"Yous youngsters has been awful bad," she reiterated, returning to the back door, and shaking the innocent-looking branch menacingly, "an'

you've jist got to be--to be--whipped," she ended up faintly.

The orphans stared at her for a moment in open-mouthed amazement; then, with shrieks of hysterical laughter, the twins bounded off the veranda and scrambled up to the safe sanctuary of the woodpile.

Tim alone stood his ground. He surveyed the meager weapon in the woman's hand, contempt in his wise old eyes. "Ye kin lick me, if ye like, for the hull o' them," he said, with weary indifference. "I don't care. I'm used to it."

At this pathetic confession, Mrs. Sawyer threw down the disciplining rod and sank upon the doorstep. She buried her face in her ap.r.o.n and burst into sobs. At the sight of her grief, so inexplicable, so terrifying, the twins pitched themselves off the woodpile and flung themselves upon her. They wound their arms chokingly about her neck; they petted and caressed, and besought her not to cry; they bewailed their own shortcomings, and made unconditional promises of perfection in the future. And even Tim sidled up, and volunteered a vague hint concerning contemplated reformation.

So Hannah dried her tears, and lighting a lamp, fetched more gingerbread and raspberry vinegar from the cellar, and they all repaired to the parlor to celebrate the family reunion. They were in the midst of the feast when there came a stealthy movement at the back door, and Jake crept sheepishly in, leading Joey by the hand. He looked at his wife with an expression of mingled contrition and frightened inquiry. Hannah beamed back perfect forgiveness and a.s.surance, and in his overwhelming relief Jake caught up the twins and swung them over his head. The whole family immediately gave itself up to riot, and when the Duke of Wellington and Mrs. Winters came over to see if the orphans had been properly subdued they found the undisciplined household, Hannah included, engaged in a glorious game of blind man's buff. Even while the two officers of the law were peeping through the kitchen window, Jake upset the water-pail, and the twins broke a gla.s.s pitcher, all unheeded.

Mrs. Winters and the Duke turned, and marched indignantly homeward.

"Well!" exclaimed the exasperated village manager, as she stumbled through the Sawyers' lumpy garden, "what we've got to do 'fore we can raise them orphants, is to raise them two old fools they've got for a father and mother, and I guess it's about fifty years too late!"

Not till the still unchastened orphans were in bed and asleep did Jake again broach the subject of corporal punishment. For some time he walked up and down the kitchen, scratching his head, as he always did when worrying out a mental problem.

At length he gave a sigh of satisfaction, and paused before the table where Hannah sat mending Tim's riven trousers.

"We ain't a-goin' to try that Winters dodge no more, Hannah," he announced firmly, "an' that's all about it."

Hannah looked up joyfully. "Oh, Jake, I'm awful glad! I couldn't do it--I jist couldn't!"

"Of course you couldn't," he cried sympathetically, "An', what's more, you don't have to try any more. We'll do our best by them kids other ways, an' the good Lord'll see they don't turn out bad. But there's one thing dead sure, an' you can tell Susan Winters, and the Dook, too--I ain't a-goin' to raise my hand to no motherless child; no, not if they burn down the mill; and may the Lord help me so to do!"

CHAPTER VIII

A STRANGE COMRADESHIP

O wind of death, that darkly blows Each separate ship of human woes Far out on a mysterious sea, I turn, I turn my face to thee.

--ETHELWYN WETHERALD.

In spite of the excitement attendant upon the orphans' waywardness and the doctor's growing practice, Elmbrook did not lose sight of the new watchman in the mill.

Since the minister's rebuff, the village generally had ceased all advances; but they watched John McIntyre from a distance, with deep interest, not unmixed with fear. There was something in his whole conduct to arouse apprehension. Every evening at dusk he came stealing up the valley from the Drowned Lands, and every morning, in the gray dawn, he stole away again. Silent and morose, avoiding all contact with his fellow-men, he came and went with the darkness, until he seemed a creature of night and shadows. One or two of the more kindly souls of the village still made vain attempts to be friendly. Old Hughie Cameron visited the mill several evenings, and Silas Long carried his telescope down to the engine-room door, and strove to introduce the strange man to the joys of star-gazing. Even the minister, grieved at his former harshness, paid him a second visit.

But all alike were repulsed. John McIntyre would accept kindness from no man, and one by one they were forced to leave him to himself. Some of the women, too, tried to pierce his reserve, with as little effect.

The Longs lived near the mill-pond, and Mrs. Long had been in the habit of sending Jerry Coombs, the former watchman, a nightly lunch. So one evening she borrowed Davy Munn, and sent him down to the mill with a strawberry pie and a plate of cookies that would have tempted any living man. They were returned with dignified thanks, and Silas and his wife sat and exclaimed over the strange man's obstinacy, while Davy Munn and the eldest orphan despatched the despised viands. Mrs. Long told her story the next afternoon at Miss McQuarry's, where the village mothers had met to make a quilt for the Sawyer twins' bed. Every one agreed that John McIntyre certainly was a caution, and the hostess declared, with a sigh, that she was jist terrible feared he would bring retribution upon Sandy for his treatment of the minister.

