betsey and david were frankly gossiping, but with the most intent and serious purpose in the world. the days were growing so long that they could do their studying out of doors in the evenings, and the place of their choosing, where they struggled with dates and angles and difficult lines of virgil, was the stretch of grass around the pool. when the first stars began to show in the water, it was a signal for discussion of lessons to be put aside. later they would walk back to the cottage, where betsey would help miss miranda in the kitchen or would stroll with her in the garden while david would go into the workshop, take off his coat, arm himself with an oil can in one hand and a wrench in the other and would say to mr. reynolds, who usually did not even hear him come in—
“all ready, sir.”
to-night they were delaying a little, after having mastered the subject of extreme and mean ratio, and were piecing together such bits of knowledge as each one had concerning their friends in the white cottage, trying to come to some conclusion as to what was the matter and what could be done. michael’s doleful face seemed to give warning every day that the “feeling in his bones” was in no way diminished, and miss miranda appeared more and more concerned and weary.
“miss miranda only meant to help us remember the barbary pirates,” david was saying, “but she told us more than that. i begin to see how it is their blood, hers and her father’s, to dream of progress and new things. that new engine that mr. reynolds is trying to develop may turn out as great a thing as the clipper ship, and may bring as many changes. and she is doing as much for it as her father, managing that he is never disturbed or troubled or discouraged. even if he should want to give it up, i think she wouldn’t let him.”
“she is more like jonathan adams than like humphrey reynolds,” rejoined elizabeth, “though they were both her great-grandfathers. jonathan’s daughter married humphrey’s son and they inherited the shipyard, so she told me yesterday, and built clipper ships after him. some of them really did sail to europe in nine days, just as jonathan had hoped. they made a great fortune during that time when american ships were trading with the whole world.”
“and it was that fortune that built this house,” david took up the thread of speculation, “and gave mr. reynolds his scientific education and sent him to all sorts of places abroad to study. but where is it?”
“wherever it has gone,” betsey said, “it may come back again some day. i will always like to think of how jonathan and humphrey succeeded in the face of everything. i think mr. reynolds will succeed in the same way.”
“miss miranda will never lose courage,” david observed reflectively, “but her father is—a little different. he is old and tired and he is trying to do the work of a young man, of a person with strength and confidence in himself. without miss miranda he might have lost spirit long ago, but she will help him to the very end. she is anxious and lonely, she wants her brother, and she wants her house. but more than anything she wants her father’s success.”
“they must have been very happy when they lived here,” betsey went on, “with mr. reynolds busy at his work, with ted coming home for vacations—he was only just out of college, michael says, when the war began—with that cousin donald gone into business and doing well. mr. reynolds must have given him the money for a start and i think they must all have felt more comfortable when he was gone. and then the house burned and the war came, and everything was changed so that nobody was happy any more.”
“mr. reynolds is happy,” david insisted; “whatever is wrong is being kept from him. to work at something you love that is coming nearer and nearer to success, that is one of the best things there is. but miss miranda isn’t happy! and she is growing more unhappy every day. it’s time something was done.”
“if her brother could only come home,” betsey suggested.
“he might come home to-morrow, he might be kept a year,” replied david. “no, we can’t wait for him. we will have to do something ourselves.”
“but what can we do?” questioned betsey blankly.
“i don’t know yet,” confessed david, knitting his eyebrows in earnest thought as he sat on the grass with his arms about his knees, “but there is bound to be something we can do if we just stand by and try hard enough. and i would try anything for miss miranda!”
there was nothing small or mean about david’s ambitions nor in the loyalty of his friendship.
“while we are talking it all over, there is one other thing i should like to speak about,” began betsey hesitatingly. “do you ever think that there is anything about this house—this place that was a house—that is at all—queer?”
david sat bolt upright and stared at her fixedly.
“you have been talking to michael,” he accused her. “michael says that ill luck is brooding over the whole place like a summer thunderstorm and that there is no telling where the bolt will strike. i never saw a person who could believe such strange things as michael.”
“no,” betsey maintained stoutly, “it is not from anything he said. it is only what i have seen myself.”
she sat looking at him, first with sharp penetration, then with the dawn of a sudden discovery. she was possessed of less soaring ambition than david, but of a more keenly observant eye.
