that particular day.”

No one discounted in the meantime the possibility that Jerams father had made good with a long series of threats and followed his boy to the Linnetts’. Daniel didn’t know which was the worst scenario. Two days had gone by before the body was found, however, and rain had washed the fields of sign,. The sheriff came to Linnett twice with no more result. Jerams death was officially stated an accident. Mrs. Willum, looking hard and unrepentant, and some of Jeram’s younger brothers and sisters came to the service. Daniel stood by himself on the other side of the grave with his hat in his hands; the day was unseasonably warm, like May. At one point during the interment, something caught Daniels eye, and he looked up to see a robin hopping among the rows.

The next day the lawyer had a visit from Parley Willum, who claimed a legal attachment to the baby. The mans motives were clear enough, as he was willing to state them.

“That brats in for some money,” growled the man, “and as his grand father I’m entitled to my handful!”

Daniel had difficulty remaining still behind his desk. “Inheritance doesn’t generally work in that direction,” he replied.

“Then I want the brat, “stated the man flatly.

“I will warn you now, Mr. Willum,” said Daniel, “that if you had custody of that child, the judge would surely stipulate regular visits from the law.”

The thought took Willum aback; his face pinched up as if he had smelled something bad, though he was the worst-smelling object in the room. “No ones visiting regularly up that place, I expect!” he declared, meaning the Linnett estate.

“And that crazy old coot there, who murdered my kin!” Parley stormed around Daniels office before leaving, shouting, “I’ll get what’s coming, soon or late, you can trust! Parley Willum isn’t one to come up short, no, he’s not!”

From his desk window Daniel watched the man storm down the walk to his buckboard and drive of At least I know where trouble may come, he thought, which foresight, like so much else in life, proved unhelpful.

Daniel first met Edward Penfen in July. Ian Linnett had been calling Daniel to some unusual duties in those weeks, liquidating his assets (which were rich in railroad stock, among other things) into physical wealth. Daniel had inf act sold of thousands of dollars’ worth of Linnetts investments in the past months and, per instruction, bought the most precious gems he was able to lay hands upon in Portland and Boston. The lawyer had argued with his client about this strange business and would have quit it himself had he not worried that a less scrupulous agent might be hired in his place.

He had no idea where the old man kept his growing hoard. Neither, as it happened, did Edward Penfen.

Daniel hardly bothered to knock at the front door when he came to the Linnett house. The old man rarely answered, and it seemed a lot of trouble to bother Mrs. Cutler when he could easily let himself in.

On this particular day in July, however, the door opened before he had reached it, and he had his first glimpse of Penfen.

He was a narrow, wild-eyed fellow, even dressed in his best suit, which appeared well worn, if tidy enough. His hair was wanting an appointment with the shears, clean but disordered. If Asher Willum was a wolf, here was a fox, with no telling which was the more dangerous. Daniel mistrusted the man the moment he set eyes upon him.

“Mr. Plainway, I presume,” said Penfen with a flash of teeth.

“You have the better of me, sir,” said Daniel.

“Edward Penfen, “said the man. “Mr. Linnett is expecting you.”

The tale was that Penfen had been hired to look after the baby, Bertram, and that the man was qualified to be the child’s instructor when the time came. Ian Linnett fell silent on the matter after the first explanation, though he made sure that Penfen was out of the room before he resumed the business between himself and Daniel.

As always, Daniel stopped by the nursery, where Mrs. Cutler would be rocking Bertram or her son, or feeding them, or singing nursery songs. She was a large woman who kept to herself and the children, venturing no opinion concerning Mr. Linnett or Edward Penfen. Daniel found the babies mysterious, if pleasant, and stayed awhile to talk to Bertram. The baby watched him with a mild, serious expression; when Bertram smiled Daniel thought he saw a flash of his mother in the child’sf ace.

Penfen, as far as Daniel could see during his subsequent visits, did nothing, though he was sure to answer the door, a means to see who was calling upon his employer. The tutor, as he came to be known, made occasional appearances in town and failed to ingratiate himself there. Daniel said nothing about the man to anyone but waited his moment.

