CHAPTER XVIII MAJOR MONTAGUE’S PLANS THWARTED

At very nearly the hour when Bar Vernon and Val Manning set out for that day’s fishing on Skanigo, a big, well-dressed man was standing in the front door of an “east side” hotel in the great city, absorbed, apparently, in some deep and gloomy train of thought.

“Not a trace of him,” he muttered. “Oh, what a fool I was to let him go! He never seemed half so valuable before. And then, those papers! Blessings brighten as they take their flight. Gone, completely gone, after keeping my hold on him and them so long. That’s what comes of getting too drunk. A fit of pity is sure to follow. Always so with me. Now, as far as I can see, my best hold is on these swells that have taken him in tow. No use trying to bully men like them. They’d only laugh at me. Only show is to sell out to ’em. They’d work it out better’n I could, anyway, seeing I’m debarred so[Pg 219] many privileges; but they shan’t do it without letting me in for my share. I feel safe about Bar. He’ll never open that thing till the time comes. Queer fellow ’bout some things. Anyhow, I must make my trade before then. I’ll go right down to old Danvers’s office this very morning and set the wires a-working. Make hay while the sun shines.”

A very important decision was that of Major Montague, and it might have had an immediate effect upon the tenor of Bar Vernon’s “new time,” if he had been permitted to carry it into effect.

Alas for the Major and his plans, however, that sunny morning!

On an opposite corner of the street, at that very moment, a tall, foreign-looking gentleman was leaning over and talking low to a short, broad, keen-eyed man, as he pointed in the direction of the Major.

“That’s the chap. You might as well spot him now. May not have another chance. Of course it wouldn’t do to have him convicted. He’d squeal too loud. But he must be put out of the way for a while.”

“Free board at a public institution for six[Pg 220] months,” returned the short man. “Will that do, Prosper?”

“That or thereabouts,” replied Prosper; “but he mustn’t see me. Go on.”

And Prosper drew back and disappeared around the corner; but, in another minute, a hand was laid lightly on Major Montague’s arm, and an oddly deferential voice said to him:

“My dear Major, you’re wanted.”

Pale indeed grew the rosy face of the Major, for he seemed to need no second look to establish the identity of the new arrival.

“Will you come up to my room with me and let me get my things?” he asked, huskily.

“Not just now, thank you,” replied the short man, “but I’ll send for them and have them brought down to your new hotel for you.”

Paler still grew the Major’s face, but, although half as large again as the short, broad man, he walked silently and unresistingly away with him.

Why?

Oh, nothing. Only that other man, though none of the best, so far as he himself was concerned, had walked up to Major Montague in the[Pg 221] character of the law, and the hand so lightly laid upon the Major’s arm had been that of power, and all such men as he wilt like dying plants when they are brought into contact with those two things.

Honesty greets the law as a brother, and charity shakes hands with power. Major Montague’s hand was shaking, indeed, but not in that way. Before Bar Vernon sat down to his broiled perch at Puff Evans’s table, his far-away uncle had been provided with quarters in a “new hotel” that was very old and musty, but from which he would make no calls on Judge Danvers until the Law should say to Power that “bail” had been found, or that other reasons required a further change of boarding-place for the Major.

A strange “hotel” was that, with such strong doors and locks, and such carefully guarded windows. Perfectly “burglar-proof,” one would be inclined to think, and yet more burglars and other thieves got into it in the course of a year than into all the other hotels in the great city put together. Only some of them had too little difficulty in getting in and too much in getting out.

[Pg 222]Neither Bar Vernon nor any of his friends knew what had become of Major Montague, and perhaps none of them would have cared to ask, unless reminded of him in some way.

Bar himself was too crammed full of the thoughts and things of his “new time” to dwell much just now upon the old or its individual characters.

When he and Val reached home that evening they found that Mrs. Wood had kindly kept a good supper and a mild scolding ready for them, and that George Brayton was also waiting till they should get through with both and come up-stairs.

They made a fair report of their operations on the lake, but did not seem to think the assistant principal of the Academy would be interested in their new mechanical contrivances. At all events, they did not say a word to him about the “trap.”

He on his part listened to all that they had to tell with a degree of kindly sympathy which would have won for him the unmeasured contempt of Mrs. Dryer; but the main point of his curiosity, after all, was as to how much Latin had[Pg 223] been captured in the intervals between the “bites.”

Here, however, Brayton was destined to be altogether surprised.

“Shall I hear you recite?” he said to Bar. “I can ask you questions as we go along.”

Bar handed him the grammar, open at the title page, saying:

“That’s where I began,” and immediately launched out into a repetition of every word on it.

Brayton listened with an amused and curious air, and turned the leaf as Bar reached the “date of publication” at the bottom.

Next came the preface, and then the introduction, and Bar waded rapidly but almost unerringly through them.

“That’ll do,” said Brayton. “Have you gone any farther?”

“Yes,” said Bar.

“How far?”

“About half a mile, I should say,” replied Bar, with the first sign of a smile he had given. “You told me to begin at the beginning.”

“And I should say you had,” said Brayton.[Pg 224] “It will take you long enough to digest all that. To-morrow you may take up your Greek, and I’ll try to make up my own mind how on earth I’d better go to work with yours. You’ve a good one. The only question is what to do with it.”

“That’s just what I’d like to know,” said Bar. “I’ve done a good many things with it already, but most of them don’t suit me very well.”

“We’ll talk about it hereafter,” said Brayton, thoughtfully. “You and Mr. Manning may go now. I think you have done a good day’s work.”

So they had, but George Brayton had no notion of what the best part of it—the hardest, at all events—consisted. Neither had it yet been completed, and the boys retired to their own room to give the matter due consideration.

