"Get up from there!" he shouted hoa.r.s.ely. "What do you mean by spying on me like this? What business is it of yours how I spend my time? I am answerable to Tom Curtis, not to you. Here is your friend, Mr. Bolling, sneaking behind you on the same errand; and I suppose you both think you are gentlemen," he sneered.

"Oh, come, Brewster," interrupted Jack Bolling apologetically, "I suppose Harry and I were overdoing things a bit to come over here after you. But there is no use getting so all-fired angry. If you are not up to mischief, why do you care if we do happen to come up with you?"

"Because I care to keep my own business to myself," answered David.

"Look here, you fellow, don't be impertinent," broke in Harry Sears coolly, as though David had scarcely the right to speak to him.

David felt a blind, hot rage sweep over him. The boy was no longer master of himself. Some day, when he learned to control this white heat of pa.s.sion, it was to make him a great power for good in the world. Now his rage was the master.

"Take care!" he called suddenly to Harry. He swung himself up on the rock opposite Harry, forcing his opponent into an open place in the field. Then David let loose a swinging blow with his closed fist.

Harry and David were evenly matched fighters. Harry was taller and older, and had been trained as a boxer in school and college gymnasiums; but David was a firmly built fellow, of medium height, with muscles as hard as iron from his work in the open. In addition, David was furiously angry.

Harry parried the first blow with his left arm, then made a lunge at David.

"Here, you fellows, cut that out!" commanded Jack Bolling. "You are almost men. Don't sc.r.a.p like a couple of schoolboys. You know the women in our party will be disgusted with you."

Neither Harry nor David paid the least attention to Jack's excellent advice. Both fighters had their blood up. Harry's face was crimson and David's white. Few blows were struck, because David made a headlong rush at his opponent and the combatants wrestled back and forth, each boy trying to force the other on the ground. It was by sheer force of determination that David won. David got one hand loose and struck Harry over the eye. Harry went down with a sudden crash. His head struck the earth with a whack that temporarily put him out of the fight.

But David kept his knee on Harry's chest. He made no effort to get up.

His face was still working with anger.

"Say, get off of Sears, Brewster, can't you?" growled Jack Bolling. "You see he is down and out and you've won the fight. Don't you know that the rules of the game won't let you hit a man when he is down?"

David straightened up and stood upright. "Thank you, Bolling," he said curtly. "I wasn't a sport and I am glad you reminded me of it. I was too angry with Sears to want to quit the fight."

Harry was sitting upon the ground, looking greatly chagrined. He had a bruise over one eye and the place was rapidly swelling.

"I expect I ought to apologize to you, Sears, for not having let you alone when you were down," remarked David proudly. "But in the future you will kindly leave my private affairs alone."

David made off across the fields. He hoped to be able to get back to the Preston house before Miss Betsey Taylor returned from her ride to the haunted house. He was lucky enough to find Miss Betsey still out. As David pa.s.sed through the hall he was glad to find her bedroom door open.

He had just time enough to slip into her room and thrust a red cotton handkerchief, which was tied up in a curious knot, under Miss Betsey's pillow, when he thought he heard some one about to enter the room.

David hurried out into the hall just as Madge and Phyllis pa.s.sed by.

Both girls nodded to David in a friendly fashion, though Madge's expressive face was alive with the question: "What is David Brewster doing in Miss Betsey's room?"

CHAPTER XVII

THE BIRTH OF SUSPICION

Miss Betsey Taylor had a very successful drive to the "ha'nted house."

She returned home with the secret curiosity of years partly satisfied.

Not that Miss Betsey saw the "ghosts walk," or that anything in the least unusual took place at the "ha'nted house"; it was simply that Mrs.

Preston at last unveiled to Miss Betsey Taylor all she knew of the history of the particular "John Randolph" in whom Miss Betsey had once been interested.

It happened that Miss Jenny Ann, Miss Betsey and Mrs. Preston, in driving up the road to the "ha'nted house," had met an old colored mammy coming toward them, carrying a basket on her arm and talking to herself.

She raised up one hand dramatically when she caught sight of the three women. "Stay where you is. Don't come no farder," she warned. "The house you is drawing nigher to is a house of 'ha'nts.' Ghosties walk here in the day and sleep here in the night. It am mighty onlucky to bother a ghostie."

