"Yes, if we can. Are you going to ask any of our own folks to volunteer, Milton?" In times of great stress and sorrow his townspeople called the Colonel by his Christian name.

"No; I'm going to ask some of the men who don't know him well--some of the foreigners; Poggi's one. He'll know some others up in The Gore. And I don't believe, Tave, there's one of our own would volunteer, do you?"

"No, I don't. We can't go that far; it would be like cutting our own throats."

"You're right, Tave--that's the way I feel; but"--he squared his shoulders--"it's got to be done and the sooner it's over the better for us all--but, Tave, I hope to G.o.d he'll keep out of our way!"

"Amen," said Octavius Buzzby.

The two stood together in the office a moment longer in gloomy silence, then they went out into the street.

"Well, I must get to work," said the Colonel finally, "the time's scant.

I'll telephone my wife first. We can't keep this to ourselves long; everybody, from the quarrymen to the station master, will be keen on the scent."

"I'm glad no reward was offered," said Octavius.

"So am I." The Colonel spoke emphatically. "The roughscuff won't volunteer without that, and I shall be reasonably certain of some good men--G.o.d! and I'm saying this of Champney Googe--it makes me sick; who'd have thought it--who'd have thought it--"

He shook his head, and stepped into the telephone booth. Octavius waited for him.

"I've warned Mrs. Caukins," he said when he came out, "and told her how things stand; that I'd try to get Poggi, and that I sha'n't be at home to-night. She says tell Aileen to tell Mrs. Champney she will esteem it a great favor if she will let her come up to-night; she has one of her nervous headaches and doesn't want to be alone with the children and 'Lias. You could take her up, couldn't you?"

"I guess she can come, and I'll take her up 'fore supper; I don't want to be gone after dark," he added with meaning emphasis.

"I understand, Tave; I'm going over to Poggi's now."

The two parted with a hand-clasp that spoke more than any words.

XIII

About four, Octavius drove Aileen up to the Colonel's. He said nothing to her of the coming crucial night, but Aileen had her thoughts. The Colonel's absence from home, but not from town, coupled with yesterday's New York despatch which said that there was no trace of the guilty man in New York, and affirmed on good authority that the statement that he had not left the country was true, convinced her that something unforeseen was expected in the immediate vicinity of Flamsted. But he would never attempt to come here!--She shivered at the thought.

Octavius, noticing this movement, remarked that he thought there was going to be a black frost. Aileen maintained that the rising wind and the want of a moon would keep it off.

Although Octavius was inclined to take exception to the feminine statement that the moon, or the want of it, had an effect on frost, nevertheless this apparently innocent remark on Aileen's part recalled to him the fact that the night was moonless--he wondered if the Colonel had thought of this--and he hoped with all his soul that it would prove to be starless as well. "Champney knows the Maine woods--knows 'em from the Bay to the head of Moosehead as well as an Oldtown Indian, yes and beyond." So he comforted himself in thought.

Mrs. Caukins met them with effusion.

"I declare, Aileen, I don't know what I should have done if you couldn't have come up; I'm all of a-tremble now and I've got such a nervous headache from all I've been through, and all I've got to, that I can't see straight out of my eyes.--Won't you stop to supper, Tave?"

"I can't to-night, Elvira, I--"

"I'd no business to ask you, I know," she said, interrupting him; "I might have known you'd want to be on hand for any new developments. I don't know how we're going to live through it up here; you don't feel it so much down in the town--I don't believe I could go through it without Aileen up here with me, for the twins aren't old enough to depend on or to be told everything; they're no company at such times, and of course I sha'n't tell them, they wouldn't sleep a wink; I miss my boys dreadfully--"

"Tell them what? What do you mean by 'to-night'?" Aileen demanded, a sudden sharpness in her voice.

"Why, don't you know?"--She turned to Octavius, "Haven't you told her?"

Her appeal fell on departing and intentionally deaf ears; for Octavius, upon hearing Aileen's sudden and amazed question, abruptly bade them good-night, spoke to the mare and was off at a rapid pace before Mrs.

Caukins comprehended that the telling of the latest development was left to her.

She set about it quickly enough, and what with her nervousness, her sympathy for that mother across the Rothel, her anxiety for the Colonel, her fear of the trial to which his powers of endurance were about to be put, and the description of his silent suffering during the last week, she failed to notice that Aileen said nothing. The girl busied herself with setting the table and preparing tea, Mrs. Caukins, meanwhile, rocking comfortably in her chair and easing her heart of its heavy burden by continual drippings of talk after the main flow of her tale was exhausted.

Presently, just after sunset, the twins came rushing in. Evidently they were full of secrets--they were always a close corporation of two--and their inane giggles and breathless suppression of what they were obviously longing to impart to their mother and Aileen, told on Mrs.

