LEFT to herself Lucy stood for an instant watching her aunt’s resolute figure make its way under the fringe of lilacs that bordered the driveway. Then she turned her attention to preparing breakfast, and the Howes and their mysterious doings were forgotten.

In the meantime Ellen walked on, skirting the shelter of the hedge until she came into the lee of a clump of elder bushes growing along the margin of the brook at the juncture of the Howe and Webster land. Here she secreted herself and waited.

The brook was quite deep at this point and now, swollen by the snows that had recently melted on the hillsides, purled its path down to the valley in a series of cascades that rippled, foamed, and tinkled merrily.

As she stood concealed beside it, its laughter so outrivaled every other sound that she had difficulty in discerning the Howes’ approaching 96 tread, and it was not until the distinct crackle of underbrush reached her ear that she became aware they were approaching. She peered through the bushes.

Yes, there they were, all three of them; and there, firm in their grasp, was the mysterious bag.

It was not large, but apparently it was heavy, and they handled it with extreme care.

“Let’s put it down,” puffed Mary, who was flushed and heated, “an’ look for a good deep place. Ain’t you tired, ’Liza?”

“I ain’t so tired as hot,” Eliza answered. “Warn’t it just providential Martin took it into his head to go to the village this mornin’? I can’t but think of it.”

“It was the luckiest thing I ever knew,” assented Mary. “I don’t know what we’d ’a’ done with this thing round the house another day. I’d ’a’ gone clean out of my mind.”

“I still can’t understand why we couldn’t ’a’ left it buried,” Eliza fretted.

“I explained why to you last night,” Jane answered, speaking for the first time. “There warn’t a spot on the place that Martin might not go to diggin’ or plowin’ up sometime. He 97 might even ’a’ dug round the roots of the linden for somethin’. Ain’t he always fertilizin’ an’ irrigatin’? I didn’t dare leave the bag there. If he’d ’a’ gone stickin’ a pick or a shovel into it sudden——”

“I see,” interrupted Eliza. “’Twas stupid of me not to understand before. ’Course that wouldn’t do. Yes, I guess you were right. There ain’t much to do but sink it in the brook. Would you ’a’ dreamed there could be anything in the world so hard to get rid of? All I’ve got to say is I hope neither Martin nor old Miss Webster finds it. What do you s’pose they’d say?”

“I wouldn’t want Martin to come on to it unexpected. ’Twould worry me to death.” Eliza shuddered.

“But you don’t care about old Miss Webster,” Jane observed with a laugh.

“I never wished Miss Webster ill, goodness knows that,” returned Eliza gravely. “None of us ever did ’cept Martin, an’ he’s got no business to. I s’pose he’d like nothin’ better than to have her run across this thing. You don’t s’pose there’s any danger that she will, do you, Jane?”

“Danger of her findin’ it?” 98

“No. I mean danger of her gettin’ hurt with it,” explained Eliza timidly.

“Mercy, no. How could it harm her if it was wet?”

“I dunno,” whimpered Eliza. “I’m so scat of such things.”

“Well, it’s certainly made us trouble enough!” put in Mary, with a sigh. “I’ve felt like a criminal ever since the thing came to light. It’s seemed as if we’d never get rid of it.”

Jane smiled. “I know it,” she said. “Who’d ’a’ believed ’twould be so hard. When I think what we’ve been through tryin’ to make way with it, I wonder folks ever are wicked. It’s so much trouble. ’Tain’t half as easy as it looks. You’ve got to have your wits about you every second. This affair’s taught me that. Ain’t I been all over the face of the earth tryin’ to find a safe place to hide this pesky bag! First I tried the mountain. Then I was afraid the woodcutters might find it, so I had to cart it home again. Then it come to me to drive down to the river and dump it in. Anybody’d have said that was simple enough. But halfway there, I met Elias Barnes walkin’ to the village, an’ he asked for a ride. I s’pose 99 he couldn’t see why I couldn’t take him in; I had an empty seat an’ had often done it before, so I had to. But when he started lightin’ up his pipe——”

“What did you do, Jane?” cried Mary.

“I guess I nearly screamed,” answered Jane, laughing. “He looked some surprised; anyhow, I told him I just remembered somethin’ I’d left behind, an’ I drew up an’ put him down quicker’n chain lightnin’. Then I turned round and drove off lickety-split for home, leaving him stock still in the middle of the road starin’ after me.”