"Why, Mammy Ellen," protested Mrs. Preston, smiling kindly at the old woman, "you don't tell me that you believe in ghosts? I thought you had too much sense."

"Child," argued the old woman, "they is some as _says_ they is ghosts in this here house of Cain and Abel; but they is one that _knows_ they is ghosts here." She shook her head. "I hev seen 'em. Jest you let sleepin'

ghosts lie."

"We are not going to disturb them, Mammy Ellen," promised Mrs. Preston.

"We are just going to drive about the old place, so that my friends, who are from the North, can see what this old, deserted estate looks like."

"That old woman once belonged to the family of John Randolph, Miss Betsey. Do you recall your speaking of him to me a few days ago?"

inquired Mrs. Preston as the old colored woman marched solemnly away.

"Yes, I remember," answered Miss Betsey vaguely. "I believe I knew this same John Randolph when I was a girl."

"Then I am sorry to tell you his story, because it is a sad one," sighed Mrs. Preston. "My husband and I often talk of him. We feel, somehow, that we ought to have done something. John Randolph came back here suddenly, after spending a year or so in New York, after the close of the war. He married three or four years afterward a girl from the next county. She wasn't much of a wife; the poor thing was ill and never liked the country. She persuaded John to sell out his share in the estate to his brother James. You remember, it was the Grinstead place I showed to you on our drive to the sulphur well the other day. Well, John and his wife settled in Richmond and John tried to practise law. He wasn't much of a success. I reckon poor John did not know much but farming. He and his wife had one child, a girl. She married and died, leaving a baby for her father and mother to look after. A few years ago John's wife died, too, and the old man came back here to the old place.

He didn't have any money, and I expect he didn't have any other home to go to." Mrs. Preston paused. She had driven around the haunted house, but her visitors were more interested in her story than they were in the sight of the deserted mansion.

"Then, I suppose, poor John died," added Miss Betsey sadly, her face clouding with memories; the John Randolph she had known had been so full of youth and enthusiasm.

Mrs. Preston flapped her reins. "I reckon so," she sighed. "You see, John Randolph did not have any real claim on the Grinsteads. They were his brother James's wife's people, and I suppose they were not very good to him; or it may be the old man was just sensitive. Anyway, John Randolph went away from the Grinstead place about six months ago. No word has been heard of him, so I suppose he is dead."

Miss Betsey surrept.i.tiously wiped away a few tears for her dead romance.

They were not very bitter tears. Of course, her old lover, John Randolph, was only a memory. But it was sad to hear that he had had such an unfortunate life; he might better have been less "touchy" and not have left _her_ so abruptly. Miss Betsey's tears pa.s.sed unnoticed. Miss Jenny Ann was also depressed by the story, and as for kind Mrs. Preston, she sighed deeply every five or ten minutes during the ride home.

But Miss Betsey was so quiet and unlike herself all the evening that Madge, Phyllis and Lillian decided that she must feel ill. The girls would never have believed, even if they had been told, that Miss Betsey, who was on the shady side of sixty, could possibly have been sorrowing over a lover whom she had not seen in nearly forty years. But girls do not know that the minds of older people travel backward, and that an old maid is a "girl" at heart to the longest day she lives.

Miss Taylor went up to her own room early.

Madge and Phyllis were undressing to jump into bed, when a knock on their door startled them.

"Girls!" a voice cried in trembling tones.

"It's poor Miss Betsey!" exclaimed Phil. "I'll wager she is ill or something, she has been acting so queerly all evening." Phil ran to open their door.

"Take me in, children," whispered Miss Betsey, shaking her head. "Sh-sh!

Don't make a noise; something so strange has happened. I couldn't wait until morning to tell you."

Miss Betsey dropped into a chair by the window. She was minus her side curls and she had her still jet-black hair screwed up into a tight knot at the back of her head. But in honor of her present frivolous life as one of the houseboat girls she wore a bright red flannelette dressing gown.

Madge looked at Miss Betsey, then choked and began to cough violently to conceal her laughter.

"Don't make that noise, Madge; laugh out-right if you think I am funny,"

whispered Miss Betsey, instead of giving the little captain the lecture she deserved. "I don't want any one to know I am in here with you. I've got something so strange to show you."

Miss Betsey slipped her hand into the capacious pocket of her dressing gown. She drew out a bright red cotton handkerchief, knotted and tied together into a dirty ball.