DARK DEPTHS UNCOVERED.

When Walter left Miss Green’s, he turned away from the sea and walked rapidly in the direction of his uncle’s. A sleigh with jingling bells went by him. The driver of the team was well protected against the cold, and the style as well as the extent of the protection—the rich buffalo robe snugly tucked about his person, the handsome cap of fur that could not wholly conceal his gray hair, the warm, heavy, riding gloves of fur—showed that the driver of the team did not have a mean and scanty share of this world’s goods. The bright, sharp, intelligent eyes under the rich cap of fur gave evidence that the owner of the team was smart enough and shrewd enough to hold whatever he had gained and also add to it.

“Do you know that man?” Walter said to Jabez Wherren, who, twisted up by the cold, was moving slowly, shiveringly, over the road.

“That man! He’s Squire Tuck, your uncle’s lawyer. He lives in Groveton.”

“He looks as if he knew something.”

“Knows suthin! For what he knows, I wouldn’t swap all the clams ’tween here and Novy Scoshy,” replied Jabez, who was a famous clam digger, and all his estimates of value were determined by one famous standard, a clam.

“Then,” thought Walter, “Squire Tuck is on his way to that meeting at uncle’s that Chauncy spoke about. That is my guess.”

He soon came in sight of the well–known buildings so associated with his life the past autumn. There was the old–fashioned house from whose big, red chimney lazily drifted the purplish smoke. There was the store. There was the sign above the door. And there at the post before the door, was Squire Tuck’s horse.

“And there’s another team at the other post,” said Walter. “Guess that is Baggs’ team.”

When he entered the store, he noticed that a row of nails near the door opening into the sitting–room had been already covered with hats and coats. And who was the thief that Walter saw near one of the coats, lifting its folds and examining them with such intentness of look that the ringing of the bell above the door as Walter entered, was scarcely noticed?

“Guess those bright eyes don’t see me,” thought Walter. “I can say, ‘Caught at last.’ I’ll make the door–bell tap again.”

Jingle, jingle, jingle!

“Massy, Walter! how you skat me! Where did you come from? Now you’ll say you’ve got me a–peekin’ at folkses’ clothes. I don’t care if you have. Jest come here!” and Aunt Lydia mysteriously beckoned with a piece of cloth. Lifting the skirt of a blue frock conspicuously ornamented with big silver buttons, Aunt Lydia fitted this bit of cloth into the torn lining.

“There!” said she triumphantly. “The myst’ry is out. I haven’t ben a–savin’ this all this time for nothin’.”

“Why, whose coat is this?”

“It is that Thing’s, that Bel–ze–bub’s!”

“Baggs’? Oh, yes, I’ve seen him with it on. I remember now.”

“I suppose you want to know what I’m up to. Do you remember the fust mornin’ you were clerk and opened the store? Wall, that mornin’ I seed that Bel–ze–bub at the settin’–room winder, as ef he were a–lookin’ in, though he seemed to be a good way in; and arter that, I found this piece of cloth on the blind. Now I think he was not so much a–lookin’ in as a–gittin’ out, and tore his linin’ while he was a–tryin’ to accomplish that gentlemanly action; and ef—and ef—” said the old lady, dropping her voice, but intensifying her emphasis, “ef he don’t keep out of my settin’–room, I’ll—I’ll scald him! There!”

Walter was as much excited as his Aunt Lydia.

“There, Aunt, that just confirms me in what I believe and know, that Baggs was in the store that morning when I had stepped out on to the doorstep.”

“In the store? Where? To buy suthin’?”

“Back of the counter, where uncle keeps those books—that Bible, you know, and so on. He went out from the store into the sitting–room, and then through the window undoubtedly.” Walter told the story of the strange appearance in the store, the first morning of his clerkship. While Aunt Lydia was expressing her amazement, exclaiming, “Oh dear!” “Did you ever!” “Pizen!” the door into the store from the sitting–room opened, and there was the driver of the sleigh that Walter had so particularly noticed that morning, Squire Tuck. His sharp, keen eyes searched the store rapidly, and he said, “Ah, Mrs. Blake, you here? I wanted to see you one moment and ask you about a matter. Won’t you walk in, please?”