Caukins' already much worn nerves.

"I wish you wouldn't stay out so long after sundown, children, you worry me to death. I don't say but the quarries are safe enough, but I do say you never can tell who's round after dusk, and growing girls like you belong at home."

She spoke fretfully. The twins exchanged meaning glances that were lost on their mother, who was used to their ways, but not on Aileen.

"Where have you been all this time, Dulcie?" she asked rather indifferently. Her short teaching experience had shown her that the only way to gain children's confidence is not to display too great a curiosity in regard to their comings and goings, their doings and undoings. "Tave and I didn't see you anywhere when we drove up."

The twins looked at each other and screwed their lips into a violently repressive contortion.

"We've been over to the sheepfolds with 'Lias."

"Why, 'Lias has been out in the barn for the last half hour--what were you doing over there, I'd like to know?" Their mother spoke sharply, for untruth she would not tolerate.

"We did stay with 'Lias till he got through, then we played ranchmen and made believe round up the cattle the way the boys wrote us they do." Two of their brothers were in the West trying their fortune on a ranch and incidentally "dovetailing into the home business," as the Colonel defined their united efforts along the line of mutton raising.

"Well, I never!" their mother e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed; "I suppose now you'll be making believe you're everything the other boys are going to be."

The little girls giggled and nodded emphatically.

"Well, Aileen," she said as she took her seat at the table, "times have changed since I was a girl, and that isn't so very long ago. Then we used to content ourselves with sewing, and housework, and reading all the books in the Sunday school library, and making our own clothes, and enjoying ourselves as much as anybody nowadays for all I see, what with our picnics and excursions down the Bay and the clam bakes and winter lecture course and the young folks 'Circle' and two or three dances to help out--and now here are my girls that can't be satisfied to sit down and hem good crash towels for their mother, but must turn themselves into boys, and play ranchmen and baseball and hockey on the ice, and Wild West shows with the dogs and the pony--and even riding him a-straddle--and want to go to college just because their two brothers are going, and, for all I know, join a fraternity and have secrets from their own mother and a football team!" She paused long enough to help the twins bountifully.

"Sometimes I think it's their being brought up with so many boys, and then again I'm convinced it's the times, for all girls seem to have caught the male fever. What with divided skirts, and no petticoats, and racing and running and tumbling in basket ball, and rowing races, and entering for prize championships in golf and the dear knows what, it'll be lucky if a mother of the next generation can tell whether she's borned girls or boys by the time her children are ten years old. The land knows it's hard enough for a married woman to try to keep up with one man in a few things, but when it comes to a lot of old maids and unmarried girls trying to catch up all the time with the men in _everything_, and catch on too, I must say _I_, for one, draw the line."

Aileen could not help smiling at this diatribe on "the times." The twins laughed outright; they were used to their mother by this time, and patronized her in a loving way.

"We weren't there _all_ the time," Doosie said meaningly, and Dulcie added her little word, which she intended should tantalize her mother and Aileen to the extent that many pertinent questions should be forthcoming, and the news they were burning to impart would, to all appearance, be dragged out of them--a process in which the twins revelled.

"We met Luigi on the road near the bridge."

"What do you suppose Luigi's doing up here at this time, I'd like to know," said Mrs. Caukins, turning to Aileen and ignoring the children.

"He come up on an errand to see some of the quarrymen," piped up both the girls at the same time.

"Oh, is that all?" said their mother indifferently; then, much to the twins' chagrin, she suddenly changed the subject. "I want you to take the gla.s.s of wine jell on the second shelf in the pantry over to Mrs.

Googe's after you finish your supper--you can leave it with the girl and tell her not to say anything to Mrs. Googe about it, but just put some in a saucer and give it to her with her supper. Maybe it'll tempt her to taste it, poor soul!"

The twins sat up very straight on their chairs. A look of consternation came into their faces.

"We don't want to go," murmured Dulcie.

"Don't want to go!" their mother exclaimed; decided irritation was audible in her voice. "For pity's sake, what is the matter now, that you can't run on an errand for me just over the bridge, and here you've been prowling about in the dusk for the last hour around those lonesome sheepfolds and 'Lias nowheres near--I declare, I could understand my six boys even if they were terrors when they were little. You could always count on their being somewheres anyway, even if 't was on the top of freight cars at The Corners or at the bottom of the pond diving for pebbles that they brought up between their lips and run the risk of choking besides drowning; and they did think the same thoughts for at least twenty-four hours on a stretch, when they were set on having things--but when it come to my having two girls, and I forty at the time, I give it up! They don't know their own minds from one six minutes to the next.--Why don't you want to go?" she demanded, coming at last to the point. Aileen was listening in amused silence.

"'Coz we got scared--awful scared," said Dulcie under her breath.