"Why, Auntie!" she cried. "Isn't that--where did that lantern come from?"

Captain Obed looked where she was pointing. He stepped forward and picked up the overturned lantern.

"That's Darius Holt's lantern, I do believe," he declared. "The one Winnie S. was makin' such a fuss about last night. How in the nation did it get up here?"

Thankful laughed. "I brought it up," she said. "I come on a little explorin' cruise when Emily dropped asleep on that sittin'-room lounge, but I hadn't much more'n got in here when the pesky thing went out. You ought to have seen me hurryin' along that hall to get down before you woke up, Emily. No, come to think of it, you couldn't have seen me--'twas too dark to see anything. . . . Well," she added, quickly, in order to head off troublesome questioning, "we've looked around here pretty well. What else is there to see?"

They visited the garret and the cellar; both were s.p.a.cious and not too clean.

"If I ever come here to live," declared Thankful, with decision, "there'll be some dustin' and sweepin' done, I know that."

Emily looked at her in surprise.

"Come here to live!" she repeated. "Why, Auntie, are you thinking of coming here to live?"

Her cousin's answer was not very satisfactory. "I've been thinkin' a good many things lately," she said. "Some of 'em was even more crazy than that sounds."

The inside of the house having been thus thoroughly inspected they explored the yard and the outbuildings. The barn was a large one, with stalls for two horses and a cow and a carriage-room with the remnants of an old-fashioned carryall in it.

"This is about the way it used to be in Cap'n Abner's day," said Captain Obed. "That carryall belonged to your uncle, the cap'n, Mrs. Barnes.

The boys have had it out for two or three Fourth of July Antiques and Horribles' parades; 'twon't last for many more by the looks of it."

"And what," asked Thankful, "is that? It looks like a pigsty."

They were standing at the rear of the house, which was built upon a slope. Under the washshed, which adjoined the kitchen, was a rickety door. Beside that door was a boarded enclosure which extended both into the yard and beneath the washshed.

Captain Bangs laughed. "You've guessed it, first crack," he said. "It is a pigpen. Some of Laban's doin's, that is. He used to keep a pig and 'twas too much trouble to travel way out back of the barn to feed it, so Labe rigged up this contraption. That door leads into the potato cellar.

Labe fenced off half the cellar to make a stateroom for the pig. He thought as much of that hog as if 'twas his own brother, and there WAS a sort of family likeness."

Thankful snorted. "A pigsty under the house!" she said. "Well, that's all I want to know about THAT man!"

As they were returning along the foot-path by the bluff Captain Obed, who had been looking over his shoulder, suddenly stopped.

"That's kind of funny," he said.

"What?" asked Emily.

"Oh, nothin', I guess. I thought I caught a sight of somebody peekin'

around the back of that henhouse. If 'twas somebody he dodged back so quick I couldn't be sure. Humph! I guess I was mistaken, or 'twas just one of Solon Taylor's young ones. Solon's a sort of--sort of stevedore at the Colfax place. Lives there and takes care of it while the owners are away. No-o; no, I don't see n.o.body now."

Thankful was silent during the homeward walk. When she and Miss Howes were alone in their room, she said:

"Emily, are you real set on gettin' back to South Middleboro tonight?"

"No, Auntie. Why?"

"Well, if you ain't I think I'd like to stay over another day. I've got an idea in my head and, such a thing bein' kind of unusual, I'd like to keep company with it for a spell. I'll tell you about it by and by; probably 'twon't come to anything, anyway."

"But do you think we ought to stay here, as Miss Parker's guests?

Wouldn't it be--"

"Of course it would. We'll go over to that hotel, the one we started for in the first place. Judgin' from what I hear of that tavern it'll be wuth experiencin'; and--and somethin' may come of that, too."

She would not explain further, and Emily, knowing her well, did not press the point.

Hannah Parker protested volubly when her "company" declared its intention of going to the East Wellmouth Hotel.

"Of course you shan't do no such thing," she declared. "The idea! It's no trouble at all to have you, and that hotel really ain't fit for such folks as you to stay at. Mrs. Bacon, from Boston, stayed there one night in November and she pretty nigh famished with the cold, to say nothin'

of havin' to eat huckleberry preserves for supper two nights runnin'.

Course they had plenty of other things in the closet, but they'd opened a jar of huckleberries, so they had to be et up afore they spiled.

That's the way they run THAT hotel. And Mrs. Bacon is eastern Ma.s.sachusetts delegate from the State Grange. She's Grand Excited Matron. Just think of treatin' her that way! Well, where've you been all the forenoon?"

The question was addressed to her brother, who entered the house by the side door at that moment. Kenelm seemed a trifle confused.

"I--I been lookin' for that umbrella, Hannah," he explained. "I knew I must have left it somewheres 'cause--'cause, you see I--I took it out with me last night and--and--"

"And come home without it. It wouldn't take a King Solomon to know that.

Did you find it?"

Kenelm's embarra.s.sment appeared to increase.

"Well," he stammered, "I ain't exactly found it--but--"

"But what?"

"I--I'm cal'latin' to find it, Hannah."

"Yes, I know. You're cal'latin' to get to Heaven some time or other, I s'pose, but if the path is as narrow and crooked as they say 'tis I should be scared if I was you. You'll find a way to lose it, if there is one. Oh, dear me!" with a sudden change to a tone almost pleading. "Be you goin' to smoke again?"

Kenelm's reply was strange for him. He scratched a match and lit his pipe with calm deliberation.

"I'm cal'latin' to," he said, cheerfully. And his sister, to the surprise of Mrs. Barnes and Emily, did not utter another word of protest.

Captain Obed volunteered to accompany them to the hotel and to the store of Mr. Badger. On the way Thankful mentioned Mr. Parker's amazing independence in the matter of the pipe.

The captain chuckled. "Yes," he said, "Kenelm smokes when he wants to, and sometimes when he don't, I guess, just to keep his self-respect.

Smokin' is one p'int where he beat out Hannah. It's quite a yarn, the way he done it is. Some time I'll tell it to you, maybe."

The hotel--it was kept by Darius Holt, father of Winnie S.--was no more inviting than Miss Parker's and Captain Bangs' hints had led them to expect. But Thankful insisted on engaging a room for the night and on returning there for dinner, supper and breakfast the following day.

"After that, we'll see," she said. "Now let's go and make a call on that rent collector of mine."

Mr. Badger was surprised to meet the owner of the Barnes house, surprised and a bit taken aback, so it seemed to Mrs. Barnes and her cousin. He was very polite, almost obsequiously so, and his explanations concerning the repairs which he had found it necessary to make and the painting which he had had done were lengthy if not convincing.

As they left him, smiling and bowing in the doorway of his store, Thankful shook her head. When they were out of earshot she said:

"Hum! The paint he says he put on that precious property of mine don't show as much as you'd expect, but he used enough b.u.t.ter and whitewash this morning to make up. He's a slick party, that Mr. Badger is, or I miss my guess. His business arithmetic don't go much further than addition. Everything in creation added to one makes one and he's the one. Mr. Chris Badger's got jobs enough, accordin' to his sign. He won't starve if he don't collect rents for me any more."