E-text prepared by Al Haines

Transcriber's note:

The book's Frontispiece was missing. There were no other illustrations.

HOW JANICE DAY WON

HELEN BEECHER LONG

Author of "Janice Day the Young Homemaker,"
"The Testing of Janice Day,"
"The Mission of Janice Day," Etc.

Illustrated by Corinne Turner

The Goldsmith Publishing Co.
Cleveland

CHAPTER

I. TROUBLE FROM NEAR AND FAR II. "TALKY" DEXTER, INDEED III. "THE SEVENTH ABOMINATION" IV. A RIFT IN THE HONEYMOON V. "THE BLUEBIRD—FOR HAPPINESS" VI. THE TENTACLES OF THE MONSTER VII. SWEPT ON BY THE CURRENT VIII. REAL TROUBLE IX. HOW NELSON TOOK IT X. HOW POLKTOWN TOOK IT XI. "MEN MUST WORK WHILE WOMEN MUST WEEP" XII. AN UNEXPECTED EMERGENCY XIII. INTO THE LION'S DEN XIV. A DECLARATION OF WAR XV. AND NOW IT IS DISTANT TROUBLE XVI. ONE MATTER COMES TO A HEAD XVII. THE OPENING OF THE CAMPAIGN XVIII. HOPEWELL SELLS HIS VIOLIN XIX. THE GOLD COIN XX. SUSPICIONS XXI. WHAT WAS IN THE PAPER XXII. DEEP WATERS XXIII. JOSEPH US COMES OUT FOR PROHIBITION XXIV. ANOTHER GOLD PIECE XXV. IN DOUBT XXVI. THE TIDE TURNS XXVII. THE TEMPEST XXVIII. THE ENEMY RETREATS XXIX. THE TRUTH AT LAST XXX. MARM PARRADAY DOES HER DUTY

HOW JANICE DAY WON

CHAPTER I

TROUBLE FROM NEAR AND FAR

At the corner of High Street, where the lane led back to the stables of the Lake View Inn, Janice Day stopped suddenly, startled by an eruption of sound from around an elbow of the lane—a volley of voices, cat-calls, and ear-splitting whistles which shattered Polktown's usual afternoon somnolence.

One youthful imitator expelled a laugh like the bleating of a goat:

"Na-ha-ha-ha! Ho! Jim Nar-ha-nay! There's a brick in your hat!"

Another shout of laugher and a second boy exclaimed:

"Look out, old feller! You'll spill it!"

All the voices seemed those of boys; but this was an hour when most of the town lads were supposed to be under the more or less eagle eye of Mr. Nelson Haley, the principal of the Polktown school. Janice attended the Middletown Seminary, and this chanced to be a holiday at that institution. She stood anxiously on the corner now to see if her cousin, Marty, was one of this crowd of noisy fellows.

With stumbling feet, and with the half dozen laughing, mocking boys tailing him, a bewhiskered, rough-looking, shabby man came into sight. His appearance on the pleasant main thoroughfare of the little lakeside town quite spoiled the prospect.

Before, it had been a lovely scene. Young Spring, garbed only in the tender greens of the quickened earth and the swelling buds of maple and lilac, had accompanied Janice Day down Hillside Avenue into High Street from the old Day house where she lived with her Uncle Jason, her Aunt 'Mira, and Marty. All the neighbors had seen Janice and had smiled at her; and those whose eyes were anointed by Romance saw Spring dancing by the young girl's side.

Her eyes sparkled; there was a rose in either cheek; her trim figure in the brown frock, well-built walking shoes of tan, and pretty toque, was an effective bit of life in the picture, the background of which was the sloping street to the steamboat dock and the beautiful, blue, dancing waters of the lake beyond.

An intoxicated man on the streets of Polktown during the three years of Janice Day's sojourn here was almost unknown. There had been no demand for the sale of liquor in the town until Lem Parraday, proprietor of the Lake View Inn, applied to the Town Council for a bar license.

The request had been granted without much opposition. Mr. Cross Moore, President of the Council, held a large mortgage on the Parraday premises, and it was whispered that this fact aided in putting the license through in so quiet a way.

It was agreed that Polktown was growing. The "boom" had started some months before. Already the sparkling waters of the lake were plied by a new Constance Colfax, and the C. V. Railroad was rapidly completing its branch which was to connect Polktown with the Eastern seaboard.

Whereas in the past a half dozen traveling men might visit the town in a week and put up at the Inn, there had been through this Winter a considerable stream of visitors. And it was expected that the Inn, as well as every house that took boarders in the town, would be well patronized during the coming Summer.

To Janice Day the Winter had been lovely. She had been very busy.
Well had she fulfilled her own tenet of "Do Something." In service she
found continued joy. Janice loved Polktown, and almost everybody in
Polktown loved her.

At least, everybody knew her, and when these young rascals trailing the drunken man spied the accusing countenance of Janice they fell back in confusion. She was thankful her cousin Marty was not one of them; yet several, she knew, belonged to the boys' club, the establishment of which had led to the opening of Polktown's library and free reading-room. However, the boys pursued Tim Narnay no farther. They slunk back into the lane, and finally, with shrill whoops and laughter, disappeared. The besotted man stood wavering on the curbstone, undecided, it seemed, upon his future course.

Janice would have passed on. The appearance of the fellow merely shocked and disgusted her. Her experience of drunkenness and with drinking people, had been very slight indeed. Gossip's tongue was busy with the fact that several weak or reckless men now hung about the Lake View Inn more than was good for them; and Janice saw herself that some boys had taken to loafing here. But nobody in whom she was vitally interested seemed in danger of acquiring the habit of using liquor just because Lem Parraday sold it.

The ladies of the sewing society of the Union Church missed "Marm" Parraday's brown face and vigorous tongue. It was said that she strongly disapproved of the change at the Inn, but Lem had overruled her for once.

"And, poor woman!" thought Janice now, "if she has to see such sights as this about the Inn, I don't wonder that she is ashamed."

The train of her thought was broken at the moment, and her footsteps stayed. Running across the street came a tiny girl, on whose bare head the Spring sunshine set a crown of gold. Such a wealth of tangled, golden hair Janice had never before seen, and the flowerlike face beneath it would have been very winsome indeed had it been clean.

She was a neglected-looking little creature; her patched clothing needed repatching, her face and hands were begrimed, and——

"Goodness only knows when there was ever a comb in that hair!" sighed Janice. "I would dearly love to clean her up and put something decent to wear upon her, and——"

She did not finish her wish because of an unexpected happening. The little girl came so blithely across the street only to run directly into the wavering figure of the intoxicated Jim Narnay. She screamed as Narnay seized her by one thin arm.

"What ye got there?" he demanded, hoarsely, trying to catch the other tiny, clenched fist.

"Oh! don't do it! don't do it!" begged the child, trying her best to slip away from his rough grasp.

"Ye got money, ye little sneak!" snarled the man, and he forced the girl's hand open with a quick wrench and seized the dime she held.

He flung her aside as though she had been a wisp of straw, and she would have fallen had not Janice caught her. Indignantly the older girl faced the drunken ruffian.

"You wicked man! How can you? Give her back that money at once! Why, you—you ought to be arrested!"

"Aw, g'wan!" growled the fellow. "It's my money."

He stumbled back into the lane again—without doubt making for the rear door of the Inn barroom from which he had just come. The child was sobbing.

"Wait!" exclaimed Janice, both eager and angry now. "Don't cry. I'll get your ten cents back. I'll go right in and tell Mr. Parraday and he'll make him give it up. At any rate he won't give him a drink for it."

The child caught Janice's skirt with one grimy hand. "Don't—don't do that, Miss," she said, soberly.

"Why not?"

"'Twon't do no good. Pop's all right when he's sober, and he'll be sorry for this. I oughter kep' my eyes open. Ma told me to. I could easy ha' dodged him if I'd been thinkin'. But—but that's all ma had in the house and she needed the meal."

"He—he is your father?" gasped Janice.

"Oh, yes. I'm Sophie Narnay. That's pop. And he's all right when he's sober," repeated the child.

Janice Day's indignation evaporated. Now she could feel only sympathy for the little creature that was forced to acknowledge such a man for a parent.

"Ma's goin' to be near 'bout distracted," Sophie pursued, shaking her tangled head. "That's the only dime she had."

"Never mind," gasped Janice, feeling the tears very near to the surface. "I'll let you have the dime you need. Is—is your papa always like that?"

"Oh, no! Oh, no! He works in the woods sometimes. But since the tavern's been open he's been drinkin' more. Ma says she hopes it'll burn down," added Sophie, with perfect seriousness.

Suddenly Janice felt that she could echo that desire herself. Ethically two wrongs do not make a right; but it is human nature to see the direct way to the end and wish for it, not always regarding ethical considerations. Janice became at that moment converted to the cause of making Polktown a dry spot again on the State map.

"My dear!" she said, with her arm about the tangle-haired little Sophie, "I am sorry for—for your father. Maybe we can all help him to stop drinking. I—I hope he doesn't abuse you."

