"Christmas vacation," said Ned. "We won't have much to do then. What do you say?"

"I say that, for the first time in my life, Neddie, I'm proud to acknowledge you as my twin!"

CHAPTER XVI-POLLY TELLS A SPOOK STORY

a.s.sured of sufficient funds to complete its season without financial embarra.s.sment, the Hillman's football team seemed to take a new and firmer grip on things. Practice went well that week, and the players showed vim and snap. Perhaps the colder weather helped, too. The line-up that faced the scrubs on Friday for a short scrimmage was, barring accidents, that which would, four weeks later, start the game against Hillman's old rival, Farview Academy. Farley and White were at the ends, Captain Stevenson and Pringle were the tackles, Emerson and Corson were the guards, and Kewpie Proudtree was at center. Frank Brattle at quarter, Mason and Slavin for halves, and Pope at full-back composed the rest of the team. There were some weak places, to be sure; but, on the whole, Coach Mulford was fairly satisfied that he had the parts for a capable machine.

Ned was still playing on the scrub eleven, and doing rather well. As a punter, at least, he deserved his position at left half, and it might be that he would develop into a fair goal-kicker; for in the last four days, under the tuition of the coach and full-back Pope, he had shown excellent promise. Those morning lessons, now abandoned, had grounded Ned well in the art of toeing the pigskin, and, whatever fame the future might hold for him as punter or drop-kicker or place-kicker, much of the credit would be Kewpie's.

To-day, in the second ten minutes of the scrimmaging,-there was but twenty minutes in all,-Thursby, playing quarter, and probably acting under instructions, gave Ned his first chance to show what he could do in the way of field goals. Unable to reach a point nearer than twenty yards to the school team's goal, Thursby called for "kick formation, Turner back," and Ned went up-field with his heart in his mouth.

Although the cross-bar was less than thirty yards from where he took his stand and almost directly in front of him, it looked to Ned to be a woeful distance away and the angle much more severe than it was. But he didn't have much time for reflection, for Thursby called his signal quickly, and the leather came back to him at a good pa.s.s, and the school team was crashing through.

Ned always thought that he closed his eyes when he swung his toe against the rebounding ball and trusted to luck, but I doubt it, for the pigskin described a perfect arc and went well and true over the bar, and if Ned had had his eyes closed I don't believe the pigskin would have acted that way at all. Most of the scrub team players thumped him on the back and showed their delight in other ways, for they had not scored on the school team for nearly a week; while, at a little distance, Coach Mulford nodded his head almost imperceptibly. It was too bad Ned didn't see that nod, for it would have pleased him far more than the buffets of his team-mates.

The next day Hillman's made a trip to Warring and played the Lansing team to a standstill, returning with a 22-0 victory tucked under its belt. Ned got into the game for a bare five minutes at the last, as did half a dozen other subst.i.tutes; but he was not called on to kick any goals, for which he was at once sorry and glad. To have had the eyes of nearly a thousand persons on him would, he thought, have precluded any possibility of success; but, on the other hand, had he succeeded-He sighed for lost opportunities!

The attendance that afternoon was a matter of great joy to Manager Dave Murray, for Hillman's went home with a neat sum as its share of the day's profits, a sum far larger than he had counted on-large enough, in fact, to make up the difference between the net receipts from the fete and the three hundred and fifty dollars aimed at.

Hillman's good fortune held for another week. There were no accidents during practice; every fellow in the line-up played for all that was in him; and the scrubs took a licking every afternoon. Ned twice more gained glory as a drop-kicker, although on a third occasion he failed lamentably. Unfortunately, neither of his successes brought victory to his team, since the opponents had on each occasion a safe lead in the scoring. Every afternoon, following the scrimmage, Ned was presented by the coach with a nice battle-scarred football, and instructed to go down to the east goal and "put some over." Sometimes Hop Kendrick or Ben Thursby went with him to hold the ball while he tried placement-kicks, and always an unhappy subst.i.tute was delegated to retrieve the pigskin for him; but the coach let him pretty much alone, and Pope looked on only occasionally and was surprisingly sparing of comment or advice. And yet, Ned improved, rather to his surprise, since he felt himself neglected and, as he said to Laurie, didn't see how they expected a fellow to learn goal-kicking if they didn't show him a little! But, although he didn't realize it, Ned had reached a point in his development where he was best left to his own devices, and Coach Mulford knew it and forbore to risk confusing him with unnecessary instruction.

So Ned pegged away doggedly, and got results, as he considered, in spite of the coach!

Against the Queens Preparatory Inst.i.tute, which journeyed up from the city on Sat.u.r.day, the Blue was able to emerge from four grueling fifteen-minute periods with the score 6-6, from the Blue's standpoint a very satisfactory showing, for Q. P. I. was a much-heralded team and had downed stronger elevens than Hillman's. So November began its second week, and cloudy days and not infrequently rainy ones took the place of the sunny weather of October.

Laurie would have been somewhat at a loss for a way in which to spend his afternoons at that time, had it not been for Bob Starling's overmastering desire to build a tennis-court in the garden of the Coventry place. The weather was far too cold for tennis, although now and then he and Bob played George and Lee Murdock, and the wrecking of the old grape-arbor, preparatory to digging up the sod, proved a welcome diversion. Sometimes Thomas took a hand; but Thomas had plenty to do indoors, and the work was accomplished almost wholly by Bob and Laurie, with the occasional moral support of George or Lee.

Usually an hour's labor with hammer or crowbar ended with an adjournment to the Widow Deane's, by way of the back fence, for refreshments.

Sometimes it was warm enough to foregather in the little garden behind the shop and, armed with cream-puffs or tarts, spend a jolly half-hour in the society of Polly and Mae. At such times Mrs. Deane, hearing the shouts and laughter, came to the back door and smiled in sympathy.

