The Wall Between Part 13

"You don't s'pose there'll be any danger 'bout the cows drinkin' here, do you?" Eliza inquired anxiously. "They do drink here, you know, and in the summer, when the water's low, they often wade right in. If they was to----"

She stopped.

"I never thought of that," Jane said in a discouraged tone. "Oh, my land, what are we going to do with it?"

She let the bag sink to the ground and, straightening herself up, confronted her sisters. "We've simply got to get it off our hands before Martin gets back."

"Oh, yes, yes!" pleaded Mary, affrighted. "Do something with it, Jane, no matter what. I never could stand it to have it carted back to the house and hidden there. 'Tain't safe. Besides, in these days of German spies, 'twould be an awful thing to be found on us. S'pose the house was to be searched. We never could make the police believe how we came to have it.

They might take us and shut us all up in prison--Martin and all."

Her voice shook with terror.

"I guess they wouldn't go arrestin' us, Mary," declared Jane soothingly.

"Still, I agree with you that it's just as well for us to be clear of such a thing; let me think."

While she stood meditating her two sisters watched her with perturbed faces.

"Ellen Webster's cows don't come up to this end of the pasture much, do they?" she remarked at last.

"No. Leastways I've never seen 'em here," replied Mary.

"Then why don't we sink the bag just across the wall?"

"On her land?" gasped Eliza.

"It wouldn't do any harm," argued Jane. "She never comes up here, nor her cows nor horses either. We'll climb right over and dump the thing in.

That'll settle Martin's ever finding it, an' everythin'."

"But s'pose----" Eliza objected once more.

"Oh, 'Liza, we can't stay here s'posin' all day!" Jane declared decisively. "We got to put this bag somewheres, an' there ain't any spot that ain't got some out about it. We must take a chance on the best one we can find."

"I'm frightened to death!" wailed Eliza.

"So'm I!" Mary echoed. "Oh, Jane!"

"No matter. Pull yourself together," ordered Jane sharply. "You two take a hold of the bag an' bring it along, while I climb the wall."

Ellen, stooping behind the elderberry bushes, held her breath. She saw Jane clamber over the barrier and help Mary and Eliza to mount it and lower the sack into her hands; then, just when the three invaders were all ready to drop their mysterious gray burden into the stream, she stepped noiselessly into the open and said loudly:

"What you doin' in my brook?"

A cry rose from the two more timorous Howes, and even Jane paled a little.

"What are you sinkin' in my brook?" repeated Ellen.

No answer came. Angered by their silence, the woman stepped nearer.

"What you got in that bag?" she demanded sternly.

Still there was no reply.

"You ain't got nothin' good in it, I'll be bound," went on the tormentor.

"If you had, you wouldn't be so mighty anxious to get rid of it. Come now, long's you're intendin' to heave it into the water on my side of the wall, s'pose you let me have a peep inside it."

Striding forward, she seized a corner of the canvas roughly in her hand.

There was a scream from the three Howes.

"Don't touch it!"

"Keep away!"

"You'd better leave it be, Miss Webster," Jane said in a warning voice.

"It's gunpowder."

"Gunpowder!" repeated Ellen.

"Yes."

"An' what, may I ask, are you doin' with a bag of gunpowder in my brook?

Plannin' to blow up my cows, I reckon."

"No! No, indeed we're not!" protested Mary.

"We wouldn't hurt your cows for anything, Miss Webster," put in Eliza.

"Humph! You wouldn't? Still you don't hesitate to dam my brook up with enough gunpowder to blow all my cattle higher'n a kite."

"We were only tryin' to----" began Mary; but Jane swept her aside.

"Hush, Mary," she said. "You an' 'Liza keep still an' let me do the talkin'."

Drawing herself to her full height she faced Ellen's evil smile.

"The day before yesterday, when we were cleanin' the attic, we found a little door under the eaves that we'd never come across before," she began desperately. "We discovered it when we were movin' out a big chest that's always stood there. We were sweepin' behind all the trunks an' things, an'

long's we were, we decided to sweep behind that. 'Twas then we spied the door. Of course we were curious to know where it went to, an' so we pried it open, an' inside we found this bag together with an old rusty rifle. It must 'a' been there years, judgin' from the dust an' cobwebs collected on it. We were pretty scared of the gun," declared Jane, smiling reminiscently, "but we were scared a good sight worse when after draggin'

the bag out we saw 'twas marked _Gunpowder._"

She waited an instant.

"We didn't know what to do with it," she went on, speaking more hesitatingly, "because you see my brother doesn't like us to turn the house upside-down with cleanin'; he hates havin' things disturbed; an' we were afraid he would be put out to find what we'd done. So we decided to wait till some time when he wasn't round an' make way with it."

Jane caught her breath.

"We've tried lots of ways," she confessed wearily, "but none of 'em seemed to work. First I thought of hidin' it up near Pine Ridge, but I was afraid some woodsman might happen on it; then I started to take it down to the river in our wagon; but Elias Barnes would get in an' light his pipe, and I was so afraid a spark from it might----"

"I wish it had!" interpolated Ellen Webster with fervor.