"He's awful good when he's sober," repeated the little thing, wistfully. "But he ain't been sober much lately."

"How many are there of you, Sophie?"

"There's ma and me and Johnny and Eddie and the baby. We ain't named the baby. Ma says she ain't sure we'll raise her and 'twould be no use namin' her if she ain't going to be raised, would it?"

"No-o—perhaps not," admitted Janice, rather startled by this philosophy. "Don't you have the doctor for her?"

"Once. But it costs money. And ma's so busy she can't drag clean up the hill to Doc Poole's office very often. And then—well, there ain't been much money since pop come out of the woods this Spring."

Her old-fashioned talk gave Janice a pretty clear insight into the condition of affairs at the Narnay house. She asked the child where she lived and learned the locality (down near the shore of Pine Cove) and how to get to it. She made a mental note of this for a future visit to the place.

"Here's another dime, Sophie," she said, finding the cleanest spot on the little girl's cheek to kiss. "Your father's out of sight now, and you can run along to the store and get the meal."

"You're a good 'un, Miss," declared Sophie, nodding. "Come and see the baby. She's awful pretty, but ma says she's rickety. Good-bye."

The little girl was away like the wind, her broken shoes clattering over the flagstones. Janice looked after her and sighed. There seemed a sudden weight pressing upon her mind. The sunshine was dimmed; the sweet odors of Spring lost their spice in her nostrils. Instead of strolling down to the dock as she had intended, she turned about and, with lagging step, took her homeward way.

The sight of this child's trouble, the thought of Narnay's weakness and what it meant to his unfortunate family, brought to mind with crushing force Janice's own trouble. And this personal trouble was from afar.

Amid the kaleidoscopic changes in Mexican affairs, Janice's father had been laboring for three years and more to hold together the mining properties conceded to him and his fellow-stockholders by the administration of Porfirio Diaz. In the battle-ridden State of Chihuahua Mr. Broxton Day was held a virtual prisoner, by first one warring faction and then another.

At one time, being friendly with a certain chief of the belligerents, Mr. Day had taken out ore and had had the mine in good running condition. Some money had flowed into the coffers of the mining company. Janice benefited in a way during this season of plenty.

Now, of late, the Yaquis had swept down from the mountains, Mr. Day's laborers had run away, and his own life was placed in peril again. He wrote little about his troubles to his daughter, living so far away in the Vermont village, but his bare mention of conditions was sufficient to spur Janice's imagination. She was anxious in the extreme.

"If Daddy would only come home on a visit as he had expected to this
Spring!" was the longing thought now in her mind. "Oh, dear me! What
matter if the season does change? It won't bring him back to me.
I'd—I'd sell my darling car and take the money and run away to him if
I dared!"

This was a desperate thought indeed, for the Kremlin automobile her father had bought Janice the year before remained the apple of her eye. That very morning Marty had rolled it out of the garage he and his father had built for it, and started to overhaul it for his cousin. Marty had become something of a mechanic since the arrival of the Kremlin at the Day place.

The roads were fast drying up, and Marty promised that the car would soon be in order. But the thought now served to inspire no anticipation of pleasure in Janice's troubled mind.

She passed Major Price just at the foot of Hillside Avenue. The major was Polktown's moneyed man—really the magnate of the village. His was the largest house on the hill—a broad, high-pillared colonial mansion with a great, shaded, sloping lawn in front. An important looking house was the major's and the major was important looking, too.

But Janice noted more particularly than ever before that there were many purple veins distinctly lined upon the major's nose and cheeks and that his eyes were moist and wavering in their glance. He used a cane with a flourish; but his legs had an unsteadiness that a cane could not correct.

"Good day! Good day, Miss Janice! Happy to see you! Fine Spring weather—yes, yes," he said, with great cordiality, removing his silk hat. "Charming weather, indeed. It has tempted me out for a walk—yes, yes!" and he rolled by, swinging his cane and bobbing his head.

Janice knew that nowadays the major's walks always led him to the Lake View Inn. Mrs. Price and Maggie did their best to hide the major's missteps, but the children on the streets, seeing the local magnate making heavy work of his journey back up the hill, would giggle and follow on behind, an amused audience. This was another victim of the change in Polktown's temperance situation.

Poor Major Price——

"Hi, Janice! Did you notice the 'still' the major's got on?" called the cheerful voice of Marty, her cousin. "He's got more than he can carry comfortably already; Walky Dexter will be taking him home again. He did the other night."

"No, Marty! did he?" cried the troubled girl.

"Sure," chuckled Marty. "Walky says he thinks some of giving up the express business and buyin' himself a hack. Some of these old soaks around town will be glad to ride home under cover after a session at Lem Parraday's place. Think of Walky as a 'nighthawk'!" and Marty, who was a short, freckled-faced boy several years his cousin's junior, went off into a spasm of laughter.

"Don't, Marty!" cried Janice, in horror. "Don't talk so lightly about it! Why, it is dreadful!"

"What's dreadful? Walky getting a hack?"

"Be serious," commanded his cousin, who really had gained a great deal of influence over the thoughtless Marty during the time she had lived in Polktown. "Oh, Marty! I've just seen such a dreadful thing!"

"Hullo! What's that?" he asked, eyeing her curiously and ceasing his laughter. He knew now that she was in earnest.

"That horrid old Jim Narnay—you know him?"

"Sure," agreed Marty, beginning to grin faintly again.

"He was intoxicated—really staggering drunk. And he came out of the back door of the Inn, and some boys chased him out on to the street, hooting after him. Perry Grimes and Sim Howell and some others. Old enough to know better——"

"He, he!" chuckled Marty, exploding with laughter again. "Old Narnay's great fun. One of the fellows the other day told him there was a brick in his hat, and he took the old thing off to look into it to see if it was true. Then he stood there and lectured us about being truthful. He, he!"

"Oh, Marty!" ejaculated Janice, in horror. "You never! You don't!
You can't be so mean!"

"Hi tunket!" exploded the boy. "What's the matter with you? What d'ye mean? 'I never, I don't, I can't'! What sort of talk is that?"

"There's nothing funny about it," his cousin said sternly. "I want to know if you would mock at that poor man on the street?"

"At Narnay?"

"Yes."

"Why not?" demanded Marty. "He's only an old drunk. And he is great fun."

"He—he is disgusting! He is horrid!" cried the girl earnestly. "He is an awful, ruffianly creature, but he's nothing to laugh at. Listen, Marty!" and vividly, with all the considerable descriptive powers that she possessed, the girl repeated what had occurred when little Sophie Narnay had run into her drunken parent on the street.

Marty was a boy, and not a thoughtful boy at all; but, as he listened, the grin disappeared from his face and he did not look like laughing.

"Whew! The mean scamp!" was his comment. "Poor kid! Do you s'pose he hurts her?"

"He hurts her—and her mother—and the two little boys—and that unnamed baby—whenever he takes money to spend for drink. It doesn't particularly matter whether he beats her. I don't think he does that, or the child would not love him and make excuses for him. But tell me, Marty Day! Is there anything funny in a man like that?"

"Whew!" admitted the boy. "It does look different when you think of it that way. But some of these fellers that crook their elbows certainly do funny stunts when they've had a few!"

"Marty Day!" cried Janice, clasping her hands, "I didn't notice it before. But you even talk differently from the way you used to. Since the bar at the Inn has been open I believe you boys have got hold of an entirely new brand of slang."

"Huh?" said Marty.

"Why, it is awful! I had been thinking that Mr. Parraday's license only made a difference to himself and poor Marm Parraday and his customers. But that is not so. Everybody in Polktown is affected by the change. I am going to talk to Mr. Meddlar about it, or to Elder Concannon. Something ought to be done."

"Hi tunket! There ye go!" chuckled Marty. "More do something business. You'd better begin with Walky."

"Begin what with Walky?"

"Your temperance campaign, if that's what you mean," said the boy, more soberly.

"Not Walky Dexter!" exclaimed Janice, amazed. "You don't mean the liquor selling has done him harm?"

"Well," Marty said slowly, "Walky takes a drink now and then. Sometimes the drummers he hauls trunks and sample-cases for give him a drink. As long as he couldn't get it in town, Walky never bothered with the stuff much. But he was a little elevated Saturday night—that's right."

"Oh!" gasped Janice, for the town expressman was one of her oldest friends in Polktown, and a man in whom she took a deep interest.

A slow grin dawned again on Marty's freckled countenance. "Ye ought to hear him when he's had a drink or two. You called him 'Talkworthy' Dexter; and he sure is some talky when he's been imbibing."

"Oh, Marty, that's dreadful!" and Janice sighed. "It's just wicked!
Polktown's been a sleepy place, but it's never been wicked before."

Her cousin looked at her admiringly. "Hi jinks, Janice! I bet you got it in your mind to stir things up again. I can see it in your eyes. You give Polktown its first clean-up day, and you've shook up the dry bones in general all over the shop. There's going to be something doing, I reckon, that'll make 'em all set up and take notice."

"You talk as though I were one of these awful female reformers the funny papers tell about," Janice said, with a little laugh. "You see nothing in my eyes, Marty, unless it's tears for poor little Sophie Narnay."