“You showed good nerve, Jane, I’ll say that,” Mary declared with open admiration.

“Now if it had been me, I’d ’a’ just given the whole thing away. I ain’t no good at thinkin’ quick.”

“Well, we ain’t got to think about it any more, thank goodness,” Jane exclaimed, rising from the grass and laying a hand on the bag. “Let’s put an end to the whole thing now and go home. Take a holt of the other end, and we’ll flop it in.”

“Wait!” Eliza protested, seized by a sudden idea.

“Well.” 100

“You don’t s’pose there’ll be any danger ’bout the cows drinkin’ here, do you?” Eliza inquired anxiously. “They do drink here, you know, and in the summer, when the water’s low, they often wade right in. If they was to——”

She stopped.

“I never thought of that,” Jane said in a discouraged tone. “Oh, my land, what are we going to do with it?”

She let the bag sink to the ground and, straightening herself up, confronted her sisters. “We’ve simply got to get it off our hands before Martin gets back.”

“Oh, yes, yes!” pleaded Mary, affrighted. “Do something with it, Jane, no matter what. I never could stand it to have it carted back to the house and hidden there. ’Tain’t safe. Besides, in these days of German spies, ’twould be an awful thing to be found on us. S’pose the house was to be searched. We never could make the police believe how we came to have it. They might take us and shut us all up in prison—Martin and all.”

Her voice shook with terror.

“I guess they wouldn’t go arrestin’ us, Mary,” declared Jane soothingly. “Still, I 101 agree with you that it’s just as well for us to be clear of such a thing; let me think.”

While she stood meditating her two sisters watched her with perturbed faces.

“Ellen Webster’s cows don’t come up to this end of the pasture much, do they?” she remarked at last.

“No. Leastways I’ve never seen ’em here,” replied Mary.

“Then why don’t we sink the bag just across the wall?”

“On her land?” gasped Eliza.

“It wouldn’t do any harm,” argued Jane. “She never comes up here, nor her cows nor horses either. We’ll climb right over and dump the thing in. That’ll settle Martin’s ever finding it, an’ everythin’.”

“But s’pose——” Eliza objected once more.

“Oh, ’Liza, we can’t stay here s’posin’ all day!” Jane declared decisively. “We got to put this bag somewheres, an’ there ain’t any spot that ain’t got some out about it. We must take a chance on the best one we can find.”

“I’m frightened to death!” wailed Eliza.

“So’m I!” Mary echoed. “Oh, Jane!”

“No matter. Pull yourself together,” 102 ordered Jane sharply. “You two take a hold of the bag an’ bring it along, while I climb the wall.”

Ellen, stooping behind the elderberry bushes, held her breath. She saw Jane clamber over the barrier and help Mary and Eliza to mount it and lower the sack into her hands; then, just when the three invaders were all ready to drop their mysterious gray burden into the stream, she stepped noiselessly into the open and said loudly:

“What you doin’ in my brook?”

A cry rose from the two more timorous Howes, and even Jane paled a little.

“What are you sinkin’ in my brook?” repeated Ellen.

No answer came. Angered by their silence, the woman stepped nearer.

“What you got in that bag?” she demanded sternly.

Still there was no reply.

“You ain’t got nothin’ good in it, I’ll be bound,” went on the tormentor. “If you had, you wouldn’t be so mighty anxious to get rid of it. Come now, long’s you’re intendin’ to heave it into the water on my side of the wall, s’pose you let me have a peep inside it.” 103

Striding forward, she seized a corner of the canvas roughly in her hand.

There was a scream from the three Howes.

“Don’t touch it!”

“Keep away!”

“You’d better leave it be, Miss Webster,” Jane said in a warning voice. “It’s gunpowder.”

“Gunpowder!” repeated Ellen.

“Yes.”

“An’ what, may I ask, are you doin’ with a bag of gunpowder in my brook? Plannin’ to blow up my cows, I reckon.”

“No! No, indeed we’re not!” protested Mary.

“We wouldn’t hurt your cows for anything, Miss Webster,” put in Eliza.

“Humph! You wouldn’t? Still you don’t hesitate to dam my brook up with enough gunpowder to blow all my cattle higher’n a kite.”

“We were only tryin’ to——” began Mary; but Jane swept her aside.

“Hush, Mary,” she said. “You an’ ’Liza keep still an’ let me do the talkin’.”

