Read Ebook: The old mine's secret by Turpin Edna Henry Lee Wright George Illustrator

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Ebook has 1942 lines and 101451 words, and 39 pages

"Ah! so few are left; so many have passed on." Mrs. Osborne glanced through the open door at a portrait, her father in a colonel's gray uniform. "Of course they must go, our nine old soldiers."

"Sure!" said Dick. "If there isn't money enough, we boys can help raise it. Mr. Tavis says he'll pay me to plant corn, afternoons and Saturdays. I wasn't thinking about doing it. But our old Confeds mustn't miss their Reunion."

"Good boy! that's the right spirit," exclaimed Mrs. Osborne.

She adored the memory of her gallant father and of the Confederate cause to which he had devoted himself. The quiet, uneventful years had brought no new deep, inspiring interests to the little Southern community. Its love and loyalty clung to the past. To the children the Lost Cause was a tradition as heroic and romantic as the legends of Roland and Arthur; but it was a tradition linked to reality by the old gray-clad men who had fought with Lee and Jackson. As Jones and Tavis and Walthall, they were ordinary old men, rather tiresome and absurd; but call them "Confederate veterans" and they were transformed to heroes whom it was an honor to serve. Dick, shirking the work that meant food for his family, would toil gladly to send them to their Reunion.

"They must have this, perhaps their last--"

Mrs. Osborne paused, and her husband said: "We'll manage it; we'll manage it somehow. If there is a deficit, we may be able to make it up by private subscription. Perhaps I'll get a case next term of court, and can make a liberal contribution." He laughed.

Mr. Osborne--called Red Mayo to distinguish him from a dark-haired cousin of the same name, called Black Mayo--was a lawyer more by profession than by practice; there were not enough law crumbs in The Village, he said, to support a sparrow.

He strolled toward the Court-house while Mrs. Osborne took her last hurried stitches. Then she handed the patched trousers to her son, who rolled indoors and put them on. He went into the garden and gloomily eyed the neglected square where peas and potatoes and onions were merely green lines among crowding weeds.

"I certainly can't finish it this morning," he growled. "There's too much to do."

"If you work hard, you can finish by sundown," said his cousin, David Spotswood, who was planting a row of beets on the other side of the garden.

"I can't work after dinner," said Dick. "I've got something else to do. I just can't finish it to-day."

"You'd better," said Patsy, who had followed him into the garden. "When father says 'Richard' and shuts his mouth--so! he means business. Say, Dick! What were you getting that candle for? What are you going to do? Let us go with you, Anne Lewis and me, and I'll help you here."

"You help!" Dick spoke in his most superior masculine manner. "Girls haven't any business in gardens. They ought to stay in the house and make bed-quilts. They're too afraid of dirty hands and freckled faces."

Patsy flared up and answered so quickly that her words stepped on one another's heels. "That's mean and unfair! You know I hate gloves and bonnets, and I just wear them because mother makes me. But anyway, sir, I think they're nicer than great-grandmother's shawl for trousers."

She went back up the boxwood-bordered walk.

"I'll keep my eyes on you, Mr. Richard Randolph Osborne," she said to herself. "Where you go to-day, I'll follow."

Halfway up the long walk, she came upon Sweet William, sitting on the ground, holding a maple bough over his head.

"Won't you come to our picnic, Patsy?" he said. "Me and Scalawag are having a loverly picnic in the woods down by Tinkling Water."

"No, thank you," said Patsy. "I want to see Anne Lewis about going somewhere after dinner."

"Where?" asked Sweet William.

"I don't know--till I find out," laughed Patsy. "But Anne and I will do that; we certainly will."

"I wish Anne was staying here," Sweet William said wistfully.

"So do I," agreed Patsy. "Easter holiday is too short to divide with Ruth. Oh! I'll be so glad when it's summer and Anne comes to stay a long time."

"It isn't ever a long time where Anne is," said Sweet William. "I'm going with you to see her, Patsy, and I'll have my picnic another day."

They went off and left Dick raking and weeding and hoeing very diligently; but, working his best, he had not half finished his task when the dinner bell rang. He surveyed the garden with a scowl.

"It'll take hours and hours to get it done," he said. "And then it would be too late to go where I'm going. Maybe I can work the potato patch after supper."

"You can't," said David, who had a straightforward way of facing facts.

"Oh! maybe I can," said Dick, who had a picturesque way of evading them. "You might help me. You might work on it awhile after dinner."

"Thank you! I've something else to do. I'm going to harrow my corn acre. I want to plant it next week," said David, who was a blue-ribbon member of the Boys' Corn Club.

At the dinner table the boys were joined by Sweet William, Patsy, and Anne Lewis, a cousin who was spending her Easter holiday in The Village. The two girls watched Dick like hawks, and jumped up from the table as soon as he went out of the dining room. He hurried to the little upstairs room he shared with David that was called the "tumble-up room" because the steps were so steep. Presently he came down and showed off the things he was putting in his pockets--a candle, a box of matches, and a ball of stout twine. He sharpened his hatchet and fastened it to his belt.

"Yah! You wish you knew what that's for," he said, with a derisive face at Patsy and then at Anne.

He strutted across the yard toward the front gate, but he was not to march off in undisturbed triumph.

"Dick! uh Dick!" called his mother. "Remember you've your garden work to finish."

"Yes'm." He scowled, then he said doggedly: "There's something else I've promised myself to do first."

Anne and Patsy waited only to see that he turned up, not down, The Street; then they ran around The Back Way and came out just behind him at the church; there The Street turned to a road which led past the mill and on to Redville. Dick walked quickly, and the girls hurried after him; then he walked slowly, and they loitered so as to keep just behind him.

"Where are you going?" he turned and challenged them.

"Oh! we might go to the mill to see Cousin Giles, or to Larkland to look at Cousin Mayo's new pigeons, or to Happy Acres," answered Patsy.

Dick strode on, and the girls trotted behind him, making amicable efforts at conversation.

"Steve Tavis has gone fishing with John and Baldie Eppes," Anne remarked. "He said we girls might go, too. But Patsy and I thought there might be something--something more fun to do."

No answer.

Patsy made an effort. "Dick," she said, "I hope you'll finish your garden work to-day. Father's tired of excuses and he's made up his mind for punishing. But even if we do get home late, I can help you."

Silence.

"It's a mighty nice day," Patsy went on pleadingly, "to--to do outdoor things. You say yourself I'm as good as a boy to have around. I wouldn't be in the way at all; and I could hold the candle for you."

"You said you were going to the mill, or Larkland, or Happy Acres. Trot along!"

"I said we might go there," Patsy amended. "Or we might go--'most anywhere. Do let us go with you; please, Dick."

"Where?"

"Oh! wherever you are going. We'll not tell."

"You certainly will not," he declared; "for a mighty good reason: you are not going to know anything to tell."

Patsy's eyes flashed. "We'll show you," she said. "We are going to follow you, like your shadow. You know good and well I can run as fast as you. Now take your choice, sir; let us go with you, or give up and toddle home and finish your task so as not to get punished."

"Hm!" he jeered. "If I've got something on hand good enough to take punishment for, it's too good to spoil with girls tagging along."

He walked briskly up the road. Anne and Patsy followed him for a silent mile--up and down hills scarred with red gulleys, through woods, by brown plowed fields and green grain land. They passed several log cabins; the Spencer place, an old mansion amid tumbled-down out-buildings; Gordan Jones's trim new house gay with gables and fresh paint. Then they came to an old farmhouse surrounded by neglected fields.

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