Aunt Lydia stepped toward the opened door, and with one hand that she held behind her back, she beckoned to Walter to follow. Walter did not wait for a second flourish from that mute object, but walked after Aunt Lydia and stood silently behind her, as if a special bodyguard to attend her and see that she suffered no harm.

It was an unusual scene witnessed that morning in the old–fashioned sitting–room. There on one side of a large square table in the center of the room, sat Baggs. He was very smiling, and when Aunt Lydia entered he very politely said, “Good mornin’, Miss Blake.” Near him sat his lawyer, who looked somewhat like Baggs, a stout individual with crafty eyes, who signed himself “P. Allston Varney.” If the middle name had been “All–stone,” somebody once said, it would have been an appropriate title. Opposite Baggs was his victim, Uncle Boardman, and he sat there with an astonished air. The vacant chair near Uncle Boardman had been occupied by Squire Tuck. After calling Aunt Lydia, he did not resume his seat, but remained standing, and proceeded to address the lady he had admitted.

“Mrs. Blake,” he said courteously—Squire Tuck always had a dignified, stately way of addressing the ladies, bowing slightly as he spoke,—“I wish to ask you about this note.”

P. Allston Varney closely watched Squire Tuck as he picked up a document lying before Baggs. It was a piece of paper in the form of a money–note, long and narrow. Walter’s attention was arrested immediately by the discovery of a blot in the corner of the note, and it made him think of the document he saw in the store the morning of Baggs’ visit, carrying in one corner a blot like a pig.

“There’s that pig again,” he was saying to himself, when Squire Tuck remarked, “Before asking the question I have in mind, let me make an explanation. Your husband, Mrs. Blake, gave Mr. Baggs a note for five hundred dollars in return for money lent him that he might build the saw–mill. That is all he had against—I mean all that Mr. Baggs had against your husband, so the latter asserts. It became due the other day, and your husband went to pay it. I suppose you know this, and that it was paid also.”

Aunt Lydia nodded assent.

“And you know that Baggs presented another note—this one for fifteen hundred dollars, which indeed is in your husband’s handwriting, he allows, but says he never gave it, and can’t explain it. This you know?”

“I know what Baggs says, but my husband don’t owe him any sich sum.”

“Indeed!” exclaimed P. Allston Varney provokingly, while Baggs looked towards his lawyer with an amused air, as much as to say, “Only think of it!”

“As you generally know about your husband’s affairs, Mrs. Blake, what I wished to ask was, if you knew of any such document—but you have already implied that you did not—and could throw any light in any way upon this subject, and you might look at this and examine it.”

Baggs and Varney both stirred in their chairs and half arose, as if to intercept the passage of the precious document into Mrs. Blake’s hands.

“Oh,” said the Squire, “I will guarantee that no harm comes to the note. I will hold it and you can stand by and watch every thing done.”

As the note was thus held before Aunt Lydia’s sharply scrutinizing spectacles, her bodyguard in the rear looked over her shoulders and quickly read it.

“There is that pig!” thought Walter. “Yes, it’s the same sort of looking document, only the other said five hundred, and not fifteen.”

The sun outdoors had been endeavoring to pierce the clouds and succeeded for a few moments, and a bright, needle–like ray darted through the window and fell on the note.

“Doesn’t that ‘fifteen’ have a scratched look?” thought Walter. An idea came to him as if into his brain also a sunray had darted, making a sudden light there. It was not Walter’s nature to conceal anything, and he burst out saying, “Squire, may I call attention—”

Baggs immediately grew red in the face and nudged his lawyer, who sprang upon his feet at once.

“Who’s this talking? I object, Squire. He was not asked here!” shouted Varney.