That moment seemed to arrive one October day when Penfen didn’t greet him at the door and as the man was supposed to be “tending to personal business” in another town, Daniel thought it was a good time to bring up the security of Linnett’s growing cache. The old man was standing in the front room, across from the parlor, looking at a portrait of Nell that had been painted when she was yet sixteen. Daniel had been a little put off by the picture when it was commissioned, since it had made her look older than her years, but now it seemed to fit his memory of her.

“They’re safe put away,” said Linnett when Daniel brought up the subject of the gems.

“Safe from Penfen?” asked Daniel bluntly.

“You’re not to worry about Penfen,” said the old man.

“Ian,” said Daniel, “as much as I dislike to bring it up, your investments are nearly gone, and there is only enough left-by your own plan-to eke out a bare existence for yourself and your household. What if something were to happen to you? How would Bertram be provided for? How are we to know where you’ve hidden this cache of jewels?”

A smile, barely discernible, touched Linnett’sf ace then, and not happily. “I he’s as big a man as I am-” he said, “the boy, that is-he will see where it’s been put, in his mother’s eyes.”

Daniel peered after the man at the portrait of Nell, exasperated, wondering if he had done something as simple and foolish as hide the gems in the wall behind the portrait. Then he saw, reflected in the glass before the portrait, the shadow of a man standing in the don’t Jay to the hall.

“Mr. Penfen, “said Daniel, “I was told you were away on business.”

“How are you today, Mr. Plainway?” was Penfen’s indirect reply.

Daniel had hoped that Ian Linnett was opening up to him, but the old man lost all sign of vitality upon sight of his employee. The lawyer did discover one thing, however: Linnett knew Penfen for what he was, for the old man behaved as if a leering stranger had entered Nell’s very presence. “You are allowed in the remainder of the house, Mr. Penfen, “said Linnett, “but you will kindly avoid this room in the future.”

Penfen bowed obsequiously and backed into the hall. Linnett then turned to Daniel, and not without an expression of regard. “If you would shut the door when you leave, Daniel,” he said, but he stopped the lawyer at the door by adding,

“I heard her again last night.”

Daniel waited.

“I hear her every once in a while,” said the old man, “singing in her room.”

Daniel could have wept to hear him.

Linnett looked over his shoulder at Daniel. “It’s Nell, you know. I went to the door once, when I was over being frightened, but she stopped, so I stay down here now and listen.” Then Linnett fell to contemplating the portrait once again.

The lawyer collected his hat and was reaching for the front door when someone spoke softly to him from the other end of the hall. Penfen stood there, beckoning Daniel like a fellow conspirator. When Daniel advanced upon the man, one would have thought them in close confidence, Penfen seemed so pleased to speak with him.

“I think Mr. Linnett is not himself,” said the man, and Daniel only frowned, meaning that Penfen had better be both specific and cautious. Penfen appeared to take pains to make his next utterance as delicate as was possible. “I don’t believe the dear fellow is in his right mind,” he said.

“I daresay he is not,” said Daniel quietly, “upon which state your presence has not an ameliorative effect.”

“Mr. Plainway, we are both men of the world who can come to an agreement. It is plain to me that we are seeking the same things.”

“Never in my life,” said Daniel, “have I strock another man, but perhaps you would care to help me break that habit.”

“Not at all, Mr. Plainway, not at all.” Penfen did take a step back but continued his sly tack. “]was only thinking we might benefit from one another.”

“] have but to understand the hold you have on Mr. Linnett,” said Daniel,

“and you are gone.”

“That is devils’ knowledge, Mr. Plainway, that may do more harm than good.” There was a wild smile on Penfens face, and Daniel decided that here was the one not in his right mind. The thought almost divided the lawyer from hi anger.

It was at about this time that Daniel caught wind of a story regarding a discussion between Penfen and Parley Willum, held in the middle of the street, in front of the Post Office and General Store, that turned into an altercation of shouted threats and shaking f.

In November Mrs. Cutler left the Linnett house, saying that the “dampening atmosphere” was not healthy for her boy. Daniel thought he knew where the dampness lay, and the darkness. He tried to get Linnett to hire a new woman to care for Bertram, but the old man, more lost in regret than ever, refused, and Daniel had to admit that Penfen was administering to the childs physical welfare rather ably.