The cousins arrived at the old Day house and entered the grass-grown yard. It was an old-fashioned, homely place, a rambling farmhouse up to which the village had climbed. There was plenty of shade, lush grass beneath the trees, with crocuses and other Spring flowers peeping from the beds about the front porch, and sweet peas already breaking the soil at the side porch and pump-bench.

A smiling, cushiony woman met Janice at the door, while Marty went whistling barnward, having the chores to do. Aunt 'Mira nowadays usually had a smile for everybody, but for Janice always.

"Your uncle's home, Janice," she said, "and he brought the mail."

"Oh!" cried the girl, with a quick intake of breath. "A letter from daddy?"

"Wal—I dunno," said the fleshy woman. "I reckon it must be. Yet it don't look just like Brocky Day's hand of write. See—here 'tis. It's from Mexico, anyway."

The girl seized the letter with a gasp. "It—it's the same stationery he uses," she said, with a note of thankfulness. "I—I guess it's all right. I'll run right up and read it."

She flew upstairs to her little room—her room that looked out upon the beautiful lake. She could never bring herself to read over a letter from her father first in the presence of the rest of the family. She sat down without removing her hat and gloves, pulled a tiny hairpin from the wavy lock above her ear and slit the thin, rice-paper envelope. Two enclosures were shaken out into her lap.

CHAPTER II

"TALKY" DEXTER, INDEED!

The moments of suspense were hard to bear. There was always a fluttering at Janice's heart when she received a letter from her father. She always dreamed of him as a mariner skirting the coasts of Uncertainty. There was no telling, as Aunt 'Mira often said, what was going to happen to Broxton Day next.

First of all, on this occasion, the young girl saw that the most important enclosure was the usual fat letter addressed to her in daddy's hand. With it was a thin, oblong card, on which, in minute and very exact script, was written this flowery note:

"With respect I, whom you know not, venture to address you humbly, and in view of the situation of your honorable father, the Señor B Day, beg to make known to you that the military authorities now in power in this district have refused him the privilege of sending or receiving mail. Yet, fear not, sweet Señorita; while the undersigned retains the boon of breath and the power of brain and arm, thy letters, if addressed in my care, shall reach none but thy father's eye, and his to thee shall be safely consigned to the government mails beyond the Rio Grande.

"Faithfully thine,

"JUAN DICAMPA."

Who the writer of this peculiar communication was, Janice had no means of knowing. In the letter from her father which she immediately opened, there was no mention of Juan Dicampa.

Mr. Day did say, however, that he seemed to have incurred the particular enmity of the Zapatist chief then at the head of the district because he was not prepared to bribe him personally and engage his ragged and barefoot soldiery to work in the mine.

He did not say that his own situation was at all changed. Rather, he joked about the half-breeds and the pure-blood Yaquis then in power about the mine. Either Mr. Broxton Day had become careless because of continued peril, or he really considered these Indians less to be feared than the brigands who had previously overrun this part of Chihuahua.

However, it was good to hear from daddy and to know that—up to the time the letter was written, at least—he was all right. She went down to supper with some cheerfulness, and took the letter to read aloud, by snatches, during the meal.

A letter from Mexico was always an event in the Day household. Marty was openly desirous of emulating "Uncle Brocky" and getting out of Polktown—no matter where or how. Aunt 'Mira was inclined to wonder how the ladies of Mexico dressed and deported themselves. Uncle Jason observed:

"I've allus maintained that Broxton Day is a stubborn and foolish feller. Why! see the strain he's been under these years since he went down to that forsaken country. An' what for?"

"To make a fortune, Dad," interposed Marty. "Hi tunket! Wisht I was in his shoes."

"Money ain't ev'rything," said Uncle Jason, succinctly.

"Well, it's a hull lot," proclaimed the son.

"I reckon that's so, Jason," Aunt Almira agreed. "It's his money makin' that leaves Janice so comfterble here. And her automobile——"

"Oh, shucks! Is money wuth life?" demanded Mr. Day. "What good will money be to him if he's stood up against one o' them dough walls and shot at by a lot of slantindicular-eyed heathen?"

"Hoo!" shouted Marty. "The Mexicans ain't slant-eyed like Chinamen and
Japs."

"And they ain't heathen," added Aunt Almira. "They don't bow down to figgers of wood and stone."

"Besides, Uncle," put in Janice, softly, and with a smile, "it is adobe not dough they build their houses of."

"Huh!" snorted Uncle Jason. "Don't keer a continental. He's one foolish man. He'd better throw up the whole business, come back here to Polktown, and I'll let him have a piece of the old farm to till."

"Oh! that would be lovely, Uncle Jason!" cried Janice, clasping her hands. "If he only could retire to dear Polktown for the rest of his life and we could live together in peace."

"Hi tunket!" exclaimed Marty, pushing back his chair from the supper table just as the outer door opened. "He kin have my share of the old farm," for Marty had taken a mighty dislike to farming and had long before this stated his desire to be a civil engineer.

"At it ag'in, air ye, Marty?" drawled a voice from the doorway. "If repetition of what ye want makes detarmination, Mart, then you air the most detarmined man since Lot's wife—and she was a woman, er-haw! haw! haw!"

"Come in, Walky," said Uncle Jason, greeting the broad and ruddy face of his neighbor with a brisk nod.

"Set up and have a bite," was Aunt 'Mira's hospitable addition.

"No, no! I had a snack down to the tavern, Marthy's gone to see her folks terday and I didn't 'spect no supper to hum. I'm what ye call a grass-widderer. Haw! haw! haw!" explained the local expressman.

Walky's voice seemed louder than usual, his face was more beaming, and he was more prone to laugh at his own jokes. Janice and Marty exchanged glances as the expressman came in and took a chair that creaked under his weight. The girl, remembering what her cousin had said about the visitor, wondered if it were possible that Walky had been drinking and now showed the effects of it.

It was true, as Janice had once said—the expressman should have been named "Talkworthy" rather than "Walkworthy" Dexter. To-night he seemed much more talkative than usual.

"What were all you younkers out o' school so early for, Marty?" he asked. "Ain't been an eperdemic o' smallpox broke out, has there?"

"Teachers' meeting," said Marty. "The Superintendent of Schools came over and they say we're going to have fortnightly lectures on Friday afternoons—mebbe illustrated ones. Crackey! it don't matter what they have," declared this careless boy, "as long as 'tain't lessons."

"Lectures?" repeated Walky. "Do tell! What sort of lectures?"

"I heard Mr. Haley say the first one would proberbly be illustrated by a collection of rare coins some rich feller's lent the State School Board. He says the coins are worth thousands of dollars."

"Lectures on coins?" cackled Walky. "I could give ye a lecture on ev'ry dollar me and Josephus ever airned! Haw! haw! haw!"

Walky rolled in his chair in delight at his own wit. Uncle Jason was watching him with some curiosity as he filled and lit his pipe.

"Walky," he drawled, "what was the very hardest dollar you ever airned?
It strikes me that you allus have picked the softest jobs, arter all."

"Me? Soft jobs?" demanded Walkworthy, with some indignation. "Ye oughter try liftin' some o' them drummers' sample-cases that I hatter wrastle with. Wal!" Then his face began to broaden and his eyes to twinkle. "Arter all, it was a soft job that I airned my hardest dollar by, for a fac'."

"Let's have it, Walky," urged Marty. "Get it out of your system.
You'll feel better for it."

"Why, ter tell the truth," grinned Walky, "it was a soft job, for I carried five pounds of feathers in a bolster twelve miles to old Miz' Kittridge one Winter day when I was a boy. I got a dollar for it and come as nigh bein' froze ter death as ever a boy did and save his bacon."

"Do tell us about it, Walky," said Janice, who was wiping the supper dishes for her aunt.

"I should say it was a soft job—five pounds of feathers!" burst out
Marty.

"How fur did you haf to travel, Walky?" asked Aunt 'Mira.

"Twelve mile over the snow and ice, me without snowshoes and it thirty below zero. Yes, sir!" went on Walky, beginning to stuff the tobacco into his own pipe from Mr. Day's proffered sack. "That was some job! Miz Bob Kittridge, the old lady's darter-in-law, give me the dollar and the job; and I done it.

"The old lady lived over behind this here very mountain, all alone on the Kittridge farm. The tracks was jest natcherly blowed over and hid under more snow than ye ever see in a Winter nowadays. I believe there was five foot on a level in the woods.

"There'd been a rain; then she'd froze up ag'in," pursued Walky. "It put a crust on the snow, but I had no idee it had made the ice rotten. And with Mr. Mercury creepin' down to thirty below—jefers-pelters! I'd no idee Mink Creek had open air-holes in it. I ain't never understood it to this day.

"Wal, sir! ye know where Mink Creek crosses the road to Kittridge's,
Jason?"

Mr. Day nodded. "I know the place, Walky," he agreed.

