The Rival Campers Ashore Part 30

"Yes; come along?" replied Henry Burns. But John Ellison was too full of his plan to admit of sport, and they separated, with the agreement to meet on the following day.

John Ellison was correct in his surmise that Mrs. Ellison would oppose his intention to work for Colonel Witham. Indeed, Mrs. Ellison wouldn't hear of it at all, at first. It seemed to her a disgrace, almost, to ask favour at the hands of one who, she firmly believed, had somehow tricked them out of their own. But John Ellison was firm.

It would be only for a little time, at most; only that he might, at opportune moments, look about in hope of making some discovery.

"But what can it possibly accomplish?" urged Mrs. Ellison. "Lawyer Estes has had the mill searched a dozen times, and there has been nothing found. How can you expect to find anything? Colonel Witham wouldn't give you the chance, anyway. He's always around the mill now, and he's been over it a hundred times, himself, I dare say. Remember how we've seen his light there night after night?"

But John Ellison was not to be convinced nor thwarted. "I want to hunt for myself," he insisted. "You kept it from me, before, when the lawyers had the searches made."

"I know it," sighed Mrs. Ellison. "I hated to tell you that we were in danger of losing the mill."

"Well, I'm going," declared John Ellison, and Mrs. Ellison gave reluctant consent.

Still, she might have saved herself the trouble of objecting, and let Colonel Witham settle the matter--which he did, summarily.

It was warm, and miller Witham, uncomfortable at all times in summer sultriness, was doubly so in the hot, dusty atmosphere of the mill. The dust from the meal settled on his perspiring face and distressed him; the dull grinding of the huge stones and the whirr of the shaftings and drums somehow did not sound in his ears so agreeably as he had once fancied they would. There was something oppressive about the place--or something in the air that caused him an unexplainable uneasiness--and he stood in the doorway, looking unhappy and out of sorts.

He saw two boys come briskly down the road from the Ellison farm and turn up the main road in the direction of the mill. As they approached, he recognized them, and retired within the doorway. To his surprise, they entered.

"Well, what is it?" he demanded shortly as John Ellison and Henry Burns stood confronting him. "What do you want? I won't have boys around the mill, you know. Always in the way, and I'm busy here."

"Why, you see," replied John Ellison, turning colour a bit but speaking firmly, "we don't want to bother you nor get in the way; but I--I want to get some work to do. I'm big enough and strong enough to work, now, and I heard you wanted a man. I came to see if you wouldn't hire me."

Colonel Witham's face was a study. Taken all by surprise, he seemed to know scarcely what to say. He s.h.i.+fted uneasily and the drops of perspiration rolled from his forehead. He mopped his face with a big, red handkerchief, and looked s.h.i.+ftily from one boyish face to the other.

"Why, I did say I wanted help," he admitted; "but,"--and he glanced at the youth who had spoken,--"I didn't say I wanted a boy. No, you won't do."

"Why, I'm big enough to do the haying," urged John Ellison. "You've got the mill now. You might give me a job, I think."

Possibly some thought of this kind might have found fleeting lodgment in the colonel's brain; of Jim Ellison, who used to sit at the desk in the corner; of the son that now asked him for work. Then a crafty, suspicious light came into his eyes, and he glanced quickly at John Ellison's companion.

"What do you want here, Henry Burns?" he demanded. "I had you in my hotel at Samoset Bay once, and you brought me bad luck. You get out. I don't want you around here. Get out, I say."

He moved threateningly toward Henry Burns, and the boy, seeing it was useless to try to remain, stepped outside.

"No, I don't want you, either," said Colonel Witham, turning abruptly now to John Ellison. "No boys around this mill. I don't care if your father did own it. You can't work here. I've no place for you."

Despite his bl.u.s.tering and almost threatening manner, however, Colonel Witham did not offer to thrust John Ellison from the mill. He seemed on the point of doing it, but something stopped him. He couldn't have told what. But he merely repeated his refusal, and turned away.

It was only boyish impulse on John Ellison's part, and an innocent purchaser of the mill would have laughed at him; but he stepped nearer to Colonel Witham and said, earnestly, "You'll have to let me in here some day, Colonel Witham. The mill isn't yours, and you know it." And he added, quickly, as the thought occurred to him, "Perhaps the fortune-teller you saw at the circus will tell me more than she told you. Perhaps she'll tell me where the papers are."

For a moment Colonel Witham's heavy face turned deathly pale, and he leaned for support against one of the beams of the mill. Then the colour came back into his face with a rush, and he stamped angrily on the floor.

"Confound you!" he cried. "You clear out, too. I don't know anything about your fortune-tellers, and I don't care. I've got no time to fool away with boys. Now get out."

John Ellison walked slowly to the door, leaving the colonel mopping his face and turning alternately white and red; and as he stepped outside Colonel Witham dropped into a chair.

