St. Nicholas/Volume 41/Number 2/The Runaway
THE RUNAWAY
BY ALLEN FRENCH
Author of “The Junior Cup,” “Pelham and His Friend Tim," etc.
CHAPTER III
A HIDING-PLACE
“What is wrong with you?” cried Harriet.
Pelham leaned toward her. ‘“Harriet, you ’ve told your story. Now will you listen to ours?”
She stared at him in surprise. He turned to Brian. “Will you tell it, or shall I?”
“I suppose it ’s got to be. told,” answered Brian. “You tell it.”
Harriet listened while Pelham told the story of his own adventure. She had come back from Nate’s with a warm sympathy for the unlucky boy, but at Pelham’s description of the lad whom he and Brian had met, she slowly grew cold with dismay. It was surely the same boy. Then the wallet!
Bob, her oldest brother, nodded cheerfully. “He got pretty well come up with, the young criminal.”
In spite of her dismay, Harriet started indignantly. There rose before her eyes the face of the stranger, strangely appealing in its half wildness. “Oh!” she cried, "he ’s not a criminal!”
Bob smiled at her as older brothers do. “Then what about Brian’s money?"
Doubt crept over hcer. After all, the others must be right. Tears started to her eyes.
Her mother drew her down beside her on the window-seat. “Sometimes, dear,” she said, “we have to believe such things.”
Harriet’s face burned. Within her skirt she felt an unaccustomed lump which she recognized as the wallet. What was she to do?
Brian cleared his throat. *I think, Uncle Robert,” he began, “that I—that we— That is, I think the wallet had better be forgotten. I came upon the boy suddenly. He may not have realized that the wallet—that I was asking him to give it to me. It was my fault. I°’d just like to drop the whole matter.”
“But we can get it from him now,” said Mr. Dodd.
Harriet had clutched at her dress. Ought she to give the wallet up?
Brian spoke again, still hesitatingly. “I—I ’d like to have nothing said about it. Perhaps the boy was poor.”
Mr. Dodd smiled. “That gives him no claim to your money.”
“I feel,” Brian explained, “as if I somehow had something to do with this accident of his. As if he thought we were still following him, and so slipped and fell. I ’d like to make him a present of the money.”
Mr. Dodd considered. “Well,” he said presently, “he can’t get away from us. When I telephoned the doctor just now, he said that among other injuries the lad seems to have a sprained ankle. He must stay here for a while, then. If he ’s treated well, it may be that his conscience will work.”
“You know, sir,” still persisted Brian, “some fellows think they may keep anything they find.”
“Well,” said Mr. Dodd, “for the present I will say nothing to him about it. But in the meantime—" He drew out his own pocket-book and took from it a five-dollar bill.
Brian flushed scarlet. “Oh, no, sir!”
“Nonsense,” said his uncle. “Brian, I want vou to take it. Five dollars is a whole month’s allowance. Besides, I feel responsible for the loss, in a way.”
Harriet’s heart had been warming toward Brian. His forgiveness pleased her, especially when it enabled her to think better of the stranger. Brian’s willingness to lose the money seemed very generous. Further, although she knew that when a boy objects to receiving money from an older relative he is seldom really unwilling, she now saw Brian, red to the ears, take the money with genuine reluctance. She nodded her approval.
Bob, who had subsided into a newspaper, now came suddenly out of it. “Are you people through with this question of ethics, so that I may throw some more light on this matter?”
“Go ahead,” said his father.
“Have you considered,” inquired Bob, “how this young highwayman—excuse me, Harriet, this knight-errant—Happens to be traveling across wild country in this casual manner?”
They all looked at each other. None of them had yet thought of this. Bob took up his paper again. “Listen,” he said. “This is to-day’s paper, and I find an account of what happened yesterday on the railroad about ten miles north of us, on the stretch between Winton and Farnham.” He began to read from the newspaper.