"That's where it happened," said Walky Dexter, nodding his head many times. "I was crossin' the stream, thinkin' nothin' could happen, and 'twas jest at sunup. I'd come six mile, and was jest ha'f way to the farm. I kerried that piller-case over my shoulder, and slung from the other shoulder was a gun, and I had a hatchet in my belt.

"Jefers-pelters! All of a suddint I slumped down, right through the snow-crust, and douced up ter my middle inter the coldest water I ever felt I did, for a fac'!

"I sprung out o' that right pert, ye kin believe; and then the next step I went down ker-chug! ag'in—this time up ter my armpits."

"Crackey!" exclaimed Marty. "That was some slip. What did you do?"

"I got out o' that hole purty careful, now I tell ye; but I left my cap floatin' on the open pool o' water," the expressman said. "Why, I was a cake of ice in two minutes—and six miles from anywhere, whichever way I turned."

"Oh, Walky!" ejaculated Janice, interested. "What ever did you do?"

"Wal, I had either to keep on or go back. Didn't much matter which. And in them days I hated ter gin up when I'd started a thing. But I had ter git that cap first of all. I couldn't afford ter lose it nohow. And another thing, I'd a froze my ears if I hadn't got it.

"So I goes back to the bank of the crick and cut me a pole. Then I fished out the cap, wrung it out as good as I could, and clapped it on my head. Before I'd clumb the crick bank ag'in that cap was as stiff as one o' them tin helmets ye read about them knights wearin' in the middle ages—er-haw! haw! haw!

"I had ter laig it then, believe me!" pursued the expressman. "Was cased in ice right from my head ter my heels. Could git erlong jest erbout as graceful as one of these here cigar-store Injuns—er-haw! haw! haw!

"I dunno how I made it ter Ma'am Kittridge's—but I done it! The old lady seen the plight I was in, and she made me sit down by the kitchen fire just like I was. Wouldn't let me take off a thing.

"She het up some kinder hot tea—like ter burnt all the skin off my tongue and throat, I swow!" pursued Walky. "Must ha' drunk two quarts of it, an' gradually it begun ter thaw me out from the inside. That's how I saved my feet—sure's you air born!

"When I come inter her kitchen I clumped in with feet's big as an elephant's an' no more feelin' in them than as though they'd been boxes and not feet. If I'd peeled off that ice and them boots, the feet would ha' come with 'em. But the old lady knowed what ter do, for a fac'.

"Hardest dollar ever I airned," repeated Walky, shaking his head, "and jest carryin' a mess of goose feathers——

"Hullo! who's this here comin' aboard?"

Janice had run to answer a knock at the side door. Aunt 'Mira came more slowly with the sitting room lamp which she had lighted.

"Well, Janice Day! Air ye all deef here?" exclaimed a high and rather querulous voice.

"Do come in, Mrs. Scattergood," cried the girl.

"I declare, Miz Scattergood," said Aunt 'Mira, with interest, "you here at this time o' night? I am glad to see ye."

"Guess ye air some surprised," said the snappy, birdlike old woman whom
Janice ushered into the sitting room. "I only got back from Skunk's
Holler, where I been visitin', this very day. And what d'ye s'pose I
found when I went into Hopewell Drugg's?"

"Goodness!" said Aunt 'Mira. "They ain't none o' them sick, be they?"

"Sick enough, I guess," exclaimed Mrs. Scattergood, nodding her head vigorously: "Leastways, 'Rill oughter be. I told her so! I was faithful in season, and outer season, warnin' her what would happen if she married that Drugg."

"Oh, Mrs. Scattergood! What has happened?" cried Janice, earnestly.

"What's happened to Hopewell?" added Aunt 'Mira.

"Enough, I should say! He's out carousin' with that fiddle of his'n—down ter Lem Parraday's tavern this very night with some wild gang of fellers, and my 'Rill hum with that child o' his'n. And what d'ye think?" demanded Mrs. Scattergood, still excitedly. "What d'ye think's happened ter that Lottie Drugg?"

"Oh, my, Mrs. Scattergood! What has happened to poor little Lottie?"
Janice cried.

"Why," said 'Rill Drugg's mother, lowering her voice a little and moderating her asperity. "The poor little thing's goin' blind again, I do believe!"

CHAPTER III

"THE SEVENTH ABOMINATION"

Sorrowful as Janice Day was because of the report upon little Lottie Drugg's affliction, she was equally troubled regarding the storekeeper himself. Janice had a deep interest in both Mr. Drugg and 'Rill Scattergood—"that was," to use a provincialism. The girl really felt as though she had helped more than a little to bring the storekeeper and the old-maid school-teacher together after so many years of misunderstanding.

It goes without saying that Mrs. Scattergood had given no aid in making the match. Indeed, as could be gathered from what she said now, the birdlike woman had heartily disapproved of her daughter's marrying the widowed storekeeper.

"Yes," she repeated; "there I found poor, foolish 'Rill—her own eyes as red as a lizard's—bathing that child's eyes. I never did believe them Boston doctors could cure her. Yeou jest wasted your money, Janice Day, when you put up fer the operation, and I knowed it at the time."

"Oh, I hope not, Mrs. Scattergood!" Janice replied. "Not that I care about the money; but I do, do hope that little Lottie will keep her sight. The poor, dear little thing!"

"What's the matter with Lottie Drugg?" demanded Marty, from the doorway. Walky Dexter had started homeward, and Marty and Mr. Day joined the women folk in the sitting room.

"Oh, Marty!" Janice exclaimed, "Mrs. Scattergood says there is danger of the poor child's losing her sight again."

"And that ain't the wust of it," went on Mrs. Scattergood, bridling. "My darter is an unfortunate woman. I knowed how 'twould be when she married that no-account Drugg. He sartainly was one 'drug on the market,' if ever there was one! Always a-dreamin' an' never accomplishin' anything.

"Now Lem Parraday's opened that bar of his'n—an' he'd oughter be tarred an' feathered for doin' of it—I 'spect Hopewell will be hangin' about there most of his time like the rest o' the ne'er-do-well male critters of this town, an' a-lettin' of what little business he's got go to pot."

"Oh, Miz Scattergood," said Aunt 'Mira comfortably, "I wouldn't give way ter sech forebodin's. Hopewell is rather better than the ordinary run of men, I allow."

Uncle Jason chuckled. "It never struck me," he said, "that Hopewell was one o' the carousin' kind. I'd about as soon expec' Mr. Middler to cut up sech didoes as Hope Drugg."

Mrs. Scattergood flushed and her eyes snapped. If she was birdlike, she could peck like a bird, and her bill was sharp.

"I reckon there ain't none of you men any too good," she said; "minister, an' all of ye. Oh! I know enough about men, I sh'd hope! I hearn a lady speak at the Skunk's Holler schoolhouse when I was there at my darter-in-law's last week. She was one o' them suffragettes ye hear about, and she knowed all about men and their doin's.

"I wouldn't trust none o' ye farther than I could sling an elephant by his tail! As for Hopewell Drugg—he never was no good, and he never will be wuth ha'f as much again!"

"Well, well, well," chuckled Uncle Jason, easily. "How did this here sufferin-yet l'arn so much about the tribes o' men? I 'spect she was a spinster lady?"

"She was a Miss Pogannis," was the tart reply.

"Ya-as," drawled Mr. Day. "It's them that's never summered and wintered a man that 'pears ter know the most about 'em. Ev'ry old maid in the world knows more about bringin' up children than the wimmen that's had a dozen."

"Oh, yeou needn't think she didn't know what she was talkin' abeout!" cried Mrs. Scattergood, tossing her head. "She culled her examples from hist'ry, as well as modern times. Look at Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob! All them men kep' their wimmen in bondage.

"D'yeou s'pose Sarah wanted to go trapesing all over the airth, ev'ry time Abraham wanted ter change his habitation?" demanded the argumentative suffragist. "Of course, he always said God told him to move, not the landlord. But, my soul! a man will say anything.

"An' see how Jacob treated Rachel——"

"Great Scott!" ejaculated Uncle Jason, letting his pipe go out. "I thought Jacob was a fav'rite hero of you wimmen folks. Didn't he sarve—how many was it?—fourteen year, for Rachel?"

"Bah!" exclaimed the old lady. "I 'spect she wished he'd sarved fourteen year more, when she seen the big family she had to wash and mend for. Don't talk to me! Wimmen's never had their rights in this world yet, but they're goin' to get 'em now."

Here Aunt 'Mira broke in to change the topic of conversation to one less perilous: "I never did hear tell that Hopewell Drugg drank a drop. It's a pity if he's took it up so late in life—and him jest married."

"Wal! I jest tell ye what I know. There's my 'Rill cryin' her eyes out an' she confessed that Drugg had gone down to the tavern to fiddle, and that he'd been there before. She has to wait on store evenin's, as well as take care of that young one, while he's out carousin'."

"Carousin'! Gosh!" exploded Marty, suddenly. "I know what it is. There's a bunch of fellers from Middletown way comin' over to-night with their girls to hold a dance. I heard about it. Hopewell's goin' to play the fiddle for them to dance by. Tell you, the Inn's gettin' to be a gay place."