One glorious afternoon of mingled sunlight and frost there was an excursion afoot out into the country in search of nuts. Polly and Mae and Laurie and George and Bob and Lee formed the party. They carried two baskets, one of which George wore on his head most of the way, to the wonderment of the infrequent pa.s.sers. Mae knew, or thought she knew, where there were chestnut trees, and led the way for three miles to what is called Two Jug Ridge. The chestnut trees, however, were, according to Laurie, away for the afternoon. They found some hickory nuts, not quite ready to leave their husks, and a few beech-nuts, and after gathering those they sat on a broad, flat boulder and looked down on Orstead and Little Windsor and some twelve miles of the Hudson River, and talked a good deal of nonsense-all except Lee, who went to sleep with his cap pulled over his eyes, and had a cold in his head for days after. George decided that when he was through college and was married, he would come back there and build a bungalow just where they were seated.

"This will do for the front door-step," he expounded, "and over there will be a closed-in porch with an open fireplace and a Gloucester hammock."

"That all you're going to have?" asked Bob. "No kitchen?"

"Oh, there'll be a kitchen, all right, and a dining-room-no, I guess we'll eat on the porch. Wouldn't it be a dandy place, though? Look at the view!"

"Fine," said Laurie, without much enthusiasm, remembering the last uphill mile. "Don't mind if I don't come to see you often, though, do you?"

"Not a bit! n.o.body asked you, anyway."

"You could live on nuts," murmured Polly, "and could have s.h.a.ggy-barks for breakfast and beech-nuts for dinner and-"

"Grape-nuts for supper," said Laurie, coming to the rescue.

"And you could call the place the Squirrel-Cage," suggested Bob.

And that reminded Mae of a story her father had told of a man who had lived in the woods farther down the river some years before, and who ate nothing but nuts and things he found in the forest. "He lived all alone in a little cabin he'd built, and folks said he was a deserter from the army, and-"

"What army?" George asked.

"The Northern Army, of course."

"I thought you might mean the Salvation Army. Then this was quite awhile ago, wasn't it?"

"Of course, stupid! Years and years ago. And finally, when he died, folks found that he wasn't a deserter at all, but a general or a major or something, and they found a prize that the government had given him, some sort of a medal for bravery in battle. Wasn't that sad?"

"Well," replied Laurie, doubtfully, "I suppose it was. I suppose the government would have shown better judgment if they'd given him a bag of nuts. Of course, he couldn't eat that medal!"

"You're horrid! Anyway, it just shows that you mustn't judge folks by-by outward appearances, doesn't it?"

"Rather! I've always said that, too. Take George, for example. Just to look at him, you'd never think he had any sense at all; but at times-"

"Lay off of George," interrupted that young gentleman, threateningly.

"If folks judged you by the way you talk, you'd be inside a nice high wall!"

Why the talk should have drifted from there to the subject of ghosts and uncanny happenings isn't apparent, but it did. In the midst of it, Lee gave a tremendous snore that scared both the girls horribly, and sat up suddenly, blinking. "h.e.l.lo!" he muttered. Then he yawned and grinned foolishly. "Guess I must have dropped off," he said apologetically.

"You didn't," said George. "If you had you'd have waked up quicker! Cut out the chatter; Polly's telling a spook yarn."

Lee gathered up a handful of beech-nuts and was silent except for the sound he made in cracking the sh.e.l.ls.

"It isn't much of a story," disclaimed Polly, "but it-it _was_ funny.

It began just after Mama and I came here. I mean, that was the first time. One night, after we had gone to bed, Mama called me. 'I think there's some one downstairs, Polly,' she whispered. We both listened, and, sure enough, we could hear a sort of tapping sound. It wasn't like footsteps, exactly; more-more hollow, as if it came from a long way off. But it sounded right underneath. We listened a minute or two, and then it stopped and didn't begin again; and presently we lighted a candle and went downstairs, and n.o.body was there and everything was quite all right. So we thought that perhaps what we'd heard was some one walking along the street.

"We didn't hear it again for nearly two weeks, and then it lasted longer-maybe two minutes. It got louder; and stopped, and began again, and died away; and we sat there and listened, and I thought of ghosts and everything except robbers, because it didn't sound like any one in the store. It was more as if it was some one in the cellar."

"Well, maybe it was," suggested Laurie, when Polly paused.

"That's what we thought, Nod, until we went to see. Then we remembered that there wasn't any cellar!"

"Oh!" said Laurie.

"What happened then?" asked Lee, flicking a sh.e.l.l at George.

"It kept on happening every little while for two years. We got so we didn't think any more about it. Mr. Farmer, the lawyer, said what we heard was probably a rat. But I know very well it wasn't that. It was too regular. It was always just the same each time. At first we could just hear it a little, and then it grew louder and louder, and stopped.

And then it began again, loud, and just sort of-of trailed off till you couldn't hear it at all. I suppose we never would have heard it if it hadn't been for Mama not sleeping very well, because it always came after midnight, usually about half-past twelve. After a while I didn't hear it at all, because Mama stopped waking me up."

"Spooks," declared George, with unction. "The house is haunted, Polly."

"Wish I lived there," said Bob eagerly. "I'm crazy about ghosts. They told me that old Coven-I mean your uncle, Polly-haunted the house we're in; but, gee! I've been around at all times of night and never seen a thing! There are lots of jolly, shivery noises-stairs creaking, and woodwork popping, and all that, you know; but nary a ghost. Look here, Polly! Let me sit down in the store some night, will you? I'd love to!"

"You've got funny ideas of fun," murmured George.

"Oh, but it's gone now," said Mae. "Hasn't it, Polly? You haven't heard the noise for a long time, have you?"