“Oh, I am a man of many talents, Mr. Plainway,” said Penfen. He had the child drinking from a cup. “We’ll be working on his catechism before you know it, won’t we, Bertram?”

At least, thought Daniel, he’s earning his keep. He didn’t let the mans presence drive him from the nursery, and when he sat down to spend a moment with the little boy, Bertram smiled at him. Ah, thought Daniel, there’s your mother.

Penfen went to work as winter progressed, keeping the stoves and the fireplaces stoked, tending to the laundry and the meals. Ian Linnett grew thinner and more haggard. He neglected his clothes, his hair, and his beard, all of which took on the ragged measurements of a scarecrow. He rarely left the parlor and then only to consider the portrait of his granddaughter in the front room. Once, in February, Daniel came in on an argument between the old man and Penfen, and the lawyer suggested in front of the wild-eyed man that Linnett kick the repellent individual from the house. Penfen listened to the ensuing conversation with an unchanging smile.

The winter was mild and open until February, and then what they had missed began to tumble out of the western mountains and fill the skies and fields with snow. An involved business in contract law kept Daniel very busy through March, and he went to the Linnett house only twice.

In April he knew that the old man was not long for the world, and he pressed again for the location of the hidden jewels.

“His mother’s eyes,” was all the old man would say.

Penfen hovered over the old man like a vulture.

Bertram was walking. He recognized Daniel when he came to the nursery, and the lawyer felt guilty for having lingered away.

It snowed again. On the first anniversary of Eleanor Linnett’s death, Daniel took a sleigh up to the estate. He was surprised to see another vehicle’s tracks in the new snow before him. But he was a little lost in his thoughts, remembering his first trip among these oaks, more than twenty years before: the summer sound of the brook over which the carriage drive ran on its way to the house.

He was climbing from the sleigh when he noticed the footprints coming from the side of the house and descending toward the pond. Something unnamed caught him like ice at the pit of his stomach. It did not seem like Penfen to go strolling through deep snow, and as he neared the tracks, he realized that they were made by someone who moved feebly and in confusion: the footprints wandered and wavered.

Struggling through the snow, Daniel had barely crested the hill when he saw the body of the old man sprawled, facedown upon the white slope. He knew that Ian Linnett was beyond saving, was inf act hours dead, before he reached the body.

But where had he been going? His stiffened arm was stretched out in the direction of Clemons Pond.

Daniel had wrestled the body part of the way back to the house when he thought of the baby. This time he was gripped by real fear, and he left Ian Linnett’s remains where they lay.

“Penfen!” he called as he hunied down the front hall of the estate. “Bertram!” From the front door he ran to the back of the house, calling both for the fox and the child.

40. Two Hearts

“They were gone, of course,” said Daniel Plainway. “The house was cold, the fires long dead. How many hours, or even days, Ian had been out there, the Lord only knows, and whether Penfen took the boy before Ian died or after. Some people assumed that Ian was going for help, but I think he was beyond even that simple office. I believe that there was little more than guilt left in him and that he was struggling toward the place where Jeram died. Looking back, I was a fool for not having watched them more closely.”

Sundry Moss silently considered the floor before him. Charlotte Burnbrake, who was seated near to Daniel, watched the lawyer with no emotion telling upon her face. There were tears in her eyes.

Standing by the window of his hotel apartment, Mister Walton remembered what had been told him when he was a boy. “‘What we know, we must first have learned,’” quoted the portly fellow, his hands folded behind him. “It is a human dilemma-and not yours alone, Mr. Plainway that we have hindsight rather than foreknowledge, and it seems to me that you have done more for these sad people than others would have or could have.”

“But I did make a promise to Nell,” said Daniel, “and failed even that.”

“You haven’t failed at all,” said Charlotte, the first words from her lips since Daniel started his tale.

“My prayers have not failed, at any rate,” he said, lifting his head. “But I have never understood why she did it.”

“Nor did she, I promise you,” said Mister Walton sadly.

“She was greatly disappointed in her grandfather,” ventured Sundry.

“But in the end,” said Daniel, “her instincts were true, for she felt more shame for the old man than she did for Jeram.”