“Boy disappears from train, and is not recovered.—Yesterday afternoon disappeared from train number 12, on the Worcester and North Adams branch of the B. & M. R. R., between Winton and Farnham, a boy of fifteen years. He was traveling with an older brother, W. L. Wilson, a New York business man, who was greatly agitated at the disappearance. It seems that on the long stretch between these towns, the older brother was playing whist in the smoking-car, when the boy, complaining of the air, got permission to go to the next car. Since then he has not been seen. It was at first supposed that, being dizzy from the close atmosphere of the smoking-car, he had fallen from the platform of the train. Wilson, together with a foreman and three men of a section gang, traveled the whole distance back to Winton on a hand-car, keeping a most careful watch for the boy; but no trace of him was found. No other train had passed over the road, a single-track division, in the interval, and at first it seemed impossible to account for his disappearance. Wilson then acknowledged that he and his brother had recently quarreled, and that the lad might have run away in a fit of temper. The conductor states that about seven miles out of Winton the train slowed up sufficiently for an active boy to jump from the step without danger. Had he walked back to Winton, a junction, he might have taken the train for New York, which left shortly before the older brother’s return. No one recollected seeing a boy of the description, but Wilson, acting upon the theory, and declaring that he knew where his brother would naturally go, took the first train to New York. There is another theory: that the boy fell into one of the three ponds over which the railroad passes.”
Bob looked up. ‘“Perhaps,” he said, “we can now form a third theory of our own. There is a spiteful young brother for you, to do so much to make trouble for an honest and well-meaning, though perhaps unduly strict, older brother.”
“How do you know so much about him?” demanded Harriet.
“Because,” answered Bob, “though you yourself have not yet discovered it, all older brothers are honest and well-meaning. Even their strictness arises from the kindly desire to save unfortunate youngsters from mistakes which the elder has already committed and repented of. Now, shall we wire to this Mr. Wilson of New York?”
“But,” cried Harriet, “we can’t be sure that this is the same boy?”
Mr. Dodd rose. “The boy himself shall decide that. My dear,” he said to his wife, “we ’d better drive to Nate’s after dinner and see the lad. Meanwhile, dinner is waiting.”
Through the meal, the wallet weighed like lead in Harriet's pocket. It seemed to her as if every one must know that she had it. Her mother remarked on her lack of appetite, and noticed, without speaking of it, her absent-mindedness. But both of these characteristics were natural after such an experience as Harriet’s, and Mrs. Dodd, careful mother though she was, did not suspect that there was anything more on the girl’s mind.
Harriet was trying to decide what she ought to do. On the one hand, she had promised to tell no one of the wallet; but on the other, there was the fact, which she could not deny, that the wallet had been—no, not stolen from Brian, but found and kept. While her father had been giving Brian the money, Harriet had been obstinately silent, trying to find some way in which to keep her promise; but the longer she thought of the matter the more firmly she became convinced that she must tell.
“I will tell Mother about it immediately after dinner,” she decided.
But the meal was no sooner finished, with Harriet watching for a chance of a talk with her mother, than Mr. Dodd said to his wife, “Come, dear. The horse is waiting.”
“Where are you going?” cried Harriet.
“To Nate's,”” answered her mother. “We want to see how the boy is.”
In spite of her disappointment, Harriet looked at her mother gratefully. Mrs. Dodd, a very handsome woman for all her forty-five years, had more than her good looks wherewith to claim her daughter’s admiration. She was quick to do good; Nate had judged her well when he foresaw this visit. Harriet gave her Nate’s message: she might see the boy, but was not to expect to take him away.
“Very well,” laughed Mrs. Dodd. With her husband she departed.
Bob had gone to the mill. Harriet, left alone with Brian and Pelham, thanked her cousin for giving up his claim to the money. “It was very good of you,” she said.
“Good of him,” echoed Pelham. Harriet, “I tell you, that 's what I call ‘going some.'”
Brian sprang to his feet. “Confound you, Pelham,” he cried. “Cut that out!” He went quickly out of the room.
“Snappy, is n't he?” asked Pelham.
But with her mind still full of Brian’s generosity, Harriet saw nothing unnatural in his temper. “He does n't like to be praised,” she said. And Pelham returning no answer, she sat thinking.
It seemed to her that her course was clear. The wallet was not, perhaps, stolen—that is, not in the ordinary sense of the word. Yet in another sense stolen it was, and the injured boy, in making her promise to keep it secret, was really making her aid him in keeping it from its rightful owner. The act was unfair. No promise could hold which was made under such circumstances. Of course, now that she knew that Brian really owned the wallet, she was free to return it to him.
Impulsively she sprang to her feet to follow him. One moment’s regret she had, as she thought of the appealing gaze of the fainting boy; but she dismissed it. One more thing she had learned: she must be careful where she trusted. Then she began to hunt for Brian.