“you have seen something yourself,” she announced. “you are trying to argue me out of it because you don’t want to believe your own eyes. tell me what you have seen.”
david was silent for a minute, apparently struggling obstinately against his own convictions.
“it was just—lights, and—and something moving,” he confessed shamefacedly at last. “it might have been almost anything, wind, fireflies, moonlight on that broken mirror. i’m not going to let michael make me believe in goblins.”
“it is only lately that i have seen it,” betsey said. “from the house where i live you can see the top of this hill and i am certain that, on three nights at least, i have seen a light moving back and forth among the ruins. it is very small and dim and it goes so slowly, sometimes i think it has disappeared entirely but it always comes in sight again. one night it was raining and the next the moon was shining and the next it was dim starlight, but the light was there. and you have seen it too?”
“yes,” admitted david, “though i have tried to make myself believe it was a mistake. i was coming up somerset lane after dark, the first time, and i saw that same light, bobbing and jerking across the broken walls. i stopped and watched and tried to persuade myself that it was fireflies or glow-worms, but i didn’t succeed. a very small light, as you say, and moving slowly but never really coming to rest. i—i don’t quite like it.”
it was growing dusky in the shadow of the pines, so that betsey began to look about her with a slight uneasiness. the subject was one that did not tend greatly toward making one peaceful or at rest in that lonely place.
“i rather believe miss miranda will be looking for us,” she said somewhat lamely at last. david laughed.
“i don’t feel very comfortable here myself,” he agreed, “and it is getting rather dark. yes, it must be time to go.”
they went along the path together to the gate without speaking, until, with his hand on the lock, david paused and looked back.
“i am going back after it grows really dark,” he said, “to see what that thing is. it ought not to go on.”
“oh, no,” cried elizabeth in real horror. “oh, no!”
“it is something that ought to be cleared up,” david insisted steadily. “if we don’t do it ourselves, we should tell some one who will. the place belongs to miss miranda and it should be looked after. yes, i am going to see about it to-night.”
“then,” replied elizabeth with a long and rather gasping breath, “if you will go, i am going with you.”
they did not work very long at their respective tasks that evening. betsey was an absent-minded helper as she put away the dishes and david, it appeared later, had dropped so many tools and needed to be told so many things twice over, that even mr. reynolds had grasped vaguely that something was not quite right and had stopped to gaze at him over his spectacles, in mild and pained astonishment. it was earlier than usual and just at the edge of real darkness, the soft, black dark of a warm spring night before the moon has risen, when david presented himself at the kitchen door for the ostensible purpose of taking elizabeth home. with rather trembling hands she took off her apron and put away her towels, and prepared to go with him. but their plan was not to be carried out so easily, or without any hitch.
“i will walk down the hill with you,” announced miss miranda with somewhat disconcerting suddenness. “i have some things to take to mrs. donovan at the foot of the lane. i promised her some of my cabbage plants.”
“we will take them,” chorused the two conspirators, speaking together with such promptness that any one less preoccupied than miss miranda might have guessed that some project was on foot.
“no, i must see her myself,” she persisted and set out with them, to their ill-concealed dismay.
“it is not very late and we can come back after she has left us,” david found opportunity to say before miss miranda joined them with the cabbage plants.
they went down the hill without much of their usual talking and laughter, for miss miranda appeared absorbed in her own thoughts, and her two companions, perhaps a little appalled by their undertaking, seemed to have not much to say. they bade her good-night at mrs. donovan’s door with suspicious alacrity and, having seen it safely closed, turned once more up the lane. by david’s advice they were to pass the cottage, climb higher up the hill and find the spot where the boundary wall was nearest the ruins of the house.
“if we wait by the pool,” he explained, “we might not see anything. it might not come near, whatever it is.”
betsey shivered a little. she was ashamed of the thrills that were running through her and the tendency of her teeth to chatter unless she kept them firmly closed.
they walked briskly, but some one who came behind them was walking quicker still. a man passed them as they trudged upward, a man quite indistinguishable in the dark, save for the faint white of his collar and of his face. betsey could make out that he was a broad person, not very tall, with an alert, though rather heavy step. they lagged a little after he had passed, to let him get well ahead of them so that they could go on with the discussion of their plans unheard.