“Oh, it is all right,” rejoined Squire Tuck, his tone and manner quieting and assuring. “Let the young man speak. You know, Squire Varney, it wouldn’t look well to shut him up. He may have something valuable to say, and truth will always stand criticism.”

Amid grunting by Varney and head–shaking by Baggs, Walter proceeded: “I wanted to call attention to this note. I saw it the first morning I was here, and I know it was that by that blot which it seemed to me looked like a pig.”

“Pig!” ejaculated Varney, with a sneer. “Some folks see themselves in everything they look at.”

“Ha—ha!” roared Baggs.

“Let the young man proceed,” calmly remarked Squire Tuck.

Walter was not used to encounters of this kind, and he felt as if a head–wind had struck him. He recovered himself, though, and began to speak again.

A saucy answer was on the end of his tongue, but he remembered something his father said once, that in a discussion the man more likely to come out ahead is the man who can control his tongue as well as use it. He held to his point like a vessel to its course and said, “I saw something on that note which it may be wished I had not seen. The words ‘five hundred’ were then on it, not ‘fifteen hundred,’ and—and—that ‘fifteen’ to me has a scratched look.”

Everything was in intense confusion. Uncle Boardman jumped upon his feet, crying, “Let me see! I lost one note and gave another.” Varney shouted, advancing towards Walter, “Do you mean to say that my client is a forger? that Bezaleel Baggs is guilty of scratching notes?”

Walter had no opportunity to reply, for a woman’s sharp voice piped forth, “Well, I mean to say that Beelzebub is equal to scratchin’ notes.”

“Who, madame?” politely asked Squire Tuck. “Undoubtedly that person is equal to the operation.”

“I mean—him!” declared Aunt Lydia, boldly pointing toward B. Baggs. “Before we came in here, my nephew here and me were a–comparin’ idees, and from what he says and the way this note looks, I think Beelzebub—I think—yes, I’ll stick to it, that’s his name—came into the store, took that note where he must have found out my husband kept sich things, his Bible in the store—”

“You certainly did know, Mr. Baggs,” said Uncle Boardman. “I remember you asked me about the time I gave the note, if I had a safe where I kept things, and I said I was apt to tuck notes and things into my Bible in the store,—a careless way I allow.”

“From his Bible, took the note,” resumed Aunt Lydia, “cleared out through the winder in my sittin’–room, and there’s the rag your coat—now in the entry—left behind when you climbed out and tore the linin’!” Here Aunt Lydia held up before Baggs the little rag that she had so carefully retained.

All but Baggs had risen and were eagerly scrutinizing the note. Inwardly, Baggs was in a turmoil; outwardly, his face was flushed and his crooked eye was rolling like a vessel in a storm. When he spoke, he showed great self–control. His voice was placid as ever, and he waved his great, fat hands as if quieting an unnecessary tumult.

“Now, ladies and gentlemen, what’s all this fuss for? I have doc—doc—doc—”

“Doctor?” suggested Varney, wishing to help up his stumbling client. “Want the doctor?”

“No—no! What kind of evidence do you call it? Doc—doc—”

“Documentary?” suggested Squire Tuck.

“Thank you, Squire,” said Baggs, bowing low. “I have dockermentry evidence about this note, and it’s in the coat that Madame Blake spoke about.”

Here Baggs bowed toward “Madame Blake.”

“And,” he continued, “if you will permit me, I will bring the very coat, and splain that rag business too.”

Here he triumphantly looked about upon his auditors as if he were carrying a point in the town meetings, where he had been famous as an orator.

“Yes, I will bring the coat, this very moment”—and as he spoke, he rose and stepped toward the door into the store—“and no one need feel s’cluded from the investigation. All please stay here. Our young friend there”—he pointed toward Walter—“may remain. I will satisfy all—yes—I will—” and he was gone.

“Well,” declared Squire Tuck, “this is interesting business,” and he looked toward Varney.