"It's disgustin whatever it is!" cried Mrs. Scattergood, rather taken aback by Marty's information, yet still clinging to her own opinion. It was not Mrs. Scattergood's nature to scatter good—quite the opposite. "An' no married man should attend sech didoes. Like enough he will drink with the rest of 'em. Oh, 'Rill will be sick enough of her job before she's through with it, yeou mark my words."

"Oh, Mrs. Scattergood," Janice said pleadingly, "I hope you are wrong.
I would not want to see Miss 'Rill unhappy."

"She's made her bed—let her lie in it," said the disapproving mother, gloomily. "I warned her."

Later, both Janice and Marty went with Mrs. Scattergood to see her safely home. She lived in the half of a tiny cottage on High Street above the side street on which Hopewell Drugg had his store. Had it not been so late, Janice would have insisted upon going around to see "Miss 'Rill," as all her friends still called, the ex-school teacher, though she was married.

As they were bidding their caller good night at her gate, a figure coming up the hill staggered into the radiance of the street light on the corner. Janice gasped. Mrs. Scattergood ejaculated:

"What did I tell ye?"

Marty emitted a shrill whistle of surprise.

"What d'ye know about that?" he added, in a low voice.

There was no mistaking the figure which turned the corner toward Hopewell Drugg's store. It was the proprietor of the store himself, with his fiddle in its green baize bag tightly tucked under his arm; but his feet certainly were unsteady, and his head hung upon his breast.

They saw him disappear into the darkness of the side street. Janice Day put her hand to her throat; it seemed to her as though the pulse beating there would choke her.

"What did I tell ye? What did I tell ye?" cried the shrill voice of Mrs. Scattergood. "Now ye'll believe what I say, I hope! The disgraceful critter! My poor, poor 'Rill! I knew how 'twould be if she married that man."

It chanced that Janice Day's Bible opened that night to the sixth of
Proverbs and she read before going to bed these verses:

"These six things doth the Lord hate; yea, seven are an abomination unto him.

"A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood.

"An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief.

"A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren."

CHAPTER IV

A RIFT IN THE HONEYMOON

Janice could not call at the little grocery on the side street until Friday afternoon when she returned from Middletown for over Sunday. While the roads were so bad that she could not use her car in which to run back and forth to the seminary she boarded during the school days near the seminary.

But 'Rill Drugg and little Lottie were continually in her mind. From Walky Dexter, with whom she rode home to Polktown on Friday, she gained some information that she would have been glad not to hear.

"Talk abeout the 'woman with the sarpint tongue,'" chuckled Walky. "We sartain sure have our share of she in Polktown."

"What is the matter now, Walky?" asked Janice, gaily, not suspecting what was coming. "Has somebody got ahead of you in circulating a particularly juicy bit of gossip?"

"Huh!" snorted the expressman. "I gotter take a back seat, I have.
Did ye hear 'bout Hopewell Drugg gittin' drunk, an' beatin' his wife,
an' I dunno but they say by this time that it's his fault lettle
Lottie's goin' blind again——"

"Oh, Walky! it can't be true!" gasped the girl, horrified.

"What can't? That them old hens is sayin' sech things?" demanded the driver.

"That Lottie is truly going blind?"

"Dunno. She's in a bad way. Hopewell wants to send her back to Boston as quick's he can. I know that. And them sayin' that he's turned inter a reg'lar old drunk, an' sich."

"What do you mean, Walky?" asked Janice, seriously. "You cannot be in earnest. Surely people do not say such dreadful things about Mr. Drugg?"

"Fact. They got poor old Hopewell on the dissectin' table, and the way them wimmen cut him up is a caution to cats!"

"What women, Walky?"

"His blessed mother-in-law, for one. And most of the Ladies Aid is a-follerin' of her example. They air sayin' he's nex' door to a ditch drunkard."

"Why, Walky Dexter! nobody would really believe such talk about Mr.
Drugg," Janice declared.

"Ye wouldn't think so, would ye? We've all knowed Hopewell Drugg for years an' years, and he's allus seemed the mildest-mannered pirate that ever cut off a yard of turkey-red. But now—Jefers-pelters! ye oughter hear 'em! He gits drunk, beats 'Rill Scattergood, that was, and otherwise behaves himself like a hardened old villain."

"Oh, Walky! I would not believe such things about Mr. Drugg—not if he told them to me himself!" exclaimed Janice.

"An' I reckon nobody would ha' dreamed sech things about him if Marm Scattergood hadn't got home from Skunk's Holler. I expect she stirred up things over there abeout as much as her son and his wife'd stand, and they shipped her back to Polktown. And Polktown—includin' Hopewell—will hafter stand it."

"It is a shame!" cried Janice, with indignation. Then she added, doubtfully, remembering the unfortunate incident she and Marty and Mrs. Scattergood had viewed so recently: "Of course, there isn't a word of truth in it?"

"That Hopewell's become a toper and beats his wife?" chuckled Walky. "Wal—I reckon not! Maybe Hopewell takes a glass now and then—I dunno. I never seen him. But they do say he went home airly from the dance at Lem Parraday's t'other night in a slightly elevated condition. Haw! haw! haw!"

"It is nothing to laugh at," Janice said severely.

"Nor nothin' ter cry over," promptly returned Walkworthy Dexter.
"What's a drink or two? It ain't never hurt me. Why should it
Hopewell?"

"Don't argue with me, Walky Dexter!" Janice exclaimed, much exasperated. "I—I hate it all—this drinking. I never thought of it much before. Polktown has been free of that curse until lately. It is a shame the bar was ever opened at the Lake View Inn. And something ought to be done about it!"

Walky had pulled in his team for her to jump down before Hopewell Drugg's store. "Jefers-pelters!" murmured the driver, scratching his head. "If that gal detarmines to put Lem Parraday out o' the licker business, mebbe—mebbe I'd better go down an' buy me another drink 'fore she does it. Haw! haw! haw!"

Hopewell Drugg's store was a very different looking shop now from its appearance that day when Janice had led little blind Lottie up from the wharf at Pine Cove and delivered her to her father for safe keeping.

Then the goods had been dusty and fly-specked, and the interior of the store dark and musty. Now the shelves and showcases were neatly arranged, everything was scrupulously clean, and it was plain that the reign of woman had succeeded the pandemonium of man.

There was nobody in the store at the moment; but from the rear the sobbing tones of a violin took up the strains of "Silver Threads Among the Gold." Janice listened. There seemed, to her ear, a sadder strain than ever in Hopewell's playing of the old ballad. For a time this favorite had been discarded for lighter and brighter melodies, for the little family here on the by-street had been wonderfully happy.

They all three welcomed Janice Day joyfully now. The storekeeper, much sprucer in dress than heretofore, smiled and nodded to her over the bridge of his violin. His wife, in a pretty print house dress, ran out from her sitting room where she was sewing, to take Janice in her arms. As for little Lottie, she danced about the visitor in glee.

"Oh, Janice Day! Oh, Janice Day! Looker me!" she crowed. "See my new
dress? Isn't it pretty? And Mamma 'Rill made it for me—all of it!
She makes me lots and lots of nice things. Isn't she just the bestest
Mamma 'Rill that ever was?"

"She certainly is," admitted Janice, laughing and kissing the pretty child. But she looked anxiously into the beautiful blue eyes, too. Nothing there betrayed growing visual trouble. Yet, when Lottie Drugg was stone-blind, the expression of her eyes had been lovely.

"Weren't you and your papa lucky to get such a mamma?" continued Janice with a swift glance over her shoulder at Hopewell.

The storekeeper was drawing the bow across the strings softly and just a murmur came from them as he listened. His eyes, Janice saw, were fixed in pride and satisfaction upon his wife's trim figure.

On her part, Mrs. Drugg seemed her usual brisk, kind self. Yet there was a cheerful note lacking here. The honeymoon for such a loving couple could not yet have waned; but there was a rift in it.

'Rill wanted to talk. Janice could see that. The young girl had been the school teacher's only confidant previous to her marriage to Hopewell Drugg, and she still looked upon Janice as her dearest friend. They left Lottie playing in the back room of the store and listening to her father's fiddle, while 'Rill closed the door between that room and the dwelling.

"Oh, my dear!" Janice hastened to ask, first of all, "is it true?"

'Rill flushed and there was a spark in her eye—Janice thought of indignation. Indeed, her voice was rather sharp as she asked:

"Is what true?"

"About Lottie. Her eyes—you know."

"Oh, the poor little thing!" and instantly the step-mother's countenance changed. "Janice, we don't know. Poor Hopewell is 'most worried to death. Sometimes it seems as though there was a blur over the child's eyes. And she has never got over her old habit of shutting her eyes and seeing with her fingers, as she calls it."

"Ah! I know," the girl said. "But that does not necessarily mean that she has difficulty with her vision."

"That is true. And the doctor in Boston wrote that, at times, there might arise some slight clouding of the vision if she used her eyes too much, if she suffered other physical ills, even if she were frightened or unhappy."

"The last two possibilities may certainly be set aside," said Janice, with confidence. "And she is as rosy and healthy looking as she could be."

