CHAPTER XI WILLING HANDS

An unusually fine-looking man was George Brayton, only his full beard and mustache, and his length and strength of limb, made him seem at least three years older than he really was.

Perhaps Effie Dryer would have been less afraid of him if she had known that he was but twenty-three, hardly more than four years older than herself.

It was not so easy as the reverend doctor could have wished, however, for him to look dignifiedly down upon a man who overtopped him by a head and outweighed him by at least fifty pounds of clear bone and muscle.

An evil-disposed person might have added:

“And who had forgotten more before he left college than the Academy principal had ever known in all his born days.”

That was a thing, however, which Dr. Dryer could hardly have imagined of any human being,[Pg 135] even while he half-scornfully admitted his new assistant’s greater familiarity with the chemical apparatus and “all that new-fangled trash.”

Brayton had given a decidedly vivid account of Zeb’s valorous behavior on the road, but he had failed to repeat that young worthy’s exact statement of the relations between himself and “old Sol.”

Effie knew very well that he was keeping back something, but he was altogether too new an acquaintance to ask any questions of, and she was compelled to smother her curiosity in a general “wonder” what it could be that made Mr. Brayton’s face look so very much as if he were trying not to laugh.

As for Mrs. Dryer, that lady smiled all the evening on the handsome newcomer, and every time she smiled it seemed to cost her more of an effort. In fact, before the evening was over, George Brayton had one thoroughly rooted enemy in Ogleport, and, when the doctor and his wife found themselves once more alone, the first thing that smote upon his ears was:

“Board with us? That fellow, with all his airs and graces? He board in our house? No,[Pg 136] indeed! Let him go to old Mrs. Wood’s, or to anybody that’ll take him. My advice to you is that you get rid of that kind of an assistant as soon as ever you can.”

“Why, Dorothy Jane, my dear——”

“Don’t talk to me, Mr. Dryer. Haven’t I your true interests at heart? Don’t you s’pose I can see what’s coming? It’ll be just like a young minister in a church. Everybody’ll go mad about him. All the girls’ll be setting their caps for him. All the old women’ll be inviting him to tea, so’s to give their daughters a chance. The young men’ll hate him, that’s a comfort. Such a fellow won’t have any control over the boys, neither. Why, he actually laughed twenty times this very evening.”

A very hearty and wholesome laugh, indeed, had been that of George Brayton—not at all the sort to bring upon him the enmity of the young men, but they were a part of the community which Mrs. Dr. Dryer had never very thoroughly understood, and it might be she was as much mistaken about them now as she had been in her younger days, if that sort of woman ever really has any.

[Pg 137]The next morning dawned peacefully enough upon the sleepy-looking homes of Ogleport, but there was a general sense of insecurity pervading the entire community. Perhaps, if anybody had succeeded in expressing the common feeling, it would have been a “Wonder where Zeb Fuller won’t turn up next?”

Old Mr. Parker came down from the East hill in the middle of the forenoon, full of a wrathfully determined investigation of the raid on his orchard during the day before.

He listened with half incredulous amazement to the account the miller gave him of Zeb’s rescue of Dr. Dryer’s cows, and thus responded:

“Brother Todderley, if that’s true I begin to have my doubts. I don’t see how any apple tree in these parts could well be robbed if Zeb Fuller wasn’t there. It doesn’t seem to stand to reason, somehow.”

“Squire Parker,” replied the miller, “there’s worse boys in these parts than Deacon Fuller’s son. He saved my life the other day, and I believe he’s got the making of a great man in him.”

“There he is, now!” exclaimed Parker, pointing[Pg 138] to a group of boys gathered at the mill-dam. “I’d like to know what mischief’s on foot this time.”

“You won’t learn by asking,” said the miller, but his friend exclaimed:

“Anyhow, I’m going to take a look at that crowd of boys.”

As they approached, Zeb arose from the log on which he had been sitting and greeted them ceremoniously.

“Good-morning, Mr. Todderley. Glad to see you, Mr. Parker; I was thinking of coming to see you.”

“To see me?”

“Yes,” said Zeb; “I was going to ask if you had any sweet apples to sell.”

“You young rascal, what do you know about my apples?”

“Your apples?” cried Zeb, with a surprised air. “Why, has anything happened to them? That was one thing I meant to speak about if I came to see you. I noticed the other day that you are careless about them. I’m afraid you’ve left ’em out over night, hanging on the trees. Have any of ’em run away?”

[Pg 139]“Run away!”

“That’s it. I was afraid it would be so,” moralized Zeb. “Just like old Sol Dryer’s cows. There’s nothing sure in this world, Mr. Parker. Nothing but death and taxes.”

“Brother Todderley!” exclaimed the angry old farmer, “I believe he knows all about it. I’ll go right and see his father, at once. I don’t believe a word of that cow business—not a word of it.”

“Look at his eye, Brother Parker,” argued the miller, as he hurried to keep pace with his longer-legged friend. “Look at his eye. Didn’t get that fighting with your apples. No use, Parker. Look at his eye.”