“Yes, but just wait and give the man a chance to speak for himself. It’s a serious thing to charge a man with forgery.”

“I should think, sir,” roared Uncle Boardman, “to take away a man’s property was a pretty serious matter also!”

“Yes; serious, vile, imperdent, reskelly—” Aunt Lydia stood with opened mouth pouring out a torrent of hot adjectives, when Squire Tuck interrupted her and interrupted also the tumult that had become general, saying, shouting rather, “Now all be quiet! We want to hear from Baggs. He ought to have got that coat by this time.”

The Squire stepped to the door into the store and opened it, wishing to assist the tardy Baggs. “Allow me, Brother Tuck, the pleasure of helping you,” said Varney with much politeness, and he followed the Squire who had stepped out into the store. Those in the sitting–room now heard one word from the Squire and it came in no gentle tones: “Gone!” What a rush there was from that sitting–room!

“Oh!” exclaimed Aunt Lydia, “why didn’t I hold on to that coat while I had the chance!”

“I know now why he was so willing that ‘our young friend’ should stay in the sitting–room,” remarked Walter.

“But how did he get out?” inquired Uncle Boardman. “We did not hear the door–bell ring.”

“There!” shouted the Squire, pointing at an opened window. “He was cunning enough not to ring that door–bell.”

“Then he’s used to climin’ through folks’ winders,” said Aunt Lydia sarcastically.

“Why didn’t I arrest him on the spot? Scatter, everybody, and chase hard! Come out here!” cried the Squire, and his gray hairs led off in the scramble made for the store door. The little bell rang violently now, and out they rushed, Aunt Lydia as forward as any.

“He didn’t take any sleigh, you see, for we would have noticed that from the windows of the sitting–room. You come too!” said the Squire to Don Pedro, who, bare–headed, chanced to be coming from the direction of the kitchen. He had been almost asleep in a snug warm corner back of the stove, but the late banging of the door and that violent ringing of the door–bell had fully aroused him. He had hastily come out to see what the matter was. Wishing to avoid the company in the sitting–room, he had not tried to reach the store from that quarter, and trying another way, he succeeded in meeting the company by the doorstep.

“What fur?” asked Don Pedro, with widening eyes.

“To chase that rascal, Baggs,” said Squire Tuck.

“Dis moment I’m ready! I’ll go for him! Whar?”

“Get a hat! Be awful spry.”

Interpreting a hat as meaning any hat, Don Pedro went into the store, and took the first hat he saw in the line where Baggs and others had hung their wearing apparel.

“Mr. Blake,” said Squire Tuck, “you go along the road through the woods, rousing neighbors and making inquiries. I’ll take my team and dash down to The Harbor and rouse them there. Walter, you take the woods themselves, striking in at the left; and you, boy,” (addressing Don Pedro) “take the woods over here at the right. If you see Baggs, grip him and then shout for help, but hold him!”

Off went this police force, Uncle Boardman impressing into his constabulary force his patient old mare that chanced to be already harnessed to a red pung, and standing in a shed at the rear of the house. Squire Tuck sprang into his sleigh, eagerly caught up the reins and was about to dash off, when he said to Varney, “The counsel on the other side can join in the pursuit, if he wishes.”

Varney’s answer was a look of scorn. He went to a corner of the house that gave him a short view of this interesting chase, and there watched Uncle Boardman who urged on the old mare as if a whirlwind were after him. Aunt Lydia was anxious to have a hand in the hunt. Closing and locking the store door, securing all others, even the back door, as she passed out, lest “the pest” might get in again, she determined to search the barn. Armed with a pitchfork, she visited every corner she could think of, prudently sending her fork ahead and thoroughly “jabbing” the darkness of any nook before giving it personal examination. No enemy could be found. If one had been there, after such a reconnoissance with the pitchfork, he would have come out more dead than alive. Aunt Lydia chanced to think of one more place that might hide the fugitive. It was a little tool closet. She had laid down her weapon of search, as the door required a tug with both hands. The door yielded and flew open. And there in one corner, she spied a pair of sharp, black eyes!