He had not gone up-stairs, and a look out of the window showed her that he was not in the front garden. Probably he was in the big garden behind the house, and as the shortest way was through the kitchen, that way she took.
To her surprise, in the kitchen she found Brian standing alone. He was by the stove, with one hand in his pocket, and with the other gingerly endeavoring to manage the lid-lifter. Amused, Harriet thought of a line from an old saga, and she quoted it:
“‘What, lad, are you taking to cooking?’”
Brian started, dropped the lifter with a clatter, snatched his hand from his pocket, and turned from her. His face reddened deeply, and Harriet was surprised.
“I did n’t mean to startle you,” she said. She added mischievously: “The cookies are in the pantry.”
“Oh, come now, Harriet,” protested Brian. “You know I 'm too old to go hunting for cookies.”
It occurred to her to wonder what he was doing there, but she put the question aside. “Come into the garden,” she said, “before Bridget finds us and drives us out. She won’t allow any one here unless she ’s in a good temper.”
The flush slowly faded from Brian’s cheeks. “Come on, then,” he said. Into the garden the two went together, and there she thought to find a chance to give the wallet to him.
It was a large garden, with paths wandering here and there among shrubs and flower clumps. Harriet’s mother had taught her to love the work of gardening, and this place was to her a resort of peace and friendliness. It was very natural, therefore, to expect soon to be speaking confidentially with Brian.
But he talked so that she could find no chance. Though his blush was gone, his embarrassment seemed to remain. Harriet thought that he was talking to cover it. He rattled on about unimportant matters; and though Harriet waited for him to speak of the most natural subject of all, their adventures with the stranger, he did not mention it.
Harriet tried to bring him to it. “Was n’t it odd,” she asked, “that that boy should come out of the woods just where I was?”
“Perfectly natural,” answered Brian. He stooped to examine a flower. “What do you call this thing?”
“Why,” exclaimed Harriet, “I thought that even city boys knew roses!”
“Of course,” he answered with a little irritation. “I meant what kind.”
“A tea-rose,” she answered. “Those just beyond are the hybrid-perpetuals, and over that arch are the Dorothy Perkins.”
“Great garden this,” remarked Brian. “Do you know, the land you have in this garden, if placed on Fifth Avenue, would probably be worth a million?”
“If you 'd take it and put it there, I ’d let you have it for half a million.”
Brian looked at her, surprised. Younger girls did not usually poke fun at him. Then he laughed. “Good!” he exclaimed, but half-heartedly. “You country folk come back at a fellow sometimes.”
Harriet tried to break into his train of thought. “Brian.”
“H-m, great garden,” mused Brian, moving along as he spoke, so that she was forced to follow. “All kinds of things you 've got.”
“Everything we want,” she replied. Then she made her effort. “Brian, that wallet—"
He turned to her quickly, and his face was red again. “Now don’t you begin on that,” he said roughly. “Did n’t you hear me tell Pelham to let it alone?”
“Why, Brian!” she cried, surprised and hurt.
He turned. “Just cut that out entirely,” he said curtly, over his shoulder, as he walked away.
Now Harriet, being no saint, felt her cheeks grow hot. No one before had ever spoken to her like that. Harriet usually pleased people, for most of them recognized her good sense and her good intentions. In the town she was well liked; at home her brothers did nothing worse than tease her. Not even cousinship, she felt, entitled Brian to speak so to her. Quite indignant, she turned and hastened toward the house.
Then she began to reflect. Perhaps she had spoken unkindly. She could not see why he should be sensitive on the subject—yet boys were so queer! And if he were sensitive, then, perhaps, she had hurt his feelings. She slackened her pace. Ought she to apologize? Perhaps she ought. With a generous impulse she turned back, and hastened after Brian.
She could not find him 4t first among the windings of the paths, where here and there shrubs grew large. But presently she turned a corner 
“PRESENTLY SHE TURNED A CORNER AND CAME UPON HIM.” and came upon him. To her surprise he was just rising from a stooping position, and was dusting off his hands as if he had been gardening. The earth before him, well in from the border, had just been disturbed. She remembered that this was the place where her mother had ordered a late seeding of asters. Now, to Harriet a seed-bed was as sacred as Bridget's kitchen.
She was too indignant to notice that he started quite violently, and flushed to his very hair. “Just weeding,” he exclaimed confusedly.
“Oh, please don't touch anything in the garden,” she cried. “You can’t be sure that you have n't pulled up a flowering plant. What was it you took out?”