“Eye! Eye!” exclaimed Parker. “What do I care about his eye? What I want to know is, what went with my apples?”

That was a question the fat miller could not undertake to answer, and he had hardly breath left for any other by the time they reached the mill.

Before noon half of Ogleport was disputing with the other half whether Zeb Fuller could have been in old Parker’s orchard and up in[Pg 140] Rodney at the same time, for there was more than a little common sympathy with the idea that no out-and-out mischief was probable in Zeb’s absence.

He had indeed been present in the flesh at but one point at a time, but the general impression was hardly so far wrong as it might have been.

“Boys,” Zeb had remarked to his faithful followers, “we did splendidly yesterday, all of us, but there’s troublesome times ahead. I understand that that city fellow’s coming back to the Academy next term, and there’ll be twice as many boarders as ever before.”

“Can’t we fix ’em just as we’ve always done?” asked Hy Allen.

“Either one of us can lick Val Manning,” said Bill Jones.

Several more of the larger boys added their confident self-assurance that the boys of Ogleport were likely to be equal to any emergency which could possibly arise, but Zeb shook his head wisely as he remarked:

“That’s all very well, so long as we only had old Sol to handle, but this new man’s a very different sort of a fellow.”

[Pg 141]“I ain’t afraid of him,” said Hy Allen.

“Nor I.”

“Nor I.”

“Nor I,” responded half a dozen voices, but Zeb Fuller again shook his head.

“That ain’t it, boys; the new man’s all right, and we must kind o’ stand by him, but there’ll be great times at the Academy this fall and winter, and we must be ready for ’em.”

It was all very mysterious and oracular, nor could Zeb himself have fully explained his prophetic meaning, but he related to his friends how George Brayton had rescued him from the three vagabonds of Rodney, and not a boy of them but dimly comprehended the possibility of something new and stirring, if old Sol was to be re?nforced by a man of that sort.

“I think, boys,” said Zeb, at last, “it’s our first duty to explore the Academy. Not one of us has been inside of it for two months.”

There was no gainsaying a piece of generalship like that, and the conclave broke up immediately, only to find its way, in squads of various sizes, to the long double line of sheds at the back of the village green.

[Pg 142]Under cover of these, it was easy enough to reach, unseen, a point directly in the rear of the barn-like white edifice which the wisdom of successive generations had consecrated to learning.

But it was not the outside of the Academy building which Zeb and his friends had come to explore.

Neither did they perplex themselves by fruitless attempts at any of the well-locked doors.

A board of proper length was promptly placed below one of the first-floor windows in the rear, not more than ten feet from the ground, and Hy Allen was clinging to the window-sill in a twinkling.

“Fastened on the inside,” he exclaimed, after a fruitless effort.

“Come down, then,” said Zeb. “We must try another.”

And so they did, but with a result that was but faintly expressed by Zeb Fuller’s final declaration:

“Something wrong, boys. Old Sol’s been plotting against us again. It won’t do for us to go around in front. Not in broad daylight. But we must look out for our rights. Next[Pg 143] thing we shall have a rebellion among the teachers after the school begins.”

The symptoms threatened something of the kind, doubtless, but just then one of the smaller boys, who had been acting as a sort of scout or sentinel, came up with the intelligence that a large wagon was being hauled across the green, towards the Academy, and that it was accompanied by the principal himself, with two or three of the trustees and a stranger, on foot.

“Hurrah!” shouted Zeb. “That’s the new apparatus. Boys, we’re in the right place at the right time. It would never do to let that stuff be stowed away without our help. We’d never know where half of it went to.”

No wonder the boys of Ogleport had such blind faith in Zeb Fuller’s leadership.

When the wagon was pulled up in front of the steps leading to the door of the “lecture room,” in the rear “addition” to the main building of the Academy, Dr. Dryer could hardly repress an exclamation of surprise at the amount and energy of the “popular aid” which awaited the unloading of that cargo of scientific goods.

[Pg 144]Not that anything very remarkable showed itself through the numerous pine-boxes, but Mr. George Brayton, in the simplicity of his heart, deemed it a most encouraging sign that so many of his future pupils should take so deep an interest in such a matter.

At all events, the strong and willing hands of Zeb Fuller and the rest made the transfer of those boxes to the lecture-room floor a very brief and easy piece of work.

“Now, Mr. Brayton,” said Zeb, “you’ll want to show what’s in them. I’ll go for a hatchet and chisel, and we’ll have ’em open.”

“Bring a saw, too,” said Brayton, but Dr. Dryer wagged his reverend head somewhat suspiciously. Never before had the boys of Ogleport taken so deep an interest in the affairs of the village institution.

That was a great day for Zeb and his friends, nevertheless. They could hardly be persuaded to go home to dinner.

The worst of it all, if Dr. Dryer had only known it, was the frequency with which the keen eyes of his pupils detected him in turning over to his assistant the various questions propounded[Pg 145] by the excited “trustees” as to the use of this, that, and the other contrivance of glass or brass.