Mister Walton took his spectacles from his nose and rubbed at them with a handkerchief. “I fear,” he said, “we ask too much of our young people when we shelter them from life, then expect them to behave sensibly when life comes knocking.” Placing his spectacles back on his nose, he added, “but when we first laid eyes upon that little boy in the dory of let out a sigh. “We guessed it would be an unhappy tale, Sundry,” he Fort Edgecomb, we couldn’t know that we would be so entangled with his fate.”

It did seem a great deal of story for so small a person. Bird had rubbed shoulders with them in Edgecomb and Boothbay, Portland and several points in between; he had affected many, including Mollie Peer, the young woman who saved him from drowning in the Sheepscott River, and Wyckford O’Hearn, who had been shot and his career perhaps ruined in the boy’s defense. Even the Moosepath League had followed many circuitous wanderings (without Mister Walton’s leadership!) in its attempt to keep the boy from harm.

“And you had no further trouble from Jeram’s family?” asked Sundry.

“There was a story going around town,” said Daniel, “a month or so after Ian died-something of a joke among the locals, actually-that Parley took his clan to the house one night to rob the place, but they were frightened off.”

“Was someone waiting for them?” asked Mister Walton.

“Only the Linnetts, if anyone. Perhaps Ian’s grim visage greeted them at the door.” Daniel pronounced this without levity, and it was followed by silence, till he spoke again. “The problem of the house of course takes a new turn, now that there is a surviving heir. It doesn’t seem in the boy’s best interests to let his legacy remain in an empty house.”

“And yet,” said Mister Walton, “there is’more than coin to an estate.”

“Exactly. a man doesn’t leave his watch so that his son can pawn it.”

“And the gems,” said Charlotte.

“If I could find them, there would be no trouble. I could manage the upkeep on the place and have a healthy bequest waiting for Bertram when he came of age. But without them, or the wealth they represent-well, let’s just say a country lawyer might get paid in apples or a side of ham, or he might get paid in two or three years.” Daniel was not moaning but only stating a natural fact, and he could do it with something of a smile on his face.

Mister Walton made a low sound, and his brow furrowed with thought.

Daniel said, “I should like to meet the boy.”

Mister Walton’s head came up from his musing. “Of course,” he said. “He must know where he comes from. And he should know you, Mr. Plainway.”

“Is he too young, do you think, to hear some of it?” wondered Daniel.

“He will be pleased that the woman in the portrait is his mother, I think, and certainly glad that she didn’t abandon him. I wonder, however, if he should wait to see his family home when he is old enough to ask.”

“I should like to burn it down,” said Daniel, “or see it lighted once again and filled with people. If l could just know that Nell and her grandfather are not wandering there: Ian in his guilt, Nell waiting to hear from her child.” He was conscious that Charlotte had reached across the small space between them and taken his hand. He hardly dared breathe, as if some exquisite bird had lit upon him.

Mister Walton looked out the window again. Sundry, who understood that these people had met each other only the day before, raised a surprised eyebrow, then looked after Mister Walton.

“I fear, sir, that for yourself,” said Mister Walton, “they do still walk those rooms. Perhaps the place will need to be lit and filled with people once again before you can let them go. I know that my own family’s house, once I was alone in it, was vastly haunted till my friends brought new voices inside its walls.” Without fear of appearing sentimental, Mister Walton gripped Sundry’s shoulder.

“Any of you are invited whenever you like,” said Daniel, but he directed this thought to Charlotte, who drew her hand away. Daniel took a deep, regretful breath.

“I should see how my uncle is,” she said.

Daniel got up and nearly knocked his chair over.

“Miss Burnbrake,” said Mister Walton. He stepped up to her, purposely navigating his portly self in a manner that would most likely draw attention from the lawyer’s obvious discomfort. “I look forward to seeing you and your uncle in the morning.”

Charlotte offered her hand to Sundry Moss and Mister Walton; it was not as awkward then for her to do the same to Daniel Plainway, where her touch lingered as she thanked him for his escort.

Daniel nodded, his chest feeling heavy and constricted. “It was my pleasure,” he said finally, and he could not have spoken more truthfully. When she was gone, he was at a loss for words; he stood before his chair, finding it difficult to stay in the moment when it was suddenly without her elegant presence.

