It was like the shout of Israel from the top of the mountains. Shep bounced into the house with hair on end and the chickens cackled and the old rooster clapped his wings and crowed with all the power of his lungs. Every member of that little group stood stock-still and breathless.

I trembled with a fear I could not have defined. Quick relief came when, straightway, my uncle went out of the room and stood on the stoop, back toward us, and blew his nose vigorously with his big red handkerchief.

He stood still looking down and wiping his eyes. Mr. Grimshaw shuffled out of the door, his cane rapping the floor as if his arm had been stricken with palsy in a moment.

Mr. Dunkelberg turned to my aunt, his face scarlet, and muttered an apology for the disturbance and followed the money-lender.

I remember that my own eyes were wet as I went to my aunt and kissed her. She kissed me--a rare thing for her to do--and whispered brokenly but with a smile: "We'll go down to the poorhouse together, Bart, but we'll go honest."

"Come on, Bart," Uncle Peabody called cheerfully, as he walked toward the barnyard. "Le's go an' git in them but'nuts."

He paid no attention to our visitors--neither did my aunt, who followed us. The two men talked together a moment, unhitched their horses, got into their buggies and drove away. The great red rooster had stood on the fence eying them. As they turned their horses and drove slowly toward the gate, he clapped his wings and crowed l.u.s.tily.

"Give it to 'em, ol' d.i.c.k," said Uncle Peabody with a clap of his hands.

"Tell 'em what ye think of 'em."

At last the Dunkelbergs had fallen--the legendary, incomparable Dunkelbergs!

"Wal, I'm surprised at Mr. Horace Dunkelberg tryin' to come it over us like that--ayes! I be," said Aunt Deel.

"Wal, I ain't," said Uncle Peabody. "Ol' Grimshaw has got him under his thumb--that's what's the matter. You'll find he's up to his ears in debt to Grimshaw--prob'ly."

As we followed him toward the house, he pushing the wheelbarrow loaded with sacks of nuts, he added:

"At last Grimshaw has found somethin' that he can't buy an' he's awful surprised. Too bad he didn't learn that lesson long ago."

He stopped his wheelbarrow by the steps and we sat down together on the edge of the stoop as he added:

"I got mad--they kep' pickin' on me so--I'm sorry, but I couldn't help it. We'll start up ag'in somewheres if we have to. There's a good many days' work in me yet."

As we carried the bags to the attic room I thought of the lodestone and the compa.s.s and knew that Mr. Wright had foreseen what was likely to happen. When we came down Uncle Peabody said to me:

"Do you remember what you read out of a book one night about a man sellin' his honor?"

"Yes," I answered. "It's one o' the books that Mr. Wright gave us."

"It's somethin' purty common sense," he remarked, "an' we stopped and talked it over. I wish you'd git the book an' read it now."

I found the book and read aloud the following pa.s.sage:

"Honor is a strange commodity. It can not be divided and sold in part. All or none is the rule of the market. While it can be sold in a way, it can not be truly bought. It vanishes in the transfer of its t.i.tle and is no more. Who seeks to buy it gains only loss.

It is the one thing which distinguishes manhood from property. Who sells his honor sells his manhood and becomes simply a thing of meat and blood and bones--a thing to be watched and driven and cudgelled like the ox--for he has sold that he can not buy, not if all the riches in the world were his."

A little silence followed the words. Then Uncle Peabody said:

"That's the kind o' stuff in our granary. We've been reapin' it out o'

the books Mr. Grimshaw scolded about, a little here an' a little there for years, an' we knew it was good wheat. If he had books like that in his house mebbe Amos would 'a' been different. An' he'd 'a' been different. He wouldn't 'a' had to come here tryin' to buy our honor like you'd buy a hoss."

"Oh, dear!" Aunt Deel exclaimed wearily, with her hands over her eyes; "a boy has to have somethin' besides pigs an' cattle an' threats an'

stones an' hoss dung an' cow manure to take up his mind."

Uncle Peabody voiced my own feeling when he said:

"I feel sorry, awful sorry, for that boy."

We spent a silent afternoon gathering apples. After supper we played Old Sledge and my uncle had hard work to keep us in good countenance. We went to bed early and I lay long hearing the autumn wind in the popple leaves and thinking of that great thing which had grown strong within us, little by little, in the candle-light.

CHAPTER XI

A PARTY AND--MY FOURTH PERIL?

"A dead fish can swim down-stream but only a live one can swim up it,"

said Uncle Peabody as we rode toward the village together. We had been talking of that strong current of evil which had tried to carry us along with it. I understood him perfectly.

It was a rainy Sunday. In the middle of the afternoon Uncle Peabody and I had set out in our spring buggy with the family umbrella--a faded but sacred implement, always carefully dried, after using, and hung in the clothes press. I remember that its folded skirt was as big around as my coat sleeve and that Uncle Peabody always grasped it in the middle, with hand about its waist, in a way of speaking, when he carried it after a shower. The rain came on again and with such violence that we were drenched to the skin in spite of the umbrella. It was still raining when we arrived at the familiar door in Ashery Lane. Uncle Peabody wouldn't stop.

"Water never scares a live fish," he declared with a chuckle as he turned around. "Good-by, Bart."

He hurried away. We pioneers rarely stopped or even turned out for the weather. Uncle Peabody used to say that the way to get sick was to change your clothes every time you got wet. It was growing dusk and I felt sorry for him.

"Come in," said the voice of the schoolmaster at the door. "There's good weather under this roof."

He saw my plight as I entered.

"I'm like a s.h.a.ggy dog that's been in swimming," I said.

"Upon my word, boy, we're in luck," remarked the schoolmaster.

I looked up at him.

"Michael Henry's clothes!--sure, they're just the thing for you!"

"Will they go on me?" I asked, for, being large of my age, I had acquired an habitual shyness of things that were too small for me, and things, too, had seemed to have got the habit of being too small.

"As easily as Nick Tubbs goes on a spree, and far more becoming, for I do not think a spree ever looks worse than when Tubbs is on it. Come with me."

I followed him up-stairs, wondering how it had happened that Michael Henry had clothes.

He took me into his room and brought some handsome soft clothes out of a press with shirt, socks and boots to match.

"There, my laddie buck," said he, "put them on."

"These will soon dry on me," I said.

"Put them on--ye laggard! Michael Henry told me to give them to you.

It's the birthday night o' little Ruth, my boy. There's a big cake with candles and chicken pie and jellied cookies and all the like o' that.