There in the shadow of the mast-head was a column of doughnuts!

"You may take them all to school with you, Charlie."

Now he was glad that he was not sick. He disposed of six doughnuts that forenoon, and as these, if tied together, would have made good chain-shot for the monitor, and yet did not affect him unfavorably, it was proof that Charlie was restored to health.

CHAPTER VII.

THE NAILED DOOR AND WINDOW.

Charlie made a discovery in the barn. In that side toward the river there was a door on the first floor, and there was also a window in the chamber above. Not only was the door closed, and closed also was the wooden shutter of the window, but over each iron hook dropped in its staple and securing the door and window were two nails stoutly driven. All this Charlie had noticed before. He now traced these half-obliterated words in chalk on the door: "This is not to be opened." He was standing before this prohibition, wondering who put it there, and for what purpose, thinking how nice it would be to have the door open that the club might have a chance to get down that way into the dock. Then he thought how pleasant it would be, also, to have the window open that the club might have a lookout upon the river and off toward the sea, on whose blue rim, a mile away, could be seen the white tower of the light-house, where Simes Badger and his a.s.sistant served their country alternate days. Suddenly, Charlie heard a thick, hoa.r.s.e voice behind him: "Your Aunt Stanshy in, sonny?"

Charlie turned, somewhat startled, and there was Simes Badger himself.

"She has gone out, I guess, sir."

"What are you looking at that door for? I don't believe your Aunt Stanshy wants you to open it."

"O, I was not going to open it."

If, after the half-effaced chalk-marks, Charlie had seen a written threat, "On pain of death," he could not have been more determined to let that window alone.

"Do you know, Mr. Badger, who shut and nailed that window?"

"Aunt Stanshy herself. I saw her with my own eyes."

"You did?"

"Yes. You see--there, I don't know but I'm telling a secret--but then you won't say any thing."

Having made this prudent remark, and not waiting for any promise from Charlie, Simes, who dearly loved to tell a thing, and especially any thing that might astonish a hearer, began his story.

"You see, Tim Tyler is your Aunt Stanshy's second cousin."

"Tim's father?" said Charlie, in astonishment.

"You mean young Tim Tyler's father? Ginerally old Tim is young Tim's father, sartin as the sea is father of our river. But this old Tim is young Tim's uncle. Then you didn't know it? Well, you are young, and I spose n.o.body told you. Well, Stanshy and old Tim were brought up side by side in this neighborhood and were good as chickens to one another. Some folks say they'd been better friends still, if their parents hadn't set their faces agin it, and so they were never married to one another. They were never married at all. Did you ever see old Tim?"

"I don't know as ever I saw old Tim, but then I've seen _that_ boy, and he is rough," said Charlie, recalling the afternoon of the Fourth.

"Tim Tyler don't live in this part of the town, and it's no wonder you never saw him. He hardly ever comes down this way now, though he often did once. Well, the wust lookin' old drunkard you ever see about town, spot him for Tim."

"Then I guess I have seen him," remarked Charlie, recalling the drunkard he had watched the afternoon of his severe sickness, and remembering, too, Aunt Stanshy's singular conduct.

"Tim looks poorly enough now, but it wasn't so once. Straight and smart, and bright as the blades of a new jack-knife, was Tim. His face was blushin' like a posy, and his beard was long and handsome, like Moses the prophet's. He was nice as a pictur till rum got the better of him, and then he changed, I tell ye. For many years he had the privilege of fishin'

from this barn. From the stairs on the 'tother side of that door, he would get down into his fishin' boat in the dock. He would bring his fish in here, split 'em and prepare 'em for market. Sometimes Stanshy kept a horse and cow below, and then Tim would hist his fare into the upper window and clean his fish there. But one day Aunt Stanshy cleaned him out, and when Stanshy starts on a cleanin' tour, she makes thorough work of it, and puts things through promptly. And she did clean out old Tim! But I must go back and hitch the horse into the cart, and say what you know as well as I, that your Aunt Stanshy is a great teetotaler, a leetle too much I think."