A large, pleasant room it was, at the rear of the house, and one of its windows opened upon the sloping roof of the one-story back-building which old Judge Wood, in his pride, had deemed necessary to complete the proportions of his mansion.

“He must have foreseen our necessities,” remarked Bar. “You know, Val, it won’t do for[Pg 225] anybody to see us go out or come in. Now there isn’t a tree anywhere else within four rods of the house, but that old maple yonder leans clean over the back roof.”

“Easy enough to get into that and slide down,” said Val. “I guess other boys that have boarded with Mrs. Wood must have done it many a time. I never had this room before.”

“We’ll start about ten o’clock,” said Bar. “It’s going to be a pretty dark night. Stars, but no moon till very late. That’s just what we want.”

“Moonshine enough last night,” said Val.

“Well,” replied Bar, “wasn’t it about midnight? That’ll be just when we want it. Now we must do some studying, or I must, and then we’ll go to bed for awhile.”

Val hardly knew what to make of a fellow who could pick up a Latin grammar and go to work so doggedly under such circumstances.

He could not have done it, to save his life, but he managed to get fairly interested in “Ivanhoe” while Bar was studying.

Neither of the city boys had given a moment’s thought that day, as to the notions formed of[Pg 226] them by the young gentlemen of the village, important as they were likely to find that very thing.

They might, indeed, have been surprised if they had known how very thoroughly they had been discussed, or how largely their arrival entered into the current plans and calculations of Zebedee Fuller and his friends.

“Now, Zeb,” said Hy Allen, as they sat on the log by the mill-dam after taking their accustomed swim, “we all know Val Manning well enough, and he wasn’t so very hard to manage.”

“Young aristocrat,” growled Zeb. “Thinks he’s a mile and a half above us Ogleport boys. And this new chap that’s come along with him, he’s ten times worse than Val. They’re boarding at Ma’am Wood’s, you know, and so’s Brayton. He’ll take ’em right in charge, and they’ll get in on everything ahead of us. Tell you what, boys, those fellows have got to have a setting down. Here they’ve bought the best boat on all Skanigo first day they got here.”

Perhaps, if the truth were told, Zeb’s jealousy was very much less on account of the boat, or good clothes, or even “citified ways,” after all,[Pg 227] than because the objects of his dislikes were domiciled with George Brayton.

Somehow or other, Zeb had acquired a feeling of “ownership” for the new teacher, and was very much disposed to resent what looked like an invasion of his vested rights.

“There’s only two of ’em,” vaguely suggested Bill Jones.

“Don’t know how many are coming,” replied Zeb. “I move we take proper measures for the subjugation of these two before the rest get here.”

“I’m in for that!” exclaimed Hy Allen, whose somewhat pugnacious cast of features indicated very faithfully the character of their owner.

Hy was half a head taller than Zeb Fuller, and decidedly his superior, physically, only such a thing as a quarrel, or even a test of strength with his “chieftain” had probably never occurred to him.

The subject of the “new boys” had been coming up again and again all day, and had gone far towards neutralizing the happiness which the bell and heifer mystery might otherwise have supplied.

[Pg 228]It was now, however, becoming threadbare and distasteful, for the time, and the council at the mill-dam slowly broke up and dispersed, even Zeb Fuller’s nearest friends finding some other errand, so that he was all alone when he met the Rev. Dr. Dryer as he walked up the street towards his father’s house.

“Looks as if the indelicate conduct of the dun heifer weighed on his spirits,” soliloquized Zeb. “No, I’ll not give Solomon an excuse for saying I avoid him. Good-evening, Dr. Dryer.”

Zeb’s face had nearly recovered from the effects of his combat with the Rodney vagabonds, but it was not at any time specially adapted to the look of dignified benevolence he now tried to make it assume.

Dr. Dryer, at sight of Zeb Fuller, had been taken possession of by one idea, however, and he failed to appreciate the effort.

“Zebedee,” he exclaimed, with deep solemnity of manner, “how did that cow get into the Academy?”

“Not a single long word,” thought Zeb, “and that’s bad for Solomon.” He, however, answered promptly:

[Pg 229]“Dr. Dryer, that matter troubles me. There’s something supernatural about it.”

“Supernatural?”

“Ghostly!” said Zeb. “This village is going to the bad.”

“Zebedee!” exclaimed the Doctor. “Are you so lost as that? Do you believe in ghosts?”

“Firmly,” responded Zeb. “Ogleport is getting full of them. I don’t know what we shall do when Mrs. Wood’s lot get back again for the winter.”

“I must see your father about this,” said the Doctor, with an ominous wag of his head.

“Do, please,” replied Zeb; “I don’t know what’s to become of Mr. Brayton, who seems a deserving young man, or those poor boys from the city.”

The Doctor gazed very hard at Zeb through his spectacles, and half wished that he had his wife with him; but the youth said something about his own cows to the effect that he hoped the ghosts would let them alone, and marched steadily away up the street.

“Remarkable!” exclaimed the Doctor. “Superstition assailing the uneducated intellect of[Pg 230] even this favored generation. This must be looked to. I wonder what Mrs. Dryer will say now?”

He wondered less an hour or so later, when he consulted his beloved Dorothy Jane in the presence of Euphemia.

“Father,” said Zeb to the deacon, when he came back from the cow pasture, “if old Sol comes to consult you about supernatural noises and appearances at the Academy, I wish you would humor him a little.”

“Zebedee, what’s up now?”

“Hard to tell,” said Zeb. “Old Sol seems unable to comprehend how that bell managed to rope in his dun heifer.”

“I don’t wonder,” replied the deacon, with a very sharp look at his heir; but he and Mrs. Fuller had been talking the matter over, and had decided not to press Zeb too closely about it.

“I’m doing all I can for this village,” said Zeb to himself, that night, “but I fear an increase of activity will shortly be demanded.”