“Massy!” exclaimed Aunt Lydia, turning to flee, but stumbling and falling. “Oh—h—h!” she screamed. “It’s he! Help—p!”

The next moment, she was conscious that a spring had been made over her shoulders, and out of the barn–door went Billy, the old black cat, mad to think he had been carelessly shut up twenty–four hours in that hungry place. And Aunt Lydia, who had previously thought she would be so glad to find Baggs, was just as glad now that this occupant of the tool closet was not Baggs, and went into the house thoroughly satisfied. The others still kept up the pursuit. Squire Tuck roused The Harbor after a fashion not known for years. Uncle Boardman stirred up every farmhouse on his road. Walter and Don Pedro searched the woods, but in silence. The command had been not to shout until a seizure had been made and help was needed. The snow was not very deep in the woods, and progress was not difficult.

“I don’t see anything!” thought Walter. “A fox has been along there, I guess, and those are a man’s tracks; but they are old ones.”

Through the silent forest, under the green roof of the pines, across a frozen brook, Walter vigorously pushed. He saw nothing suspicious, heard nothing. “Caw—caw!” went an occasional crow overhead, but it was not Baggs forsaking his feet and taking to wings. Walter reached at last a low but vigorous young growth of spruce. Above their tops, did he see a gray stove–pipe hat? Did not Baggs wear such a hat that day? Walter’s heart leaped within him.

“It’s Baggs’ hat!” he excitedly declared. “Now if he don’t see me and dodge me, and if I can just follow him without his noticing me a few moments, I’ll slip up to him so near that though he may dodge all he pleases, I—shall have him!”

Suddenly, the hat—was it turning? Did Baggs see Walter, possibly? Walter stooped, then rose again, only to declare that the wearer was turning to make an observation. Several times this was done, and each time Walter slightly bowed himself to escape observation. Then the hat began to move rapidly.

“He’s running!” thought Walter. “Now, go for him sharp!”

It was a furious chase, but Walter did not gain on that violently bobbing gray hat as he anticipated. “He runs the fastest I ever saw, for a short, fat man!” declared Walter. “I’ll have him though.” He knew the woods well enough to be aware that somewhere beyond the low spruce growth was a swamp, and a bad one. He had heard Uncle Boardman say that the swamp was not frozen, lately.

“That feller,” thought Walter, “will find he can’t cut through that swampy place so easily. It won’t hold him, and he will have to keep to the edge of the spruces and come out down here to the left, and I will aim for that point and meet him there, surprise and welcome him, and say, ‘How do you do, Mr. Baggs? Fine day!’ Ha—ha!”

Would Walter’s confident predictions be successful? That agitated old hat of gray was forced by the yet yielding swamp to keep to the left, only to be met by Walter, who in turn found under the hat a surprise, even—Don Pedro!

“Why, Don, you—booby, I’ve been chasing you all this time?”

Don Pedro’s eyes were large and staring.

“Walter, you—jes’ frighten me—a heap! My—breff—clean gone—honey! Ef I didn’t t’ink you’se a robber. Why—didn’t—you—holler, an’ show—who you was?”

“Holler! We were told not to, till we got something to holler about. It would have frightened the game. What have you got on Baggs’ hat for? Oh dear—ha! ha! ha!” And Walter leaned against a tree and laughed till he was sore.

“Me got Baggs’ hat? Squire said I might hab any, an’ I tuk the fus’ one handy. And do you want to know why I ran so hard? Back dar a piece I met a man, and he looked bad, and he was a handlin’ a knife sort ob careless, a bad looking knife.”

Don Pedro rolled his eyes about tragically as he told his story, deepening his voice as he went on.