“I don't know,” mumbled Brian. “I threw it behind me. Here, I 'll help you find it.”
But though for a minute they looked carefully, nothing resembling a plant was found on the smooth walk or the carefully raked beds,
“I hope it was n’t important,” said Brian.
She looked again at the seed-bed. "I suppose it was n't,” she admitted. “Now I think of it, I don’t see why there should be either a weed or a plant there. John sowed aster seed there yesterday, and he does n’t usually leave weeds where he has been working.”
“Well, he did this time,” retorted Brian, abruptly.
“Why, Brian,” she cried, “I did 't mean to doubt you.”
He lowered at her. “And if vour old seeds have n't sprouted, then I could n't hurt them anyway. You need n't have been so huffy about it.”
Harriet felt that she had been rude. I 'm afraid we ‘re rather fussy about the garden,” she murmured weakly.
“Well,” declared Brian, “vou need n't fret any more, I ‘ll never touch a thing in your garden again.” He turned and left her.
Greatly depressed. Harriet went slowly back to the house. Once she thought of the wallet. “I ‘ll give it to Father or Mother,” she thought. Pelham had disappeared from the living-room, the piano was no solace in her present mood, and she sat and read fitfully among the magazines until the sound of wheels on the driveway told her that her father and mother had returned. She met them at the door just as Pelham and Brian, appearing from different quarters, joined them also.
“What did you learn?” demanded Pelham.
“Nothing,”’ answered Mr. Dodd, briefly.
“Did you ask about the wallet?”’ inquired Brian.
Mr. Dodd shook his head. “Mary, you tell them,” he said to his wife. “I am going to telephone.” He went to the library and shut himself in. The three looked their inquiries at Mrs. Dodd.
“The boy is ill,” she explained. “He is lying in a fever, and is not able to talk.”
“Sick!” exclaimed Brian, scornfully. “Just from a fall!”
Harriet checked her retort. Her mother reproved Brian gently. “A blow on the head, a deep cut in the arm, a sprained ankle, and much loss of blood are enough for most people. Besides, we all think, from the look of his clothes, that he got wet in the woods yesterday, perhaps by blundering into a swamp. And he slept out without any covering. The doctor says it may mean pneumonia.”’
Harriet sat down. The news made her feel weak. Before he fell, had he already been feeling faint and sick? If he should die, what then would be her duty concerning the wallet? For as the face of the boy rose before her, and she saw his very eyes, earnest and appealing, she felt again that he must be honest.
She heard the boys and her mother talking, but could not listen to what they said. Her problem absorbed her. Was her promise binding? She sat thinking until her father joined them again.
“It ’s puzzling,” he said. “I ’ve been telephoning the station-master at Winton. He says that the matter of the disappearance yesterday is very clear to him. The older brother was in the greatest distress so long as he believed that the boy had fallen from the train: but when it was clear that no body was to be found, then he seemed certain that his brother had run away. All he wanted then was to follow him quickly to New York. He refused to give any address, and they have n't heard from him since.”
“How about dragging the ponds?” asked Pelham.
“There are n't any ponds along the route,” answered Mr. Dodd. “That was some reporter’s foolishness. Until he heard from me, the station-master supposed that the man had found his brother. And really, when you think of it, that is the natural conclusion. There is nothing to prove that this boy is that boy.”
“What are you going to do?” asked his wife.
“Nothing at all,” answered Mr. Dodd. “The station-master at Winton knows all there is to know, and if Wilson comes back, will send him over here. Meanwhile, the boy can’t get away.” He turned to the door.
“Father,” said Harriet, rising.
“Not now, dear,” he said. “I am driving your mother down to the store, and must hurry to the mill. We ’ll be back before supper.”
Harriet, after watching her father and mother drive away, went slowly to her room. The wallet still weighed heavily in her pocket, and she wanted to be rid of it, at least until she could talk the matter over with her parents. She shut herself carefully into her chamber. In her part of the house she knew that there was no one. Yet it was with caution that she took the wallet from her pocket, listened for a while, and then, going nearer to the light, looked at the cause of her troubles.
Then, with a start, she studied it eagerly, turning it over and over. It was a large wallet, and a long one too, made of good leather that had withstood much wear. It was stuffed with some- thing, but she did not open it. On one side, she saw faint impressions where once gilt letters had been stamped: a few tiny glittering spots were still adhering. Though she carefully turned the wallet to and from the light, Harriet could read nothing.