Then, as the boys went on together up the hill to the Ellison farm, Colonel Witham, recovering in a measure from the shock he had received, arose from his chair, somewhat unsteady on his legs, and began, for the hundredth and more time, a weary, fruitless search of the old mill, from the garret to the very surface of the water flowing under it.

And as Colonel Witham groped here and there, in dusty corners, he muttered, "What on earth did he mean? The fortune-teller--how could he know of that? There's witchcraft at work somewhere. But there aren't any papers in this mill. I know it. I know it. I know it."

And still he kept up his search until it was long past the time for shutting down.

Three days after this, Lawyer Estes was talking to John Ellison at the farmhouse.

"Well, I've run down your witch," he said, smiling; "and there isn't anything to be made out of her. I've been clear to the fair-grounds at Newbury to see her. She's a shrewd one; didn't take her long to see that something was up. Sized me up for a lawyer, I guess, and shut up tighter than a clam. I told her what I knew, but she swore Tim Reardon was mistaken.

"Those people have a fear of getting mixed up with the courts; naturally suspicious, I suppose. She declared she had said that the man she talked with asked about some letters he had lost, himself; and that was all she knew about it. No use in my talking, either. I didn't get anything more out of her. We're right where we were before."

"Well, I'm going to get into that mill and look around, just the same,"

exclaimed John Ellison. "I'll do it some way."

"Then you'll be committing trespa.s.s," said Lawyer Estes, cautiously.

"I don't care," insisted the boy. "I won't be doing any harm. I'm not going to touch anything that isn't ours. But I'm going to look."

"Then don't tell me about it," said the lawyer. "I couldn't be a party to a proceeding like that."

"No, but I know who will," said John Ellison. "It's Henry Burns. He won't be afraid of looking through an old mill at night--and he'll know a way to do it, too."

John Ellison tramped into town, that afternoon, and hunted up his friend.

"Why, of course," responded Henry Burns; "it's easy. Jack and I'll go with you. It won't do any harm, just to walk through a mill." And he added, laughing, "You know we've been in there once before. Remember the night we told you of?"

John Ellison looked serious.

"Yes," he replied, "and there was something queer about that, too, wasn't there? You said father went through the mill, upstairs and down, just the same as Witham does often now."

"He did, sure enough," said Henry Burns, thoughtfully. "I wish I'd known what trouble was coming some day; I'd have tried to follow him. Well, we'll go through all right--but what about Witham?"

"That's just what I've been thinking," said John Ellison.

"Well," replied Henry Burns, after some moments' reflection, "leave it to me. I'll fix that part of it. And supposing the worst should happen and he catch us all in there, what could he do? We'll get Jack and Tom and Bob--yes, and Tim, too; he's got sharp eyes. Witham can't lick us all. If he catches us, we'll just have to get out. He wouldn't make any trouble; he knows what people think about him and the mill."

So John Ellison left it to Henry Burns; and the latter set about his plans in his own peculiar and individual way. The scheme had only to be mentioned to Jack and the others, to meet with their approval. They were ready for anything that Henry Burns might suggest. The idea that a night search, of premises which had already been hunted over scores of times by daylight, did not offer much hope of success, had little weight with them. If Henry Burns led, they would follow.

The night finally selected by Henry Burns and John Ellison would have made a gloomy companion picture to the one when Harvey and Henry Burns first made their entry into the mill, under the guidance of Bess Thornton, except that it did not rain. Henry Burns and John Ellison had noted the favourable signs of the weather all afternoon; how the heavy clouds were gathering; how the gusts whipped the dust into little whirlwinds and blew flaws upon the surface of the stream; how the waning daylight went dim earlier than usual; and they had voted it favourable for the enterprise.

Wherefore, there appeared on the surface of Mill stream, not long after sundown, two canoes that held, respectively, Henry Burns and Harvey and Tim Reardon, and Tom Harris and Bob White. These two canoes, not racing now, but going along side by side in friendly manner, sped quietly and swiftly upstream in the direction of the Ellison dam. Then, arriving within sight of it, they waited on the water silently for a time, until two figures crept along the sh.o.r.e and hailed them. These were John and James Ellison.

"It's all right," said John Ellison, in answer to an inquiry; "Witham's at home, and the place is deserted. And who do you suppose is on watch up near the Half Way House, to let us know if Witham comes out? Bess Thornton. I let her in on the secret, because I knew she'd help. She knows what Old Witham is."

"Have you got it?" inquired Henry Burns, mysteriously.

"Sure," responded John Ellison. "It's up close by the mill. Come on."

They paddled up close to the white foam that ran from the foot of the dam, where the falling water of the stream struck the basin below, and turned the canoes insh.o.r.e. There, up the bank, John Ellison produced the mysterious object of Henry Burns's inquiry. It proved to be an old wash-boiler.

Harvey and the others eyed it with astonishment.