“I like her,” said Sundry bluntly.

“She is a very fine person, I think,” said Mister Walton.

The lawyer was adrift with emotion. He had never told the Linnetts’story before, from beginning to end, and though it had exhausted him to do so, it had also purged him of some of its sadness. “I think I too must retire,” he said.

“You have had some adventures the last day or so,” said Mister Walton.

“And I am not so used to them as you,” said Daniel with a smile.

Wh“You’ll build up to it,” said Sundry wryly. en Daniel was gone, Mister Walton gave out a sigh.

“What do you think?” wondered Sundry.

“I think that two pair of shoulders would bear such burdens better.”

Sundry chuckled softly. It was remarkable how obvious people could be in their affection for one another, most especially when they were reticent about displaying it. It was remarkable, too, how very accurately Mister Walton’s observation might have been applied to himself.

“But I do think,” continued Mister Walton, “that I may have a solution to his problem regarding Bird’s estate.”

“Do you?”

“Or should we call him Bertram now? At any rate, I must confer with the Moosepath League. My goodness! There is a good deal to think about!”

“I should say,” pronounced Sundry, who was reclining once more in his chair, his feet stretched out before him, his hands folded behind his head. “The portrait identified, new people to be considered, the O’Hearns to be informed.”

“I have yet to digest the events at Council Hill,” said Mister Walton. “Your ability to take quick action, by the way, continues to amaze me, and I believe we are all in your debt for it.”

Sundry insisted, as ever, that it was Moxie who had saved them and no one else.

“I wonder if our friends have risen from their naps,” said Mister Walton. He was clearly in need of an errand. Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump would have been invited to hear Daniel’s tale if they hadn’t fallen asleep after dinner, exhausted by their exploits; perhaps they had renewed themselves by now.

“They are probably up and reliving the day’s battle,” said Sundry. “They made great friends with the fellow with the duck.” He thought he might go down to the hotel parlor and hear the details of the Battle of the Smoking Pine (as he later dubbed it). First, however, he must send Mister Walton off to where he knew the bespectacled fellow’s thoughts were roaming. With this in mind, Sundry said, “And speaking of things-and people-to think about, there is always Phileda McCannon.”

Mister Walton chuckled. Miss McCannon had in truth been crowding his mental facilities somewhat. “There is no harm, I suppose, in being easily read by a good friend,” he said. “I only wish she were at home.”

“But in her absence,” said Sundry, “you should stroll by her place and see that all is as it should be.” He understood only too well the romantic inclination of a heart like Mister Walton’s.

“I did promise to look in,” said the bespectacled fellow with a smile.

“I will report to Miss McCannon that you have been as good as your word.”

41. Two More

Phileda McCannon was a compact sort of person, in body and in the manner in which she conducted her affairs. She was a brisk walker and direct in her speech and her meaning. Her father had thought she had an excess of wit, but it was always to the point and never cruel-wry, even ironic at times, but never scornful. She was a busy person and as alert as a bird. She was by no means without sadness in her life, yet she kept sadness at bay, for the most part, by outstripping it. Just the day before, she had seen to the final services over her aunt, who had died of a lingering illness. She had taken the train to Hallowell only this evening, outstripping sadness, but with the persistent understanding that it would catch her up once she had returned to the home where she was the sole occupant.

She was never sure if it was by accident that she met Charleston Thistlecoat outside the Hallowell station, but she wasn’t entirely sorry to see him; she quite naturally accepted his offer to carry her bags and allowed him to drive her in his sleigh to her home.

It wasn’t an accident that the lights in her house were blazing when they drew up to the rambling granite steps that led up the bank, past the great red maple and the stone cherubs. She had sent a telegram to her friend Mrs. Miriam Nowell but was gratified (not to mention a little relieved, with Mr. Thistlecoat at her side) to find that the Nowells were waiting for her with lamps lit and a fire crackling at the parlor hearth. She quite naturally allowed Charleston to carry her things in for her.

“Welcome home,” said Miriam when Phileda stepped inside. “We were so sorry to hear of your aunt.”

