Part 2 (2/2)

In the course of a few days Lawrence Croft received a note signed Candy & Co. ”per” some illegible initials, which stated that Mr Junius Keswick had been traced to a boarding-house in the city, but as the establishment had been broken up for some time, endeavors were now being made to find the lady who had kept the house, and when this was done it would most likely be possible to discover from her where Mr Keswick had gone.

Lawrence waited a few days and then called at the Information Shop.

Again was Mr Candy absent; and so was the boy. The cas.h.i.+er informed him that she had found--that is, that the lady who kept the boarding-house had been found--and she thought she remembered the gentlemen in question, and promised, as soon as she could, to look through a book, in which she used to keep directions for the forwarding of letters, and in this way another clew might soon be expected.

”This seems to be going on better,” said Lawrence, ”but Mr Candy doesn't show much in the affair. Who is managing it? You?”

The girl blushed and then laughed, a little confusedly. ”I am only the cas.h.i.+er,” she said.

”And the laborious duties of your position would, of course, give you no time for anything else,” remarked Lawrence.

”Oh, well,” said the girl, ”of course it is easy enough for any one to see that I haven't much to do as cas.h.i.+er, but the boy and Mr Candy are nearly always out, looking up things, and I have to do other business besides attending to cash.”

”If you are attending to my business,” said Lawrence, ”I am very glad, especially now that it has reached the boarding-house stage, where I think a woman will be better able to work than a man. Are you doing this entirely independent of Mr Candy?”

”Well, sir,” said the cas.h.i.+er, with an honest, straightforward look from her gray eyes that pleased Lawrence, ”I may as well confess that I am. But there's nothing mean about it. He has all the same as given it up, for he's waiting to hear from a man at Niagara, who will never write to him, and probably hasn't any thing to write, and as I advised you to pay the money I feel bound in honor to see that the business is done, if it can be done.”

”Have you a brother or a husband to help you in these investigations and searches?” asked Lawrence.

”No,” said the cas.h.i.+er with a smile. ”Sometimes I send our boy, and as to boarding houses, I can go to them myself after we shut up here.”

”I wish,” said Lawrence, ”that you were married, and that you had a husband who would not interfere in this matter at all, but who would go about with you, and so enable you to follow up your clew thoroughly. You take up the business in the right spirit, and I believe you would succeed in finding Mr Keswick, but I don't like the idea of sending you about by yourself.”

”I won't deny,” said the cas.h.i.+er, ”that since I have begun this affair I would like very much to carry it out; so, if you don't object, I won't give it up just yet, and as soon as anything happens I'll let you know.”

CHAPTER III.

Autumn in Virginia, especially if one is not too near the mountains, is a season in which greenness sails very close to Christmas, although generally veering away in time to prevent its verdant hues from tingeing that happy day with the gloomy influence of the prophetic proverb about churchyards. Long after the time when the people of the regions watered by the Hudson and the Merrimac are beginning to b.u.t.ton up their overcoats, and to think of weather strips for their window-sashes, the dwellers in the land through which flow the Appomattox and the James may sit upon their broad piazzas, and watch the growing glories of the forests, where the crimson stars of the sweet gum blaze among the rich yellows of the chestnuts, the lingering green of the oaks, and the enduring verdure of the pines. The insects still hum in the sunny air, and the sun is now a genial orb whose warm rays cheer but not excoriate.

The orb just mentioned was approaching the horizon, when, in an adjoining county to that in which was situated the hospitable mansion of Midbranch, a little negro boy about ten years old was driving some cows through a gateway that opened on a public road. The cows, as they were going homeward, filed willingly through the gateway, which led into a field, at the far end of which might be dimly discerned a house behind a ma.s.s of foliage; but the boy, whose head and voice were entirely too big for the rest of him, a.s.sailed them with all manner of reproaches and impellent adjectives, addressing each cow in turn as: ”You, sah!” When the compliant beasts had hustled through, the youngster got upon the gate, and giving it a push with one bare foot, he swung upon it as far as it would go; then lifting the end from the surface of the ground he shut it with a bang, fastened it with a hook, and ran after the cows, his wild provocatives to bovine haste ringing high into the evening air.

This youth was known as Plez, his whole name being Pleasant Valley, an inspiration to his mother from the label on a grape box, which had drifted into that region from the North. He had just stooped to pick up a clod of earth with which to accentuate his vociferations, when, on rising, he was astounded by the apparition of an elderly woman wearing a purple sun-bonnet, and carrying a furled umbrella of the same color.

Behind the spectacles, which were fixed upon him, blazed a pair of fiery eyes, and the soul of Plez shrivelled and curled up within him. His downcast eyes were bent upon his upturned toes, the clod dropped from his limp fingers, and his mouth which had been opened for a yell, remained open, but the yell had apparently swooned.

The words of the old lady were brief, but her umbrella was full of jerky menace, and when she left him, and pa.s.sed on toward the outer gate, Plez followed the cows to the house with the meekness of a suspected sheep dog.

The cows had been milked, some by a rotund black woman named Letty, and some, much to their discomfort, by Plez himself, and it was beginning to grow dark, when an open spring wagon driven by a colored man, and with a white man on the back seat came along the road, and stopped at the gate.

The driver having pa.s.sed the reins to the occupant on the back seat, got down, opened the gate, and stood holding it while the other drove the horse into the road which ran by the side of the field to the house behind the trees. At this time a pa.s.ser-by, if there had been one, might have observed, partly protruding from behind some bushes on the other side of the public road, and at a little distance from the gate, the lower portion of a purple umbrella. As the spring wagon approached, and during the time that it was turning into the gate, and while it was waiting for the driver to resume his seat, this umbrella was considerably agitated, so much so indeed as to cause a little rustling among the leaves. When the gate had been shut, and the wagon had pa.s.sed on toward the house, the end of the umbrella disappeared, and then, on the other side of the bush, there came into view a sun-bonnet of the same color as the umbrella. This surmounted the form of an old lady, who stepped into the pathway by the side of the road, and walked away with a quick, active step which betokened both energy and purpose.

The house, before which, not many minutes later, this spring wagon stopped, was not a fine old family mansion like that of Midbranch, but it was a comfortable dwelling, though an unpretending one. The gentleman on the back seat, and the driver, who was an elderly negro, both turned toward the hall door, which was open and lighted by a lamp within, as if they expected some one to come out on the porch. But n.o.body came, and, after a moment's hesitation, the gentleman got down, and taking a valise from the back of the wagon, mounted the steps of the porch. While he was doing this the face of the negro man, which could be plainly seen in the light from the hall door, grew anxious and troubled. When the gentleman set his valise on the porch, and stood by it without making any attempt to enter, the old man put down the reins and quickly descending from his seat, hurried up the steps.

”Dunno whar ole miss is, but I reckon she done gone to look after de tukkies. She dreffle keerful dat dey all go to roos' ebery night. Walk right in, Mahs' Junius.” And, taking up the valise, he followed the gentleman into the hall.

There, near the back door, stood the rotund black woman, and, behind her, Plez. ”Look h'yar Letty,” said the negro man, ”whar ole miss?”

”Dunno,” said the woman. ”She done gib out supper, an' I ain't seed her sence. Is dis Mahs' Junius? Reckon' you don' 'member Letty?”

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