"There's a ladder for you!" he exclaimed proudly, as he propped the railings against the wall.

"It's splendid! Quite splendid!" shouted the twins, forgetting in their excitement how near they were to the terrible house with the cellar.

"Hush! Hush!" whispered Lewis. "If you make such a noise we shall be caught, and all our fun stopped. And it's not quite perfect either.

Not high enough. See!"

In point of fact the top bar of the railings was only five feet from the ground, so that it did not reach more than half-way up the wall.

It was very nice as far as it went, but more of it was badly wanted.

However, Lewis was not easily discouraged. He returned to the shed, where there were several more railings, and dragged out another. "They are dreadfully heavy," he said; "but I don't care. I shall go on fetching them until I get enough to reach the top of the wall. I know there are a heap of them in the shed. They are kept there when they are not being used to divide the field."

"Take care you don't tumble! Oh, that's beautiful! I do wish we could help you!" cried the twins, looking on in the highest admiration while Lewis slowly pushed and pulled one railing on the top of another against the wall. Then he tied them together with some bits of string out of his pocket, and proceeded to mount. It was not a very steady ladder, but with the wall to lean against there was small fear of falling, and when near the top of it Lewis could reach the hands that were eagerly stretched out to help him. In another moment he was sitting on the Eagle's Nest.

"This is a goodish sort of tree," he remarked, looking round with a patronizing air. "Very easy to climb, of course--"

"Oh, but I can go much higher than these boughs by the wall!"

interrupted Betty. "So high that my feet are where your head is now."

"That's not much," said Lewis scornfully. "Girls never can climb much.

They just flop about, and catch their frocks in all the branches, and get giddy, and cry to be helped down again!"

Betty flushed hotly. "You are talking nonsense!" she shrieked. "Silly nonsense! I can climb much higher than John; and as for crying--"

Her remarks were promptly cut short by a hand being roughly pressed over her mouth. "Hold your tongue!" whispered Lewis. "Unless you wish old Mother Howard and her slave-drivers to be after us!"

At this terrible threat Betty looked nervously towards the brick house.

But there was nothing to be seen in that direction except the quiet old cows in the orchard below. She was so rea.s.sured by seeing them chewing the cud, as if nothing dreadful could possibly happen, that she regained sufficient courage to remark defiantly that after all Mrs.

Howard did not seem a very formidable person.

"That shows all you know about it!" replied Lewis. "I can tell you a very different tale. If you two will promise faithfully not to say a single word of what I tell you to anybody--not to Madge, or your nurse, or anybody,--then I will tell you something that n.o.body else knows.

Only it's a secret, you must remember,--a dead secret."

This was very solemn work. Betty and John glanced at each other, both longing to know the secret, and yet a little afraid of the conditions that had been imposed.

"Mightn't we just tell Madge if she promises not to repeat it?" Betty ventured to say.

"Certainly not! We don't want Madge poking her interfering nose into everything, do we?" replied Lewis rudely. "Just make up your minds whether you want to hear a most terrible and extraordinary thing, or not, for I can't wait much longer. But if I don't tell you to-day I sha'n't breathe a word of it another time, so it's no good teasing me again."

This last remark decided Betty. She was very curious by nature, and could not bear to miss any piece of news that promised to be interesting.

"I think I must hear the secret, although I would much rather tell Madge about it," she said in a hesitating voice. "And if you don't like to promise, John, you must go a little way off and stop your ears."

But John was not equal to so much self-restraint. If Betty had resisted the temptation of hearing the secret he would have done so too, but he could not possibly let her enjoy the advantage of knowing more than he did. "I promise not to tell," he grunted.

"Ah, that's all very well!" exclaimed Lewis; "but I must see if you two babies can keep a secret. Just put out your hands. Now I am going to pinch your little fingers, and if you cry out it means that you can't be trusted." And pinch he did, and very hard too, but the twins bravely clenched their teeth and said nothing.

When Lewis had teased them to his heart's content, he began his wonderful tale by whispering in a mysterious voice:

"Do you know what Mrs. Howard really is?"