"Yes," said 'Rill.

"Then what can it be that has caused the trouble?"

"We cannot imagine," with a sigh. "It—it is worrying Hopewell, night and day."

"Poor man!"

"He—he is changed a great deal, Janice," whispered the bride.

Janice was silent, but held 'Rill's hand in her own comforting clasp.

"Don't think he isn't good to me. He is! He is! He is the sweetest tempered man that ever lived! You know that, yourself. And I thought I was going to make him—oh!—so happy."

"Hush! hush, dear!" murmured Janice, for Mrs. Drugg's eyes had run over and she sobbed aloud. "He loves you just the same. I can see it in the way he looks at you. And why should he not love you?"

"But he has lost his cheerfulness. He worries about Lottie, I know.
There—there is another thing——"

She stopped. She pursued this thread of thought no further. Janice wondered then—and she wondered afterward—if this unexplained anxiety connected Hopewell Drugg with the dances at the Lake View Inn.

CHAPTER V

"THE BLUEBIRD—FOR HAPPINESS"

Could it be possible that Janice Day had alighted from Walky Dexter's old carryall at the little grocery store for still another purpose? It was waning afternoon, yet she did not immediately make her way homeward.

Mrs. Beaseley lived almost across the street from Hopewell Drugg's store, and Nelson Haley, the principal of Polktown's graded school, boarded with the widow. Janice ran in to see her "just for a moment." Therefore, it could scarcely be counted strange that the young school principal should have caught the girl in Mrs. Beaseley's bright kitchen when he came home with his satchel of books and papers.

"There! I do declare for't!" ejaculated the widow, who was a rather lugubrious woman living in what she believed to be the remembrance of "her sainted Charles."

"There! I do declare for't! I git to talkin' and I forgit how the time flies. That's what my poor Charles uster say—he had that fault to find with me, poor soul. I couldn't never seem to git the vittles on the table on time when I was young.

"I was mindin' to make you a shortcake for your supper to-night, Mr. Haley, out o' some o' them peaches I canned last Fall! But it's so late——"

"You needn't hurry supper on my account, Mrs. Beaseley," said Nelson, cheerily, and without removing his gloves. "I find I've to go downtown again on an errand. I'll not be back for an hour."

Janice was smiling merrily at him from the doorway.

Mrs. Beaseley began to bustle about. "That'll give me just time to toss up the shortcake," she proclaimed. "Good-bye, Janice. Come again. Mr. Haley'll like to walk along with you, I know."

Mrs. Beaseley was blind to what most people, in Polktown knew—that Janice and the schoolteacher were the very closest of friends. Only their years—at least, only Janice's youth—precluded an announced engagement between them.

"Wait until I can come home and get a square look at this phenomenal young man whom you have found in Polktown," Daddy had written, and Janice would not dream of going against her father's expressed wish.

Besides, Nelson Haley was a poor young man, with his own way to make in the world. His work in the Polktown school had attracted the attention of the faculty of a college not far away, and he had already been invited to join the teaching staff of that institution.

Janice had been the young man's inspiration when he had first come to Polktown, a raw college graduate, bent only on "teaching for a living" and on earning his salary as easily as possible. Awakened by his desire to stand well in the estimation of the serious-minded girl—eager to "make good" with her—Nelson Haley had put his shoulder to the wheel, and the result was Polktown's fine new graded school, with the young man himself at the head of it.

Nelson was good looking—extremely good looking, indeed. He was light, not dark like Janice, and he was muscular and sturdy without being at all fleshy. The girl was proud of him—he was always so well-dressed, so gentlemanly, and carried himself with such an assured air. Daddy was bound to be pleased with a young man like Nelson Haley, once he should see the schoolteacher!

In his companionship now, Janice rather lost sight of the troubles that had come upon her of late. Nelson told her of his school plans as they strolled down High Street.

"And I fancy these lectures and readings the School Committee are arranging will be a good thing," the young man said. "We'll slip a little extra information to the boys and girls of Polktown without their suspecting it."

"Sugar-coated pills?" laughed Janice.

"Yes. The old system of pounding knowledge into the infant cranium isn't in vogue any more."

"Poor things!" murmured Janice Day, from the lofty rung of the scholastic ladder she had attained. "Poor things! I don't blame them for wondering: 'What's the use?' Marty wonders now, old as he is. There is such a lot to learn in the world!"

They talked of other things, too, and it was the appearance of Jim Narnay weaving a crooked trail across High Street toward the rear of the Inn that brought back to the girl's mind the weight of new trouble that had settled upon it.

"Oh, dear! there's that poor creature," murmured Janice. "And I haven't been to see how his family is."

"Who—Jim Narnay's family?" asked Nelson.

"Yes."

"You'd better keep away from such people, Janice," the young man said urgently.

"Why?"

"You don't want to mix with such folk, my dear," repeated the young man, shaking his head. "What good can it do? The fellow is a drunken rascal and not worth striving to do anything for."

"But his family? The poor little children?" said Janice, softly.

"If you give them money, Jim'll drink it up."

"I believe that," admitted Janice. "So I won't give them money. But I can buy things for them that they need. And the poor little baby is sick. That cunning Sophie told me so."

"Goodness, Janice!" laughed Nelson, yet with some small vexation. "I see there's no use in opposing your charitable instincts. But I really wish you would not get acquainted with every rag-tag and bob-tail in town. First those Trimminses—and now these Narnays!"

Janice laughed at this. "Why, they can't hurt me, Nelson. And perhaps
I might do them good."

"You cannot handle charcoal without getting some of the smut on your fingers," Nelson declared, dogmatically.

"But they are not charcoal. They are just some of God's unfortunates," added the young girl, gently. "It is not Sophie's fault that her father drinks. And maybe it isn't altogether his fault."

"What arrant nonsense!" exclaimed Nelson, with some exasperation. "It always irritates me when I hear these old topers excused. A man should be able to take a glass of wine or beer or spirits—or let it alone."

"Yes, indeed, Nelson," agreed Janice, demurely. "He ought to."

The young man glanced sharply into her rather serious countenance. He
suspected that she was not agreeing with him, after all, very strongly.
Finally he laughed, and the spark of mischief immediately danced in
Janice Day's hazel eyes.

"That is just where the trouble lies, Nelson, with drinking intoxicating things. People should be able to drink or not, as they feel inclined. But alcohol is insidious. Why! you teach that in your own classes, Nelson Haley!"

"Got me there," admitted the young school principal, with a laugh. Then he became sober again, and added: "But I can take a drink or leave it alone if I wish."

"Oh, Nelson! You don't use alcoholic beverages, do you?" cried
Janice, quite shocked. "Oh! you don't, do you?"

"My, my! See what a little fire-cracker it is!" laughed Nelson. "Did I say I was in the habit of going into Lem Parraday's bar and spending my month's salary in fiery waters?"

"Oh, but Nelson! You don't approve of the use of liquor, do you?"

"I'm not sure that I do," returned the young man, more gravely. "And yet I believe in every person having perfect freedom in that as well as other matters."

"Anarchism!" cried Janice, yet rather seriously, too, although her lips smiled.

"I know the taste of all sorts of beverages," the young man said. "I was in with rather a sporty bunch at college, for a while. But I knew I could not afford to keep up that pace, so I cut it out."

"Oh, Nelson!" Janice murmured. "It's too bad!"

"Why, it never hurt me," answered the young schoolmaster. "It never could hurt me. A gentleman eats temperately and drinks temperately. Of course, I would not go into the Lake View Inn and call for a drink, now that I am teaching school here. My example would be bad for the boys. And I fancy the School Committee would have something to say about it, too," and he laughed again, lightly.

They had turned into Hillside Avenue and the way was deserted save for themselves. The warm glow of sunset lingered about them. Lights twinkling in the kitchens as they went along announced the preparation of the evening meal.

Janice clasped her hands over Nelson's arm confidingly and looked earnestly up into his face.

"Nelson!" she said softly, "don't even think about drinking anything intoxicating. I should be afraid for you. I should worry about the hold it might get upon you——"

"As it has on Jim Narnay?" interrupted the young man, laughing.

"No," said Janice, still gravely. "You would never be like him, I am sure———"

"Nor will drink ever affect me in any way—no fear! I know what I am about. I have a will of my own, I should hope. I can control my appetites and desires. And I should certainly never allow such a foolish habit as tippling to get a strangle hold on me."

"Of course, I know you won't," agreed Janice.

"I thank goodness I'm not a man of habit, in any case," continued Nelson, proudly. "One of our college professors has said: 'There is only one thing worse than a bad habit—and that's a good habit.' It is true. No man can be a well-rounded and perfectly poised man, if he is hampered by habits of any kind. Habits narrow the mind and contract one's usefulness in the world——"

"Oh, Nelson!" excitedly interrupted Janice. "See the bluebird! The first I have seen this Spring. The dear, little, pretty thing!"

"Good-night!" exploded the school teacher, with a burst of laughter.
"My little homily is put out of business. A bluebird, indeed!"

"But the bluebird is so pretty—and so welcome in Spring. See! there he goes." Then she added softly, still clinging to Nelson's arm:

"'The bluebird—for happiness.'"

