The room was a large apartment with smoke-cured and age-blackened beams in the ceiling. This was the ancient tap-room of the tavern, which had been built at that pre-Revolutionary time when the stuffed catamount, with its fangs and claws bared to the York State officers, crouched on top of the staff at Bennington--for Polktown was one of the oldest settlements in these "Hampshire Grants."

No noisier or more ill-favored crew, Janice Day thought, could ever have been gathered under the roof of the Inn, than she now saw as she pushed open the screen. Tobacco smoke poisoned the air, floating in clouds on a level with the men's heads, and blurring the lamplight.

There was a crowd of men and boys at the door of the dance hall. At the bar was another noisy line. It was evident that Joe Bodley had merely run from behind the bar for a moment to stop, if he could, Hopewell Drugg's departure. Hopewell was flushed, hatless, and trembling. Whether he was intoxicated or ill, the fact remained that he was not himself.

The storekeeper clung with both hands to the neck of his violin. A greasy-looking, black-haired fellow held on to the other end of the instrument, and was laughing in the face of the expostulating Frank Bowman, displaying a wealth of white teeth, and the whites of his eyes, as well. He was a foreigner of some kind. Janice had never seen him before, and she believed he must be the "foxy-looking" man Frank had previously mentioned.

It was, however, Joe Bodley, whom the indignant young girl confronted when she came so suddenly into the room. Most of the men present paid no attention to the quarreling group at the entrance.

"Come now, Hopewell, be a sport," the young barkeeper was saying.

"It's early yet, and we want to hear more of your fiddling. Give us that 'Darling, I Am Growing Old' stuff, with all the variations.

Sentiment! Sentiment! Oh, hullo! Evening, Miss! What can I do for you?"

He said this last impudently enough, facing Janice. He was a fat-faced, smoothly-shaven young man--little older than Frank Bowman, but with pouches under his eyes and the score of dissipation marked plainly in his countenance. He had unmeasured impudence and bravado in his eyes and in his smile.

"I have come to speak to Mr. Drugg," Janice said, and she was glad she could say it unshakenly, despite her secret emotions. She would not give this low fellow the satisfaction of knowing how frightened she really was.

Frank Bowman's back was to the door. Perhaps this was well, for he would have hesitated to do just what was necessary had he known Janice was in the room. The young engineer had not been bossing a construction gang of l.u.s.ty, "two-fisted" fellows for six months without many rude experiences.

"So, you won't let go, eh?" he gritted between his teeth to the smiling foreigner.

With his left hand in his collar, Frank jerked the man toward him, thrust his own leg forward, and then pitched the fellow backward over his knee. This act broke the man's hold upon Drugg's violin and he crashed to the floor, striking the back of his head soundly.

"All right, Mr. Drugg," panted Frank. "Get out."

But it was Janice, still confronting Bodley, that actually freed the storekeeper from his enemies. Her eyes blazed with indignation into the bartender's own. His fat, white hand dropped from Hopewell's arm.

"Oh, if the young lady's really come to take you home to the missus, I s'pose we'll have to let you go," he said, with a nasty laugh. "But no play, no pay, you understand."

Janice drew the bewildered Hopewell out of the door, and Frank quickly followed. Few in the room had noted the incident at all.

The three stood a minute on the porch, the mist drifting in from the lake and wetting them. The engineer finally took the umbrella from Janice and raised it to shelter her.

"They--they broke two of the strings," muttered Hopewell, with thought for nothing but his precious violin.

"You'd better cover it up, or it will be wet; and that won't do any fiddle any good," growled Frank, rather disgusted with the storekeeper.

But there was something queer about Hopewell's condition that both puzzled Janice and made her pity him.

"He is not intoxicated--not as other men are," she whispered to the engineer.

"I don't know that he is," said Frank. "But he's made us trouble enough. Come on; let's get him home."

Drugg was trying to shelter the precious violin under his coat.

"He has no hat and the fiddle bag is gone," said Janice.

"I'm not going back in there," said the civil engineer decidedly. And then he chuckled, adding:

"That fellow I tipped over will be just about ready to fight by now. I reckon he thinks differently now about the 'white-headed kid,' as he called me. You see," Frank went on modestly, "I was something of a boxer at the Tech school, and I've had to keep my wits about me with those 'muckers' of the railroad construction gang."

"Oh, dear, me! I think there must be something very tigerish in all of us," sighed Janice. "I was glad when I saw that black-haired man go down. What did he want Hopewell's violin for?"

"Don't know. Just meanness, perhaps. They doctored Hopewell's drink somehow, and he was acting like a fool and playing ridiculously."

They could talk plainly before the storekeeper, for he really did not know what was going on. His face was blank and his eyes staring, but he had b.u.t.toned the violin beneath the breast of his coat.

"Come on, old fellow," Frank said, putting a heavy hand on Drugg's shoulder. "Let's be going. It's too wet to stand here."

The storekeeper made no objection. Indeed, as they walked along, Hopewell between Frank and Janice, who carried the umbrella, Drugg seemed to be moving in a daze. His head hung on his breast; he said no word; and his feet stumbled as though they were leaden and he had no feeling in them.

"Mr. Bowman!" exclaimed Janice, at last, and under her breath, "he is ill!"

"I am beginning to believe so myself," the civil engineer returned.

"I've seen enough drunken fellows before this to know that Hopewell doesn't show many of the usual symptoms."

Janice halted suddenly. "There's a light in Mr. Ma.s.sey's back room,"

she said.

"Eh? Back of the drugstore? Yes, I see it," Bowman said, puzzled.

"Why not take Mr. Drugg there and see if Ma.s.sey can give him something?

I hate to take him home to 'Rill in this condition."

"Something to straighten him up--eh?" cried the engineer. "Good idea.

If he's there and will let us in," he added, referring to the druggist, for the front store was entirely dark, it being now long past the usual closing hour of all stores in Polktown.

Janice and Frank led Hopewell Drugg to the side door of the shop, he making no objection to the change in route. It was doubtful if he even knew where they were taking him. He seemed in a state of partial syncope.

Frank had to knock the second time before there was any answer. They heard voices--Ma.s.sey's and another. Then the druggist came to the entrance, unbolted it and stuck his head out--his gray hair all ruffled up in a tuft which made him, with his big beak and red-rimmed eyes, look like a startled c.o.c.katoo.

"Who's this, now? Jack Besmith again? What did I tell you?" he snapped. Then he seemed to see that he was wrong, and the next moment exclaimed: "Wal! I am jiggered!" for, educated man though he was, Mr.

Ma.s.sey had lived in the hamlet of his birth all of his life and spoke the dialect of the community. "Wal! I am jiggered!" he repeated.

"What ye got there?"

"I guess you see whom we have, Mr. Ma.s.sey," said Frank Bowman pushing in and leading the storekeeper.

"Oh, Mr. Ma.s.sey! It's Hopewell Drugg," Janice said pleadingly. "Can't you help him?"

"Janice Day! I declare to sun-up!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the druggist. "What you beauing about that half-baked critter for? And he's drunk?"

"He is _not_!" cried the girl, with indignation. "At least, he is like no other drunken person I have seen. He is ill. They gave him something to drink down at the Inn--at that dance where he was playing his violin--and it has made him ill. Don't you _see_?" and she stamped her foot impatiently.

"Hoity-toity, young lady!" chuckled Ma.s.sey.

They were all inside now and the druggist locked the door again.

Behind the stove, in the corner, sat Mr. Cross Moore, and he did not say a word.