"An old lady," replied Betty very naturally. "Your aunt, perhaps? No?

But she looks rather like it, doesn't she?"

"Ah! but she is something quite different really," said Lewis. And after pausing a short time to heighten Betty's curiosity, he added: "She is a witch!"

The twins started back, hardly able to believe their ears. "But there aren't any witches now!" they cried. "Besides, there aren't such things really. They used to be burned, but Miss Thompson says most likely they were only poor old women who couldn't hurt anybody."

"I don't care a bit what Miss Thompson or anybody says," replied Lewis.

"Mrs. Howard is an old witch, you can tell that by the black cat that follows her everywhere. That's a sure sign."

Betty hardly knew what to say, for she had once seen a picture of a witch, and there was undoubtedly a black cat crouching in the corner of it.

"You noticed the way she shook her head, I dare say?" continued Lewis, who was delighted by the awestruck looks of his two companions. "Well, she is muttering spells when she does that. She has the power to destroy things if she says the right words. Any morning I may wake up and find the house changed into a heap of dust, or perhaps be struck dead myself."

It seemed impossible that such things should be going on almost within sight of Miss Thompson's schoolroom window. And yet, judging by the gravity of Lewis's face, he was speaking in most sober earnest. John and Betty pressed tighter together, and took hold of each other's hands.

"I hope for your sakes that the old witch won't find out you've been talking to me," continued Lewis solemnly.

"Why what would she do?" Betty ventured to ask.

"That would depend on what sort of a temper she happened to be in," was the rea.s.suring reply.

And then Lewis proceeded to tell such terrible tales about Mrs.

Howard's power and malignity, that the poor twins longed to be safely back at home, out of sight of that weird brick house, whose commonplace walls concealed such dreadful deeds of cruelty.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE BROWN BAG.

Madge was spending her afternoon in a still more stirring manner than the twins. A shopping expedition to Churchbury was always an excitement, and it was extraordinary how many little purchases seemed absolutely necessary directly the children found out that one of them was going to town.

Madge was heavily laden with money. Five shillings and sevenpence, mostly in coppers, take up a great deal of room. This sum represented the joint property of Madge, Betty, and John. They collected it in a tin money-box shaped like a small doll's house, with a slit in the roof to drop in the pennies. Miss Thompson kept the key of the front-door, and they had to apply to her for it before any money could be taken out. They had made this rule themselves, because they found that unless their money was locked up so that they could not get at it without a little trouble, they used it as soon as it was given them.

To-day they had all three asked for the key, and opened the front-door with pleasant antic.i.p.ations of finding a fortune inside. They were able to judge in some measure of the probable extent of their fortune by the weight of the tin house. Luckily there was no s.p.a.ce required for sitting-rooms or stairs inside the house (which was in fact rather a sham, being really nothing better than a box), so that it would hold an almost unlimited quant.i.ty of money. Even five shillings and sevenpence did not half fill it.

Of course Madge could not take a tin house with chimneys in her pocket to Churchbury on a shopping expedition, and she signally failed in an attempt to squeeze the money into her purse. Betty and John offered theirs in addition; but at this point she was met by a fresh difficulty, no pocket will hold three purses unnaturally distended with pennies.

"I really do think I had better only take my share and leave you two your own money to spend another day," Madge had observed rather dolefully, for she had been looking forward with some pride to the unusually substantial purchases that the possession of their united fortunes would enable her to make.

But John and Betty would not hear of this suggestion for a moment.

They were longing to spend their saved-up h.o.a.rds of money, and as there was no immediate prospect of their going to Churchbury themselves, they had been counting on Madge returning in the evening laden with interesting purchases.

There was a short period of dismayed silence. Then Betty suddenly broke out: "I know a way! Wait just a second!"

She rushed excitedly off, and returned waving a neat bag of shiny brown calico.

"Why, that's what Nurse made for you to pack your best shoes in when you went away on visits!" exclaimed Madge.