Ella Anne Long remarked, between st.i.tches, that his house was a sight to behold, and no mistake.

"Did you see into it with the spygla.s.s?" inquired Mrs. Winters, from the other end of the quilt, glad to get a slap at the mischievous instrument.

"No, I didn't!" said Miss Long indignantly. "It was when Arabella and me were down there, pickin' strawberries in the old clearin'. You can ask Arabella, there, if you don't believe me."

Miss Arabella, with an apologetic glance at her sister-in-law, corroborated the statement. They had seen inside the door that day quite by accident, and the place was a dreary sight: a broken-down old table, and only a piece of a log for a seat, and a heap of rags and straw in an old bunk for a bed.

"Eh, poor man! poor buddy!" cried old lady Cameron pityingly. "An' him with such a fine Hielan' name, too!"

Mrs. Winters suggested that they make a raid upon the place some evening after he had left for the mill, and scrub and clean up. It was a disgrace to the village to have such conditions not a mile from your very door!

But old lady Cameron did not quite sanction such extreme measures. A man's home was his castle, her brother Hughie always said, and no one had any right to enter without his permission. So the quilting-bee ended in a great deal of talk, and John McIntyre's condition remained unbettered.

The Elmbrook Temperance League next took him up. Spectacle John Cross was president of the society, and was a.s.sured that it was drink that ailed John McIntyre. No one had ever seen him overcome with liquor, neither had he ever been known to go to Lakeview, where was the nearest point at which it could be obtained. But Spectacle John said you could never tell. He might run a private still in that old place away back in the swamp, and he just looked like the kind that could carry a gallon and yet walk steady. Spectacle John had met that sort often on his temperance campaigns.

So they sent invitations to John McIntyre to join their ranks, all of which he emphatically refused. Spectacle John received little encouragement from the milkstand. Old Hughie Cameron was of the opinion, having rastled it out one evening to the tune of "The Cameron Men," that to ask that poor buddy to join his bit of a society was like asking the folks at a funeral to come and play hop-scotch. Likely, the man never touched liquor; and, anyway, his trouble was a sad one, whatever it was, and needed a remedy that would go deeper.

While the village thus pondered over John McIntyre's case, there was one person who was slowly, but surely, piercing his armor of reserve.

Ever since his first visit, the eldest orphan had felt the fascination of the wicked watchman growing, and gradually he fell into the habit of paying him a short visit every evening. He had various reasons for going. First, he really felt a strange affinity for this outcast.

John McIntyre was very bad, he hated good people and law and order, and Tim was convinced that he also was the enemy of all such. Then, too, when the boys at school learned that he was McIntyre's intimate it threw an evil glamor over him. He added to it by dark hints of the plots he and the watchman were hatching; the breaking of the dam and the burning of the mill being among the smallest. Then there was that wonderful engine he was free to examine. And last of all, Tim noticed a strange and delightful circ.u.mstance that often attended his visits to McIntyre. When he had been spending an evening at the mill, old Hughie Cameron was often on the bridge as he came down the willow path; and he never failed to pat him on the head and slip a cent into his hand.

At first, Jake and Hannah were greatly exercised over the growing intimacy between their boy and the wicked man who had defied the minister. They even had horrible visions of resorting to Mrs. Winters'

extreme measures once more to keep their eldest away from the mill; but old Hughie Cameron allayed their fears. John McIntyre would never harm a child, he declared firmly. So, much relieved, the Sawyers let the boy have his way.

At first the man merely tolerated the child's presence in silence; but as he grew accustomed to it he sometimes caught himself glancing down the willow-bordered path to see if the little, hobbling figure, in the scant trousers and the big straw hat, were yet in sight. All conversation remained, for a time, one-sided. It consisted chiefly of a string of questions on the boy's part, interspersed with reluctant answers from the man. Sometimes, weary of seeking information unsuccessfully, Tim would deliver it himself, and would talk all evening about his past hard life. After some of its sad disclosures he noticed that his companion was less taciturn, and he seized such opportunities for wringing from him something of his views on religion.

"Who made this pond?" he asked one night, when the water was a radiance of golden ripples.

"I don't know," answered his companion shortly.

"But who d'ye s'pose made it?"

"I suppose it was Sandy McQuarry, when he put the mill here."

"How did he do it?"

"He dammed the creek."

"Oh, and who made the crick?"

"It was always there."

"Yes, but who made it in the first place?"

No answer.

"Was it G.o.d?"

"I--I suppose so."

"Oh, ain't you dead sure? Who could it 'a' been, then?"

Still silence.

"Was it G.o.d?"