CHAPTER VI

THE TENTACLES OF THE MONSTER

The sweet south wind blew that night and helped warm to life the Winter-chilled breast of Mother Earth. Her pulses leaped, rejuvenated; the mellowing soil responded; bud and leaf put forth their effort to reach the sun and air.

At Janice Day's casement the odors of the freshly-turned earth and of the growing things whispered of the newly begun season. The ruins of the ancient fortress across the lake to the north still frowned in the mists of night when Janice left her bed and peered from the open window, looking westward.

Behind the mountain-top which towered over Polktown it was already broad day; but the sun would not appear, to gild the frowning fortress, or to touch the waters of the lake with its magic wand, for yet several minutes.

As the first red rays of the sun graced the rugged prospect across the lake, Janice went through the barnyard and climbed the uphill pasture lane. She was bound for the great "Overlook" rock in the second-growth, from which spot she never tired of looking out upon the landscape—and upon life itself.

Janice Day took many of her problems to the Overlook. There, alone with the wild things of the wood, with nothing but the prospect to tempt her thoughts, she was wont to decide those momentous questions that come into every young girl's life.

As she sped up the path past the sheep sheds on this morning, her feet were suddenly stayed by a most unexpected incident. Janice usually had the hillside to herself at this hour; but now she saw a dark figure huddled under the shelter, the open side of which faced her.

"A bear!" thought Janice. Yet there had not been such a creature seen in the vicinity of Polktown for years, she knew.

She hesitated. The "bear" rolled over, stretched himself, and yawned a most prodigious yawn.

"Goodness, mercy, me!" murmured Janice Day. "It's a man!"

But it was not. It was a boy. Janice popped down behind a boulder and watched, for at first she had no idea who he could be. Certainly he must have been up here in the sheepfold all night; and a person who would spend a night in the open, on the raw hillside at this time of year, must have something the matter with him, to be sure.

"Why—why, that's Jack Besmith! He worked for Mr. Massey all Winter.
What is he doing here?" murmured Janice.

She did not rise and expose herself to the fellow's gaze. For one thing, the ex-drug clerk looked very rough in both dress and person.

His uncombed hair was littered with straw and bits of corn-blades from the fodder on which he had lain. His clothing was stained. He wore no linen and the shoes on his feet were broken.

Never in her life had Janice Day seen a more desperate looking young fellow and she was actually afraid of him. Yet she knew he came of a respectable family, and that he had a decent lodging in town. What business had he up here at her uncle's sheepfold?

Janice continued her walk no farther. She remained in hiding until she saw Jack Besmith stumble out of the sheep pasture and down the hill behind the Day stables—taking a retired route toward the village.

Coming down into the barnyard once more, Janice met Marty with a foaming milk pail.

"Hullo, early bird!" he sang out. "Did you catch the worm this morning?"

Janice shuddered a trifle. "I believe I did, Marty," she confessed.
"At least, I saw some such crawling thing."

"Hi tunket! Not a snake so early in the year?"

"I don't know," and his cousin smiled, yet with gravity.

"Huh?" queried the boy, with curiosity, for he saw that something unusual had occurred.

Janice gravely told him whom she had seen in the sheepfold. "And, Marty, I believe he must have been up there all night—sleeping outdoors such weather as this. What for, do you suppose?"

Marty professed inability to explain; but after he had taken the milk in to his mother, he slipped away and ran up to the sheep pasture himself.

"I say, Janice," he said, grinning, when he came back. "I can solve the mystery, I can."

"What mystery?" asked his cousin, who was flushed now with helping her aunt get breakfast.

"The mystery of the 'early worm' that you saw this mornin'." He brought his hand from behind him and displayed an empty, amber-colored flask on which was a gaudy label announcing its contents to have been whiskey and sold by "L. Parraday, Polktown."

"Oh, dear! Is that the trouble with the Besmith boy?" murmured
Janice.

"That's how he came to lose his job with Massey."

"Poor fellow! He looked dreadful!"

"Oh, he's a bad egg," said her cousin, carelessly.

Janice hurried through breakfast, for the car was to be brought forth to-day. Marty had been fussing over it for almost a week. The wind was drying up the roads and it was possible for Janice to take a spin out into the open country.

Marty's prospects of enjoying the outing, however, were nipped before he could leave the table.

"Throw the chain harness on the colts, Marty," said his father. "The 'tater-patch is dry enough to put the plow in. And I'll want ye to help me."

"Oh—Dad! I got to help Janice get her car out. This ain't no time to plow for 'taters," declared Marty.

"Your mouth'll be open wider'n anybody else's in the house for the 'taters when they're grown," said Uncle Jason, calmly. "You got to do your share toward raisin' 'em."

"Oh, Dad!" ejaculated the boy again.

"Now, Marty, you stop talkin'!" cried his mother.

"Huh! you wanter make a feller dumb around here, too. S'pose Janice breaks down on the road?" he added, with reviving hope.

"I guess she'll find somebody that knows fully as much about them gasoline buggies as you do, Son," observed Uncle Jason, easily. "You an' me'll tackle the 'tater field."

When his father spoke so positively Marty knew there was no use trying to change him. He frowned, and muttered, and kicked the table leg as he got up, but to no avail.

Janice, later, got into her car and started for a ride. She put the Kremlin right at the hill and it climbed Hillside Avenue with wonderful ease. The engine purred prettily and not a thing went wrong.

"Poor Marty! It's too bad he couldn't go, too," she thought. "I'd gladly share this with somebody."

Nelson, she knew, was busy this forenoon. It took no little of his out-of-school time to prepare the outline for the ensuing week's work. Besides, on this Saturday morning, there was a special meeting of the School Committee, as he had told her the afternoon before. Something to do with the course of lectures before mentioned. And the young principal of Polktown's graded school was very faithful to his duties.

She thought of Mrs. Drugg and little Lottie; but there was trouble at the Drugg home. Somehow, on this bright, sweet-smelling morning, Janice shrank from touching anything unpleasant, or coming into communication with anybody who was not in attune with the day.

She was fated, however, to rub elbows with Trouble wherever she went and whatever she did. She ran the Kremlin past the rear of Walky Dexter's place and saw Walky himself currying Josephus and his mate on the stable floor. The man waved his currycomb at her and grinned. But his well-known grimace did not cheer Janice Day.

"Dear me! Poor Walky is in danger, too," thought the young girl. "Why! the whole of Polktown is changing. In some form or other that liquor selling at the Inn touches all our lives. I wonder if other people see it as plainly as I do."

She ran up into the Upper Middletown Road, as far out as Elder Concannon's. The old gentleman—once Janice Day's very stern critic, but now her staunch friend—was in the yard when Janice approached in her car. He waved a cordial hand at her and turned away from the man he had been talking with.

"Well, there ye have it, Trimmins," the girl heard the elder say, as her engine stopped. "If you can find a man or two to help you, I'll let you have a team and you can go in there and haul them logs. There's a market for 'em, and the logs lie jest right for hauling. You and your partner can make a profit, and so can I."

Then he said to Janice: "Good morning, child! You're as fresh to look at as a morning-glory."

She had nodded and smiled at the patriarchal old gentleman; but her eyes were now on the long and lanky looking woodsman who stood by.

"Good day, Mr. Trimmins," she said, when she had returned Elder Concannon's greeting. "Is Mrs. Trimmins well? And my little Virginia and all the rest of them?"

"The fambly's right pert, Miss," Trimmins said.

Janice had a question or two to ask the elder regarding the use of the church vestry for some exercises by the Girl's Guild of which she had been the founder and was still the leading spirit.

"Goodness, yes!" agreed the elder. "Do anything you like, Janice, if you can keep those young ones interested in anything besides dancing and parties. Still, what can ye expect of the young gals when their mothers are given up to folly and dissipation?

"There's Mrs. Marvin Petrie and Mrs. Major Price want to be 'patronesses,' I believe they call themselves, of an Assembly Ball, an' want to hold the ball at Lem Parraday's hotel. It's bad enough to have them dances; but to have 'em at a place where liquor is sold, is a sin and a shame! I wish Lem Parraday had lost the hotel entirely, before he got a liquor license."

"Oh, Elder! It is dreadful that liquor should be sold in Polktown," Janice said, from the seat of the automobile. "I'm just beginning to see it."

"That's what it is," said the elder, sturdily.

"It's a shame Mr. Parraday was ever allowed to have a license at the
Lake View Inn."

"Wal—it does seem too bad," the elder agreed, but with less confidence in his tone.

"I know they say the Inn scarcely paid him and his wife, and he might have had to give it up this Spring," Janice said.

"Ahem! That would have been unfortunate for the mortgagee," slowly observed the old man.

"Mr. Cross Moore?" Janice quickly rejoined. "Well! he could afford to lose a little money if anybody could."

"Tut, tut!" exclaimed the elder, who had a vast respect for money.
"Don't say that, child. Nobody can afford to lose money."

Janice turned her car about soberly. She saw that the ramification of this liquor selling business was far-reaching, indeed. Elder Concannon spoke only too truly.