Yet she began to smile. “Now,” she asked aloud, “where shall I put it?” As she looked around the room, she realized how little real privacy she had there. Not only she herself, but also her mother and an old family servant constantly went to her bureau, bringing her clothes from the laundry or the sewing-room. Harriet saw no place in her chamber where she could hide the wallet.
A glance out of the window showed her Pelham and Brian on the tennis-court. Feeling safe from interruption by them, she went to the upstairs writing-room, which was nothing else than the old nursery. Here stood her and Peclham's desks, where in school-time they studied in the evening. To her desk she went.
It was a fine old one. Harriet was very proud of its swell front, its claw feet, its brass handles, and the beautiful dark wood. But now she was thinking of something else. In the center of its row of pigeonholes was a wide space for her ink-stand, and flanking this space were two little columns, looking like decorations set against wide partitions. Grasping one of these by its square capital, Harriet pulled at it. Pillar and partition both drew out, and Harriet had what she wanted. The partition was nothing else than a long and tall and very thin box, open at the back. Into 1t Harriet pushed the wallet, which fitted tightly.
“A GLANCE OUT OF THE WINDOW SHOWED PELHAM AND BRIAN ON THE TENNIS-COURT.”
As she turned away, she had one doubt. Ought she not to tie up the wallet in paper? But no. No one would find it, for no one but herself went to her desk. Even supposing it were to be found, no one would look at it. Satisfied, Harriet went away.
When her father returned, he called for her. “Was n’t there something, Harriet, that you wanted to ask me?”
“Nothing now, Father,” she answered. “I 've settled it myself.”
Chapter IV
SIGNS AND WONDERS
What was that odd white thing in the air not far above the bed? A square, white thing it seemed, wavering sidewise and then back again. He frowned at it. Was it hanging from the ceiling? Ah, he saw! A stick, thrust into the bed at the foot, was holding it toward him. Yes, and there were letters on it. But frown as he would, they wavered and faded away. And so did he; he felt himself slipping away in sleep, and was very glad to go.
Later, he could not say how long, he came out of his doze, and again began to fix his attention upon the square, white thing. A kind of sign, was it? He saw it better now. Why should it be above his bed? What did it say? He looked and puzzled, and finally the letters took form:
“DON'T TRY TO GET UP.”
There were more words, but his attention wandered. The room seemed brighter now, as if the sun shone on the window, wherever the window might be. Probably at his back. That was best for sick folks.
Was he a sick folk? Why, else, was he lying on his back, with some heavy thing, doubtless a bandage, on his head? Why else was that ridiculous sign hanging over his head? What more did it say? Again he knitted his brows, and this time he read:
“IF YOU WANT ME, RING.”
If he wanted whom? Why ring? Oh, yes, if he wanted him, ring. But how?
Again he faded away into sleep, and again, after an interval, he came to himself. Once more the light was different in the room; the sun lay along the floor. It must be late afternoon. And that absurd sign was still there—“If you want me, ring.” But how could he ring? And who was this mysterious Me?
As he wondered, he became aware of a sound, which he somehow knew had been continuing from the first. It was like the noise of machinery, and yet was unlike. At any rate, it was an irregular, creaky, jumpy kind of machinery. It continued monotonously on and on; it was, he reflected, a pretty soothing kind of noise to sleep to. And then a new sound came to his ears: a cheerful and yet a thoughtful whistle. A man's whistle—a boy would not whistle so thoughtfully.
He lay and listened for a while. Now the whistle sounded, now it ceased. now it began again. Though it was a thoughtful whistle, it was a contented one; it had, moreover, something to do with the machinery. Was Me working over the machine?
Slowly there grew a desire to see this whistling person. “If you want me, ring.” But again, how ring? Around the room was nothing to be seen, no button and no bell handle. But what was that blurred thing close overhead? A good frown now, a close squint! The blurred thing took shape. It was a hanging rope.
He tried to raise a hand. It would not come. Something held it down; a weight, not a bandage. He tried to wiggle the fingers, and found that they also were held. And lift the hand he could not. Was the other hand in the same fix? He tried. Slowly the hand came up, groped, found the rope, and gripped it. He pulled. From a distance came a tinkle. The whistling ceased. Something jarred, and the machinery stopped its thudding. A voice called: “Jest a jiffy!”