“usually it’s not very late when the light comes,” david said. “i don’t believe we will have very long to wait.”
in spite of his haste, the man who had passed them must have lingered a moment at the reynolds’ gate, for he was only just opening it and going up the walk as they came by. the light from the cottage windows fell upon him as he approached the door and showed his figure more clearly although his face was still hidden. betsey looked at him curiously but david seemed too much occupied to give him more than a passing glance. they left the lane, skirted the wall and came finally to the place they sought.
“now,” directed david, “here is a broken tree leaning against the wall. up you go.”
with a little assistance and not much scrambling, she clambered to the top of the wall. they were at the back of the house here, with the nearest line of blackened ruin not a hundred feet away. a spreading willow grew so close to the wall that its feathery boughs brushed elizabeth’s hair and passed smooth fingers across her cheek. the stones were warm under their hands, from the past day’s sun, their heads were among the leaves and birds’ nests, very high, it seemed, above the ground. the whole desolate place before them was very still.
“the moon will be up presently,” david whispered, “so i think it will come soon, while it is still dark.”
betsey trembled a little in the warm night air, but said nothing. the minutes passed, then a half hour, finally the hour itself struck from a spire in the village. the strokes sounded very thin and far away as the night wind carried them. a faint cow bell jingled in a distant field, a comfortable, friendly sound that elizabeth missed when it moved and died away. they began to relax their tense muscles as the time passed slowly, to swing their feet and to talk almost above their breath.
“it may not be coming to-night,” said david, “we will not wait much longer.”
“that man at the reynolds’ gate, i wonder what he wanted,” observed betsey. “it was rather late for just ordinary visitors. did you notice him, david?”
“when the light fell on him i thought i had seen him before,” he answered. “yet after all it was no one i knew, just a man i saw in the village this morning by the post office.”
elizabeth was not greatly heeding, for the round, golden rim of the moon was showing almost opposite them, above the jagged heaps of ruins. slowly it rose, spreading more light through the trees, until it was half above the horizon and shone, an orange semicircle, there above the old house. she was about to speak when david touched her elbow.
“look beyond that pine tree,” he whispered.
the little glow-worm light was visible at last. it was, at first, half hidden by the bushes, but it moved slowly along, swinging near the ground, hesitating, almost coming to a standstill, but still always making some progress. it moved along the ruined walls, it came nearer and nearer. to both of them it became evident that whatever it was, whatever carried it, must presently pass opposite them and be darkly outlined against the glowing background of the moon. they had only to wait and they would see.
the wait, however, began to seem very long, since the wavering advance of the point of light was very slow. betsey, in the lagging delay as the seconds passed, felt her attention beginning to wander. she noticed how slim and graceful were the sweeping boughs of the tree that hid them, she observed the thin frettings of black and white of the shadows of the leaves on the wall. very earnestly she wished that she could sit as still as david could and not be tempted to swing her feet against the stones. she began to think, as the minutes still dragged, of that man they had seen go in at miss miranda’s gate.
“david,” she leaned over to whisper, “you said you had seen that man before. what did he look like?”
“why,” david answered, coming out of his own thoughts with a start, “he was dark, rather heavy, but with a thin face. i didn’t like him.”
“did he have,” a slow possibility was dawning in betsey’s mind, as she dwelt upon who this man might be, why he had come, and as she recollected a chance phrase spoken by the farmer’s wife beside the river, “did he have a sharp, selfish face?”
“why, i think so.” david spoke so very slowly that she could have shaken him for his deliberation. “yes, i rather think he did. he had scowling black eyebrows and eyes very close together. yes, i would put it just that way myself, a sharp, selfish face.”
that was the way mrs. bassett had put it, and michael also. elizabeth swung her feet over to the other side of the wall, the weird, moving light quite forgotten.
“i am going back,” she said. “it must be that cousin, donald reynolds. i do believe he was waiting in the lane for miss miranda to go out, so that he could find her father alone. and she has always dreaded his coming. oh, why didn’t we think who it was before!”
“but—but—” stammered david, quite dazed.
one more minute and that hidden figure would move across the moon, but she had no thought for that mystery now. she jumped down outside the wall and ran, ran with all breathless speed, stumbling in the thick grass and over jutting roots and stones until she came out at last into the moonlit lane. her heart was thumping against her side and miss miranda’s gate looked very far. she sped down the hill with no further thought of what she and david had gone out to find; it was no time to be spying on goblins when this much-dreaded and very real person was so near.