“I axed him ef he had seen a man by de name ob Baggs who had probed hisself to be a reskel, an’ we was a–hantin’ fur him. He opened his knife and felt the edge sort ob careless an’ tole me I’d better leab; dat ef he foun’ me in dese woods agin, I’d nebber hab a chance to leab ’em. Dat Baggs he said was whar I couldn’t tech him, an’ he ’vised me fur to go hum. When I saw you, I s’posed it was him, an’ didn’t I run! I jest saw a hat and didn’t s’pose you was under it, but dat man, an’ it took de bref out ob me! What will ye do now?”

“The hunt for Baggs, I guess, is up. However, we will make sure and go to the end of the woods, and there are two or three houses along there. The people will tell us if any sign of Baggs has been seen.”

The end of the wood–lot was reached and inquiries were made at the farmhouses. No footprint of the runaway could be discovered anywhere, and Walter told Don Pedro they would go no farther.

“We might as well take to the woods again on our way back. I’d like to see who that fellow is round with a knife and telling what he will do. We will stop that nonsense.” Don Pedro only needed a leader to be as brave a soldier as ever followed a flag, and he readily assented. Nothing came from the return search. No object more hostile than a squirrel was seen, and he gave a very friendly wink with his bright eyes as he peeped out of his snug quarters for the winter. Don Pedro’s use of the wrong hat was not the only case of the kind that occurred. Miss Green called the evening of that day.

“Oh, Miss Blake, you ought to have seen that lawyer, that Varney, to–day. He came riding by the post–office with a handkerchief tied round his head, and somebody said they saw him prancing round your house, trying every door, and he was as bare–headed as a bean when it has been shelled. I believe he borrowed a hat round here.”

“There!” said Aunt Lydia, “I must have locked that man out afore I went to the barn! But there was no hats left on the nails where his things had been, for I looked up to ’em myself and there was nothin’ there when I went to the barn.”

No, there were only naked nails in the wall. As for Varney’s hat, it had gone off on the head of Baggs, who had seized the first hat he met in his hasty exit, a conclusion the lawyer himself reached when making subsequent inquiries.

Guilty Baggs had gone—nobody knew where. And the mystery of that man with the knife, in the woods? It was minutely discussed at the station, where Joe Cardridge had suddenly disappeared, leaving only a message for the keeper saying he would be back soon and prove that Walter Plympton was “a good deal wuss than he ought to be.” Joe coolly wished also to have his place kept for him.

“I guess not,” remarked the keeper. “A man going off that way without a notice, will have to wait a long time before he has a notice that he is wanted again. I will fill his place at once. Tucker Jones is home from his winter fishin’, and I will get him.”

Tucker Jones, a big–boned, rugged young fisherman, was quickly established in the vacant berth.

“Walter,” said Tom Walker, “putting all things together, I think it was Joe Cardridge that scared Don Pedro in the woods. He was a–hangin’ round the store somebody said. Probably he knew what was goin’ on, and followed his master, that Baggs. They were seen together by a man five miles from here. It is good that he has gone.”

Nobody lamented his departure, not even his family. His wife and children could manage without him, and far more agreeably. At the station, the only element of dissension in the crew was now taken away. All noticed the harmony that marked the station life.

“It only takes one stone in a fellow’s shoe,” remarked Tom Walker, “to upset everything, and Joe Cardridge has been the stone in the shoe.”

Walter now fully enjoyed his life. True, there were rough, wild beats before him, but the warm, cheerful shelter followed them. Then there was the constant sense of danger from that vast, uneasy sea, to give flavor to a life that might otherwise become insipid.

“I am sorry,” he thought, “that my time at the station is almost up. It’s up in a few days, and I wonder when the district superintendent will be here to investigate my trouble. I don’t care for it. Let them hunt. I am right.”

Yes, let slanders and envy hunt through our lives, and if we are right, who cares?

Keeper Barney had said, “Joe’s goin’ off leaves Walter without an accuser, and I can’t easily believe he is wrong, but there is that bottle! What about that?”

Yes, the flask, what about that? Joe had gone, but the flask remained on a shelf, and Walter still was confronted by this dumb, black accuser.