Drawing herself to her full height she faced Ellen’s evil smile.

“The day before yesterday, when we were 104 cleanin’ the attic, we found a little door under the eaves that we’d never come across before,” she began desperately. “We discovered it when we were movin’ out a big chest that’s always stood there. We were sweepin’ behind all the trunks an’ things, an’ long’s we were, we decided to sweep behind that. ’Twas then we spied the door. Of course we were curious to know where it went to, an’ so we pried it open, an’ inside we found this bag together with an old rusty rifle. It must ’a’ been there years, judgin’ from the dust an’ cobwebs collected on it. We were pretty scared of the gun,” declared Jane, smiling reminiscently, “but we were scared a good sight worse when after draggin’ the bag out we saw ’twas marked Gunpowder.”

She waited an instant.

“We didn’t know what to do with it,” she went on, speaking more hesitatingly, “because you see my brother doesn’t like us to turn the house upside-down with cleanin’; he hates havin’ things disturbed; an’ we were afraid he would be put out to find what we’d done. So we decided to wait till some time when he wasn’t round an’ make way with it.”

Jane caught her breath. 105

“We’ve tried lots of ways,” she confessed wearily, “but none of ’em seemed to work. First I thought of hidin’ it up near Pine Ridge, but I was afraid some woodsman might happen on it; then I started to take it down to the river in our wagon; but Elias Barnes would get in an’ light his pipe, and I was so afraid a spark from it might——”

“I wish it had!” interpolated Ellen Webster with fervor.

“In order to get rid of him I had to turn round an’ come back,” narrated Jane, paying no heed to the interruption. “Then we tried to bury it, but afterward we dug it up for fear Martin might plow it up sometime an’ get——”

“’Twould ’a’ been an almighty good joke if he had!” again piped Ellen.

“So there didn’t seem to be any other way,” concluded Jane with dignity, “but to drop it in the brook; an’, as you never seemed to use this end of your pasture, we decided to sink it here.”

The narrative was true, every word of it. Ellen knew that. No one who looked into Jane Howe’s frank face could have doubted the story. 106

But Ellen was an ungenerous enemy who saw in the present happening an opportunity to put a screw upon those who had been thus compelled to throw themselves upon her mercy.

“So! That’s how you lie out of it, is it?” she cried scornfully. “An’ you expect me to believe a yarn like that! Do you s’pose I don’t know this country’s at war, an’ that the authorities are on the lookout for folks concealin’ gunpowder in their houses? How do I know you weren’t goin’ to make the stuff into bombs, or carry it somewheres an’ blow up somethin’ or other with it?”

“Indeed, oh, indeed we weren’t,” Mary cried, thoroughly alarmed.

“Oh, what shall we do!” Eliza sobbed, wringing her hands.

“Nonsense,” cut in Jane. “You know perfectly well, Miss Webster, we ain’t no German plotters. I’m sorry——”

“You’re sorry I caught you before you had a chance to drop that bag in my brook,” said Ellen, a twinkle in her eye. “I’ll bet you are. Have you thought that I can have you arrested for trespassing on my land?”

“Oh, Jane!”

The horrified voices of Mary and Jane 107 greeted with concern this new danger. Ellen was exulting in her triumph.

“You can, of course, have us arrested if you wish to,” said Jane.

“Well, I ain’t a-goin’ to—at least I ain’t, on one condition. An’ I’ll promise not to give you over to the police as spies, neither, if you do as I say.”

“What do you want us to do?” inquired Mary and Eliza breathlessly.

Jane was silent.

“Mebbe you’d like to know the condition,” sneered the old woman, addressing Jane.

She waited for a reply, but none came. Ellen looked baffled.

“You’d better accept the chance I give you to buy yourself off,” she said.

“That is my affair.”

“Do, Jane! Do promise,” begged Mary and Eliza. “Please do, for our sakes.”

“Very well,” Jane returned. “But I only do it to protect my sisters. What is the condition?”

With head thrown back she faced Ellen coldly.

“The condition is that you take that bag of gunpowder back home to your brother Martin 108 an’ tell him Ellen Webster sent it to him with her compliments. He can use it blastin’ out stones to fix up his stone wall.”

Then, with a taunting laugh, the woman turned and without more adieu disappeared in the direction of the Webster homestead, leaving a speechless trio of chagrined Howes behind her.