CHAPTER XXIII THE BELL MYSTERY REMAINS UNSOLVED

To say that the usual amount of sleeping was done in Ogleport that night would be to trifle with truth but, for all that, everybody was astir bright and early the next morning.

Why not, when there would be so remarkable an opportunity for everybody to ask everybody else:

“What do you think about it?”

Even Zeb Fuller’s name was less frequently on the lips of men than on the former occasion, for this was something apparently beyond him.

And yet Zeb’s “chores” had been done at railway speed that morning, and there was that in his eyes which might have been very suggestive to a man that knew him well.

Hardly had Bar and Val finished their breakfast before word was brought them by Mrs. Wood that the Fuller boy was asking for them.[Pg 282] “And you’d better look out for him or he’ll get you into all sorts of difficulty.”

Zebedee’s errand was a very peaceful and proper one, however, for he merely proposed to join them in their day on the lake, if they were going, and to show them some things he reckoned they had not yet seen.

It is possible that George Brayton would have willingly kept Bar and Val within reach that day, but they were off with Zeb before he had a chance to offer any objection. Very quiet was Zeb, till the three were well out of the village, and then he turned suddenly upon Bar, with:

“He’d ha’ found it out, after all, if it hadn’t been for me.”

“Why,” said Bar, somewhat taken by surprise, “did you find it out?”

“Can’t say I did,” said Zeb, as if ashamed of such a confession, “but I knew that rope along the timber and under that wheel had something to do with it. So I kept between him and that as much as I could.”

“He’d ha’ Found It Out, if It Hadn’t been for Me”

“You’re a trump, Zeb,” shouted Bar. “I wondered myself how it was he failed to see that, dark as it was, when they had so many lanterns.[Pg 283] But there they were, all of them looking up and couldn’t see it.”

“Brayton’s was the only good pair of eyes among ’em,” said Zeb, “and he was looking up, too, most of the time. But will it toll again?”

“How should I know?” asked Bar.

“Look here,” exclaimed Zeb; “there isn’t another chap in or about Ogleport that can do that belfry climbing. Brayton understands that as well as I do.”

“I’m afraid he does,” said Val, thoughtfully. “If there should be a wind this afternoon, now?”

“Oh! that’s it, is it?” exclaimed Zeb. “Why didn’t I think of that before? I give it up. You fellows beat me. To think that I should never have thought of the wind!”

There was little more to be done except to explain the exact particulars, and when Bar had done that, Zeb stopped in front of him and removed from his head the broad-brimmed and somewhat battered “straw,” saying,

“Barnaby Vernon, you can take my hat. I think I must emigrate.”

“Emigrate?” said Val Manning.

[Pg 284]“Yes,” replied Zeb, dolefully; “there isn’t room for him and me in the same village. And yet I must remain and see how he and Solomon will work together. Old Sol has his eye on you, my boy, but you needn’t be afraid of George Brayton. I’ve great confidence in George.”

But the boys were not the only part of the village population that continued to be exercised about the bell business.

Dr. Dryer instituted what he called “an exhaustive analysis of the mysterious phenomenon” at an early hour in the forenoon, but he never put his head above the “deck,” and he acquired no additional wisdom.

Brayton had deemed his own search of the previous night sufficient for the present, and he had, besides, some private matters of his own to attend to that day.

His morning mail had brought him news of some of these, and had sent him to Mrs. Wood with a request that she would prepare a room for his mother and sister, who were coming to pay him a visit.

There was no reason, thought his landlady, why he should get so very much flushed in the[Pg 285] face about it; but George Brayton did not care the rest of that day whether the Academy had one bell or ten.

Mrs. Dryer did, however, and she talked “bell” till her pretty stepdaughter could stand it no longer, but put on her bonnet for a very aimless flight among her neighbors.

There, too, it was the bell, the bell, till poor Effie reached a state of mind which led her to say to George Brayton, when she met him crossing the green:

“Please don’t speak to me. I don’t want to hear another word about it.”

“About what?” asked the very much astonished young man.

“That dreadful bell!” exclaimed Effie.

“Oh! I’d forgotten there was one,” replied Brayton. “You see, I’ve good news this morning. My mother and sister are coming to see me——”

“How very pleasant!” interrupted Effie; “and they know nothing about the bell—there, my hat. Oh, dear me! there it goes again!”

There it went, sure enough, Effie’s very pretty hat, with George Brayton after it halfway across[Pg 286] the green, and at that moment and with the breath of that one sudden gust, the obnoxious character in the steeple had uttered a grating and sonorous warning that there was life and mischief in him yet.

Just that one malicious effort did the village monster make, but that was enough, and in five minutes more there were a hundred pairs of eyes straining up at the steeple on all sides, and Dr. Dryer, accompanied by his faithful “third,” was striding across the green with the key in his hand.

Even in that moment of concentrated thought and feeling, however, Mrs. Dryer’s vision swept in all the surrounding circumstances, and she exclaimed, in the tone of an injured angel:

“I told you so. There’s Effie with George Brayton out there on the green, and she’s bare-headed, too. It’s awful! There, he’s had her hat in his hand. Doctor, what do you say to such doings? Are you a post?”

“A humble pillar, I hope, Dorothy Jane,” replied the Doctor, but there was no time for anything more.

“Are you not going to help them?” asked Effie of Brayton.

[Pg 287]“No, indeed. Why should I?” he asked. “There’s enough of ’em now. Too many, in fact. Besides, if they find out what’s the matter, they’ll be sure to let the rest of us know.”

It looked very much as if the young man was right, but the curious part of it was, after all, that not one of that crowd, nor all of them together, did more than rummage the Academy after hidden human beings.

They were all equally sure that there was no one up in the belfry, and so that part of the building was left to keep its own secrets and those of Mrs. Wood’s ghosts.

Meantime, George Brayton and Effie had the pleasantest kind of a walk and talk, and Mrs. Dryer was enabled to bottle-up an immense amount of wrath against her next meeting with her stepdaughter.

In fact, when that much-disturbed lady came out of the Academy, after the fruitless raid of the villagers, she was unable to so much as even smile in the bewildered faces of her neighbors, thereby sending them all away with a deeper sense than ever of the gloomy depth of the cloud which seemed to be settling over Ogleport and its Academy.