“Thank you,” said Phileda, and the requisite expressions were exchanged between them. Phileda took her hat off; her hair was in rather a pleasing disarray, her spectacles a little fogged by the change in temperature. “You can’t know how good it is to see you!” she declared. “Stuart, how are you,” she said as Miriam’s husband entered the hall.

“Mr. Thistlecoat, how are you,” said Miriam as that man entered by way of the front door, Phileda’s bags in hand.

Charleston Thistlecoat indicated that he was well. brow at Miriam, but her friend appeared genuinely surprised to see the “We met outside the station,” said Phileda. She flashed a raised eyeman.

Phileda had first met Charleston Thistlecoat on the night of the Hallowell Harvest Ball, the previous October, and though Mister Tobias Walton had been her escort, Thistlecoat managed to occupy a substantial bit of both Phileda’s evening and her dance card. He was a man who had been denied very little and accustomed to deny himself less. He was a tall, slender man, with silver hair, black, expressive eyebrows, and a large, not altogether unattractive nose. He had a sense of humor when it did not apply to himself and more than a passing interest in Phileda McCannon that had manifested itself in unannounced visits and numerous invitations.

Phileda had successfully put off his visits on the strong of her being a woman alone; his invitations had been more difficult to treat, and she had managed some of them-those of a less intimate nature-by accepting. She did not dislike the man, though he was never as entertaining as he thought he was; but her thoughts were generally with Toby (as she thought of Mister Walton), and she was beginning to think that a firm word, not to say a fair word, on this matter was quickly becoming a necessity.

“Come in, Charleston,” she said as she did her best to tame her hair. “You must warm yourself before you leave.” She shed her coat as she entered the parlor, which was cozy. She smelled something simmering in the kitchen. “Ah!” she said, and rubbed her hands before the hearth. “Do I smell soup on the stove?” Charleston stood a few feet away, hands behind his back.

Phileda was in her middle age, perhaps forty-one or -two, but had kept-or perhaps attained-the slim figure of a girl by constant movement, and had adorned a nearly plain countenance with smile lines and bright blue eyes behind round spectacles. Her chestnut hair glowed in the firelight, which did not pick out the few strands of gray but tinged them with its auburn warmth. She was radiant without an ounce of realization. Charleston could at least lay claim to true discernment, for he was not unmoved.

The Nowells filled the air of the parlor with news of the town and a funny story about Miriam’s dog, Nasturtium, that had an unfortunate tetea-tete with a sleepy skunk.

Charleston did his best to look amused by the chatter; but he clearly had other things on his mind, and Phileda thought that this was one evening she was not prepared to discover them. I must write Toby in the morning, she thought, and wondered if he had gotten her letter of several days ago. She felt tired of a sudden and let out a sigh, which was not like her. The heat of the fire was warming her but sapping her will to move much further.

“I have been away myself recently,” said Charleston.

“Were you?” said Miriam, affecting great interest but somehow demonstrating, by her near astonishment, how ver much she hadn’t realized he was gone.

“Difficulties with the line,” he explained, meaning a particular railroad line of which he purportedly owned controlling stock. “But we have put them to rest.”

“The difficulties?” said Miriam.

Charleston was not quite sharp enough to know if Mrs. Nowell was having fun with him, and he answered her with a long, drawled yes.

The stealthy badinage reminded Phileda of another day, when Toby had crossed swords, successfully, if not too happily, with Charleston Thistlecoat at an afternoon tea. The affair had been a little strained and, in retrospect, as it was the last time she had seen Mister Walton, more than a little melancholy. Thinking on it, she wondered that she wasn’t angry with the tall man before her.

“I beg your pardon?” she said. Charleston had been speaking to her.

“Mrs. Nowell was telling me about your aunt, Miss McCannon,” he said. “May I express my deepest sympathies.” He bowed, rather like an eighteenth-century courtier.

“Thank you, Charleston.”

He straightened to his considerable height. “I should perhaps leave you to your study then,” he said. It was an old phrase, and not unpleasing, as he was able to carry it off.

“Good night,” she said. “I shall see you out.” He allowed her to do this, and Phileda shot a look of some apprehension to Miriam, who rounded her husband up with a crook of the arm and followed them.