[Simes liked his nip.] "But seein' how her minister's in favor of it, she is wuss than ever. Now to go on. Your father, boy, let me say, had a hand in this trouble, though not meaningly, and it was this way. Tour father came to live with your Aunt Stanshy, and one day Tim took him out a-fishin', and not only tipped a jug to his own lips, but sot it to your father's also. When they came back home, it was plain they had been up to suthin' besides fishin'. Well, Tim might as well have touched a lion's whip--what do you call it?"

"Whelp. I was reading about lions to-day."

"Yes, touched a lion's whelp as touched your father; for didn't Aunt Stanshy pitch into him! I heard it all. It was when he was a-splittin'

fish, and Aunt Stanshy came out, and didn't she walk into Tim! I never see an eel skinned more purtily than she dressed Tim for temptin' a poor, motherless boy, as she called your father. 'Don't!' your father would go, tryin' to pacify her; 'don't!' It had no more effect than tryin' to fan out of the way a tornader. Indeed, jest because she and Tim had been on good terms with one another and understood one another so well, I think for that reason she was all the hotter. You know when brothers do quarrel, they go it wuss than other folks. Well, Tim at fust would say nothing but he was orful mad. He was that kind of mad that you see in the sky when a thunder-storm is brewin', and yet no rain has fallen; only the flash is there, and the thunder is there a-rumblin', and the lightnin' is there a sawin' up and down, but nary a drop of rain! At last Tim spoke, and he declared it was the last he'd ever have to do with her, and afore he'd ask a favor of her, he took a horrid oath, he'd see hisself a-drownin' in that dock fust. I hated to hear him swear that way, for, sez I, 'Young man, you may get there yet, and you may be glad to have Stanshy's help.' Then he took a barrel of fish he was fillin', and he was so mad he rolled the whole mess into the water, sayin' he would have nothin' to do with any thing that had touched Aunt Stanshy's barn. I asked him why he didn't then throw himself over! That touched him up, and he grabbed his knives and pitched them into the dock. It was a queer sight to see them fish in that barrel floatin' away. But then the rum was in him and maddened him. When he had left, it was Aunt Stanshy's turn to do suthin'. I heard it all, for I was in the yard doin' a few ch.o.r.es for Stanshy. Fust, there was a slam in the barn chamber. I jest slipped up them stairs and peeked over the edge of the floor. Stanshy had pulled the shutter in with a vengeance.

Then she hooked it and drove the nails over the hook as tight as bricks. O she is a woman of 'mazin' vigor, Stanshy is, when she gets agoin'. She came down stairs and she fastened up this door, and then I seed her fumblin' in her pocket, and, pullin' out a piece of chalk, she began to write. When Stanshy had finished, of course, I was at my ch.o.r.es agin very busily engaged. Well, since that day, there has been silence between Stanshy and Tim like that round the old tombstones in the church-yard. I hope some day it will be different."

With this benevolent wish, Simes closed.

"A bad sc.r.a.pe," remarked Charlie.

"Yes, people ought not to drink so much," said the abstemious and ascetic Simes. "They ought to stop this side of a drop too much."

"They ought to stop this side of any drop at all," stoutly affirmed the young member of Mr. Walton's temperance society.

"Pre--pre--haps so," replied Simes.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE ENTERTAINMENT.

Aunt Stanshy, as she looked down upon the sitting-room table, saw Charlie's curly head bending over pen, ink, and card-board. He had cut the card-board into strips three inches long and two inches wide.

"What have you there?"

Charlie was too much occupied to notice this remark.

"What are you doing?"

"Making tickets."

"Tickets?"

"Yes, will you buy one?"

"I want to see first what I am going to buy."

"You may."

Aunt Stanshy then read these lines on a slip of card-board:

------------------------------------------- | Ticket to the Up-the-Ladder Boys' | | ENTERTAINMENT. | | Admission, 2 nails. Seat, 10 nails. | | Elders' admission, 1 cent. Seat, 2 cents. | -------------------------------------------

"O, that is it I Could I go in for nails, or a cent?"