Kenny Part 34

"I'm not surprised," said Hughie. "From the minute I set foot here three years back, I said, and Hannah said, that Mr. Craig was a miser.

And it's common talk in the village."

But Kenny was off through the doorway with the will in his hand. Joan and Hughie followed him to the kitchen.

Here when the will had been read again commotion seized them all.

Hughie went out to the barn to hunt a spade, Hannah trotted about talking of wraps, Hetty found a lantern for Kenny and Kenny burned his fingers lighting it, and stepped on the cat. Joan soothed the outraged feline with a nervous laugh. There was madness in the air. In an interval of blank disgust in which he criticized the length of the cat's tail and the clarion quality of his yell, Kenny fumed off barnwards in search of Hughie. His excitement was compelling. Hannah headed a cloaked exodus from the kitchen, chirping an astonishment which she claimed was unprecedented in her quiet life.

They straggled up the orchard hill in a flutter.

It was snowing a little. The coldness of the air was soft and heavy.

Hannah and Hughie held the lanterns high and with a startling attack that made the dirt fly, Kenny began to dig.

The lantern light rayed off grotesquely through the leafless orchard but the silent group, intent upon the energetic digger, watched only the spot where the fan-like rays converged upon the spade. The wind, sharp, intermittent and bringing with it now and then a flurry of snow, flapped their clothes about them. Kenny, pausing to wipe his forehead, thought the night warm. Joan's eyes, dark, solemn, frightened, spurred him on to greater effort. He dug furiously, flinging earth in all directions. Hughie marvelled at his madcap speed and the strength of his sinewy arms. His jaw was set. His face, dark and vivid in the lantern light, shone with a boy's excitement. But when the wind came he looked defiant. They could not know that to him, then, the spirit of Adam Craig seemed to come with a sigh and a rustle and hover near them.

Hughie took his turn at the spade but to Kenny his methodical competence proved an irritant. He was glad when Hughie's back gave out and forced him to surrender.

"Mr. O'Neill," said Hannah flatly after what seemed an interminable interval of digging, "you've dug a hole big enough to bury yourself.

Mr. Craig's money couldn't be no further down than that. Myself I think you'd better let it go until morning. It's snowin' harder every minute and we'll all get our death of cold."

Kenny shuddered at the homely phrase. But he wiped the dirt and perspiration from his forehead and went off toward the kitchen in gloomy silence, his energy and optimism gone.

CHAPTER XXIV

DIGGING DOTS

So madness settled down upon the Craig farm.

Futile, flurried days of digging followed for which Kenny, delving desperately in his memory, supplied forgotten clues. Fearful lest the villagers might take it into their heads to climb the hill to Craig Farm and help them dig, he pledged every one to secrecy and went on digging, with Hughie at his heels. The suspense became fearful and depressing.

On the third day Hannah rebelled. The gloom and mystery were getting on her nerves.

"Hetty," she said irritably, "if you're standin' at the window there, figurin' out where Mr. Craig's money is likely to be buried, you can stop it this minute and clean the lamps. Your father's out pulling up the floor-boards in the barn and Mr. O'Neill's digging up the lilac bush for the third time. And that's enough. It beats me how Mr.

O'Neill can go on rememberin' so much now he's got his memory started.

He just seems to unravel things out of it overnight. It keeps me all worked up. I feel as if I ought to whisper when I speak and every night the minute I get to sleep I find myself diggin' in first one outlandish place and then another. And if I'm not diggin' in my sleep, your father is, with jerks and starts and grunts enough to wake the dead. I'm all unstrung. So far as I can see the only thing we're findin' is nerves. One thing I will say: It was dull and lonesome before Mr. O'Neill came and I missed him when he went but dear knows, it was peaceful. It's been one thing right after the other. Who upset Mr. Abbott in the river, I'd like to know, and almost hit him in the head with an oar? Who kept Mr. Craig so upset that he threw his brandy bottle at your father most every morning? Who sang the roan cow into kickin' at the milk? Who--"

"s.h.!.+" said Hetty.

It seemed that Mr. O'Neill at that minute was not digging up the lilac bush. There was a sound of hurried footsteps in the room beyond and he came in with a piece of letter paper in his hand.

"Look, Hannah," he cried. "Look! I found it among Mr. Craig's papers.

It's a rude chart of the farm, picked out here and there in dots."

Hannah wiped her arms and put on her gla.s.ses. The paper filled her with excitement.

"Sakes alive, Mr. O'Neill," she exclaimed, "what will you do now?"

"Do?" said Kenny wildly. "Do? There's only one thing to do, of course. Hughie and I will dig up the dots. I wish to Heaven I could find a Leprechaun somewhere under a thorn-bush."

"What's a Leper John?" demanded Hannah.

"A fairy shoemaker," explained Kenny absently, "in a red coat and he wears buckled shoes and knee-breeches and a hat with a peak and always he's mendin' a shoe that he doesn't finish, find him and never once let him trick you into lookin' away and he'll tell you where treasure is hidden, always."

Hannah blinked.

"What ye need most to my mind, Mr. O'Neill," she said earnestly, "is a regiment of grave-diggers and stone-cutters to help you and Hughie get the thing done."

Night came upon them with Hughie digging up a dot beside the well and Kenny again in the orchard. Everything led back somehow to the orchard, his memory, the chart, even his own conviction.

That night in a dream Kenny distinctly saw the weary little doctor with a bag of mystery in his hand and a spade over his shoulder walking down the orchard hill.

He awoke at dawn with a s.h.i.+ver of excitement. The doctor! What could be more reasonable? Adam had known him for a lifetime. Whom else would he trust? The thought nerved him to heroics.

Kenny climbed out of bed and dressed, s.h.i.+veringly conscious that the morning was cold enough to turn his breath to steam. It was that period of indistinctness moreover when farmers and roosters, he knew, were getting up all over the dawn, but Kenny, with little time and no inclination at all for melancholy rebellion, tip-toed down the stairway with his shoes in his hand. He put them on by the kitchen fire. There was water by the window in a milk-pail. He poured some in a basin, washed his face and hands and found the water cold enough to hurt his face. Still his excitement kept him keyed to a pitch of singular and optimistic hilarity. Through the kitchen window came the pale glimmer of snow. He hoped Hughie wouldn't hear him harnessing Nellie, and shoot at the barn. The possibility sent him to the kitchen stairway.

It wound upward in an old-fas.h.i.+oned twist to the room above.

"Hughie!" he called in a low voice. "Hughie!"

There was a noise of many creaks overhead.

"I'm going to hitch up Nellie and drive over to Dr. Cole's farm. I--I feel sure he buried the money!"

"G.o.d Almighty!" exclaimed Hughie.

But Kenny was already on his way to the kitchen door.

CHAPTER XXV

CHECKMATE!

Daylight came bleak and cold as Kenny drove rapidly up the doctor's lane. The aggrieved mare had traveled. Through the farm window, green with potted begonias, Kenny could see the doctor already at his breakfast. A young colored girl was pouring out his coffee. The doctor himself opened the door.

"Well, Mr. O'Neill," he exclaimed, "who's sick? Not Joan, I hope?"

"No," said Kenny, following the doctor back to the table. "No, n.o.body sick."

"Sit down," invited the doctor, "I always figure you can talk as well sitting as standing and you can rest. Won't you have some breakfast?"

"I couldn't eat," said Kenny. "Doctor," he added hoa.r.s.ely, "would it--be possible--for me--to speak to you--alone?"

The doctor nodded. In a life made up of emergencies as his was, nothing astonished him.

"Annie," he said kindly, "just tell Mrs. Cole not to hurry down to breakfast. And close the door."