“If there is anything I can do for you, Miss McCannon,” Charleston was saying, “in these difficult hours, please do not hesitate to let me know.”

“You are very kind,” she said, and as he was opening the door while offering his services, she reflexively offered him her hand, which he leaned over briefly. She was startled, thinking for a moment that he was going to kiss it. He did not, quite. She stood in the well-lit doorway and waved to him as he descended the steps; Miriam and Stuart Nowell formed a friendly chorus behind her.

Then she hesitated in the doorway, thinking that she saw someone moving swiftly up the hill on the other side of the street. She leaned from the door, her heart taking the smallest sort of jump; she had had the impression that to by was passing by. But she laughed to herself for the fancy, turned inside, and shut the door.

Standing above Phileda McCannon’s house on the opposite side of the street, Mister Walton turned his face away as Charleston Thistlecoat sleighed past. The bespectacled man felt foolish, hiding himself in this fashion, even ashamed. He had been so surprised to see lights burning at Phileda’s home that he had waited for some minutes, feeling almost disoriented and wondering if he had the right house or even the right street.

But there were the stone cherubs and the two switchback flights of steps; the great crown of the red maple, which he had last seen in its autumnal glory, was a thicket of narrow fingers, tangled with the stars. The door to the house opened unexpectedly, and Phileda appeared there with a man. It was Charleston Thistlecoat, whose attentions toward Phileda had been obvious during Mister Walton’s last sojourn in Hallowell the previous October.

He was startled to see the man, and more startled when Phileda appeared to give Thistlecoat her hand so that he might kiss it. Mister Walton was terrified that he would be seen before he could hurry across the street and up the hill, and in one backward glance he was almost sure that Phileda had seen him. There didn’t seem any way that she could tell who he was, standing in a well-lit doorway and looking out into the night, but he kept his face turned away and again looked off when Thistlecoat drove by.

“Good heavens!” he said to himself. He felt as if he’d run a mile and hardly knew how he would make it back home. “Oh, dear!” he said. He had rather flattered himself that Phileda harbored some interest in him beyond friendship and was shattered by what he thought he had seen.

He turned down the hill again, hardly sensing his own movement through the cold air. It had been such a beautiful starlit night, and now his thoughts were cluttered with the Linnetts of Hiram. I had no shoes and complained, he mused, until I met a man with no feet.

He stopped himself in the middle of the hill and thought about Nell Linnett’s dark tomb, on some lonely hillside. She was with God, it was true, but this did not eradicate the sadness of her lost young life and for the child she had missed and who would miss her.

He considered other dark monuments: the cold face of carved stone upon Council Hill, dreaming as it had for a thousand years perhaps since those runes had been placed there; the long, gaunt face of Adam Tempest, waiting to die from who knew what (the vengeance of the Broumnage Club?) in his berth on the Caleb Brown.

Mister Walton tried to think of everything but his own sudden sorrow, and his mind fell again upon little Bird and upon Wyckford O’Hearn and-“Phileda’s aunt!” he said aloud. He turned back to the house; he had walked further than he had realized. Either her aunt has recovered—

The cold had made his eyes water; he dabbed at them with a handkerchief. Nervously, he ascended the hill once more. The steps leading to the house, past the stone cherubs and the red maple, had been carefully cleaned, but the granite felt slick with snowmelt and ice.

He felt his chest tighten with the thought of Phileda and Charleston Thistlecoat; but Mister Walton was her friend, and that must come first. He took another deep breath before knocking on the door and waited. There was the shadow of someone passing by a window, and then the door was flung open and Stuart Nowell greeted him with a look of surprise.

“Come in, come in,” Stuart said quietly.

“Who is it?” came a voice from the kitchen, and Phileda appeared at the other end of the hall. Her hand went to her mouth, her head tilted slightly, and Mister Walton thought she looked as if tears would spring from her eyes. “Toby!” she said, but still there was enough of her face covered by her hand that he could not tell if she was happy or upset to see him.

“I happened-” he began, faltered, then began again. “I happened to be coming by-”

When she dropped her hand, he could see that she was crying and that her mouth, contrarily, was turned up in a soft, grateful smile. Then she astonished him by hurrying down the hall and throwing her arms about his neck.