Where self-interest was concerned most people would lean toward the side of liquor selling.

"The tentacles of the monster have insinuated themselves into our social and business life, as well as into our homes," she thought. "Why—why, what can I do about it? Just me, a girl all alone."

CHAPTER VII

SWEPT ON BY THE CURRENT

Janice picked up Trimmins on the road to town. The lanky Southerner, who lived as a squatter with his ever-increasing family back in the woods, was a soft-spoken man with much innate politeness and a great distaste for regular work. He said the elder had just offered him a job in the woods that he was going to take if he could get a man to help him.

"I heard you talking about it, Mr. Trimmins," the young girl said, with her eyes on the road ahead and her foot on the gas pedal. "I hope you will make a good thing out of it."

"Not likely. The elder's too close for that," responded the man, with a twinkle in his eye.

"Yes. I suppose that Elder Concannon considers a small profit sufficient. He got his money that way—by 'littles and dribbles'—and I fancy he thinks small pay is all right."

"My glo-ree! You bet he does!" said Trimmins. "But the elder never had but one—leastways, two—chillen to raise. He wouldn't ha' got rich very fast with my family—no, sir!"

"Perhaps that is so," Janice admitted.

"Tell ye what, Miss," the woodsman went on to say, "a man ought to git paid accordin' to the mouths there is to home to feed. I was readin' in a paper t'other day that it took ten dollars a week to take proper care of a man and his wife, and there ought to be added to them ten dollars two dollars a week ev'ry time they got a baby."

"Why! wouldn't that be fine?" cried Janice, laughing.

"It sure would be a help," said Trimmins, the twinkle in his eye again.
"I reckon both me an' Narnay would 'preciate it."

"Oh! you mean Jim Narnay?" asked Janice, with sudden solemnity.

"Yes ma'am. I'm goin' to see him now. He's a grand feller with the axe and I want him to help me."

Janice wondered how much work would really be done by the two men if they were up in the woods together. Yet Mrs. Narnay and the children might get along better without Jim. Janice had made some inquiries and learned that Mrs. Narnay was an industrious woman, working steadily over her washtub, and keeping the children in comparative comfort when Jim was not at home to drink up a good share of her earnings.

"Are you going down to the cove to see Narnay now, Mr. Trimmins?"
Janice asked, as she turned the automobile into the head of High Street.

"Yes, ma'am. That is, if I don't find him at Lem Parraday's."

"Oh, Mr. Trimmins!" exclaimed Janice, earnestly. "Look for him at the house first. And don't you go near Lem Parraday's, either."

"Wal!" drawled the man. "I s'pose you air right, Miss."

"I'll drive you right down to the cove," Janice said. "I want to see little Sophie, and—and her mother."

"Whatever you say, Miss," agreed the woodsman.

They followed a rather rough street coveward, but arrived safely at the small collection of cottages, in one of which the Narnays lived. Jim Narnay was evidently without money, for he sat on the front stoop, sober and rather neater than Janice was used to seeing him. He was whittling a toy of some kind for the little boys, both of whom were hanging upon him.

Their attitude, as well as what Sophie Narnay had told her, assured Janice that the husband and father of the household was not a cruel man when he was sober. The children still loved him, and he evidently loved them.

"Got a job, Jim?" asked Trimmins, after thanking Janice for the ride, and getting out of the automobile.

"Not a smitch of work since I come out of the woods," admitted the bewhiskered man, rising quickly from the stoop to make way for Janice.

"Come on, old feller," said Trimmins. "I want to talk to you. If you are favorable inclined, I reckon I got jest the job you've been lookin' for."

The two went off behind the cottage. Janice did not know then that there was a short cut to High Street and the Lake View Inn.

Sophie came running to the door to welcome the visitor, her thin little arms red and soapy from dish-water.

"I knowed 'twas you," she said, smiling happily. "They told me you was the only girl in town that owned one o' them cars. And I told mom that you must be awful rich and kind. Course, you must be, or you couldn't afford to give away ten cent pieces so easy."

Mrs. Narnay came to the door, too, her arms right out of the washtub; but Janice begged her not to inconvenience herself. "Keep right on with your work and I'll come around to the back and sit on that stoop," said the young girl.

"And you must see the baby," Sophie urged. "I can bring out the baby if I wrap her up good, can't I, Marm?"

"Have a care with the poor child, Sophie," said Mrs. Narnay, wearily.
"Where's your pop gone?"

"He's walked out with Mr. Trimmins," said the little girl.

The woman sighed, and Janice, all through her visit, could see that she was anxious about her absent husband. The baby was brought out—a pitifully thin, but pretty child—and Sophie nursed her little sister with much enjoyment.

"I wisht she was twins," confessed the little girl. "It must be awful jolly to have twins in the family."

"My soul, child!" groaned Mrs. Narnay. "Don't talk so reckless. One baby at a time is affliction enough—as ye'll find out for yourself some day."

Janice, leaving a little gift to be hidden from Jim Narnay and divided among the children, went away finally, with the determination that Dr. Poole should see the baby again and try to do something for the poor, little, weakly thing. Trimmins and Jim Narnay had disappeared, and Janice feared that, after all, they had drifted over to the Inn, there to celebrate the discovery of the job they both professed to need so badly.

"That awful bar!" Janice told herself. "If it were not here in Polktown those two ne'er-do-wells would have gone right about their work without any celebration at all. I guess Mrs. Scattergood is right—Mr. Lem Parraday ought to be tarred and feathered for ever taking out that license! And how about the councilmen who voted to let him have it?"

As she wheeled into High Street once more a tall, well groomed young man, with rosy cheeks and the bluest of blue eyes, hailed her from the sidewalk.

"Oh, Janice Day!" he cried. "How's the going?"

"Mr. Bowman! I didn't know you had returned," Janice said, smiling and stopping the car. "The going is pretty good."

"Have you been around by the Lower Road where my gang is working?"

"No," Janice replied. "But Marty says the turnout is being put in and that the bridge over the creek is almost done."

"Good! I'll get over there by and by to see for myself." He had set down a heavy suitcase and still held a traveling bag. "Just now," he added, "I am hunting a lodging."

"Hunting a lodging? Why! I thought you were a fixture with Marm
Parraday," Janice said.

"I thought so, too. But it's got too strong for me down there. Besides, it is a rule of the Railroad Company that we shall find board, if possible, where no liquor is sold. I had a room over the bar and it is too noisy for me at night."

"Marm Parraday will be sorry to lose you, Mr. Bowman," Janice said. "Isn't it dreadful that they should have taken up the selling of liquor there?"

"Bad thing," the young civil engineer replied, promptly. "I'm sorry for Marm Parraday. Lem ought to be kicked for ever getting the license," he added vigorously.

"Dear me, Mr. Bowman," sighed Janice. "I wish everybody thought as you do. Polktown needs reforming."

"What! Again?" cried the young man, laughing suddenly. Then he added:
"I expect, if that is so, you will have to start the reform, Miss
Janice. And—and you'd better start it with your friend, Hopewell
Drugg. Really, they are making a fool of him around the Inn—and he
doesn't even know it."

"Oh, Mr. Bowman! what do you mean?" called Janice after him; but the young man had picked up his bag and was marching away, so that he did not hear her question. Before she could start her engine he had turned into a side street.

She ran back up Hillside Avenue in good season for dinner. The potato patch was plowed and Marty had gone downtown on an errand. Janice backed the car into the garage and went upstairs to her room to change her dress for dinner. She was there when Marty came boisterously into the kitchen.

"My goodness! what's the matter with you, Marty Day?" asked his mother shrilly. "What's happened?"

"It's Nelson Haley," the boy said, and Janice heard him plainly, for the door at the foot of the stairs was ajar. "It's awful! They are going to arrest him!"

"What do you mean, Marty Day? Be you crazy?" Mrs. Day demanded.

"What's this? One o' your cheap jokes?" asked the boy's father, who chanced to be in the kitchen, too.

"Guess Nelson Haley don't think it's a joke," said the boy, his voice still shaking. "I just heard all about it. There ain't many folks know it yet——"

"Stop that!" cried his mother. "You tell us plain what Mr. Haley's done."

"Ain't done nothin', of course. But they say he has," Marty stoutly maintained.

"Then what do they accuse him of?" queried Mr. Day.

"They accuse him of stealin'! Hi tunket! ain't that the meanest thing ye ever heard?" cried the boy. "Nelson Haley, stealin'. It gets me for fair!"

"Why—why I can't believe it!" Aunt 'Mira gasped, and she sat down with a thud on one of the kitchen chairs.

"I got it straight," Marty went on to say. "The School Committee's all in a row over it. Ye see, they had the coins——"

"Who had what coins?" cried his mother.

"The School Committee. That collection of gold coins some rich feller lent the State Board of Education for exhibition at the lecture next Friday. They only come over from Middletown last night and Mr. Massey locked them in his safe."

"Wal!" murmured Uncle Jason.

"Massey brought 'em to the school this morning where the committee held a meeting. I hear the committee left the trays of coins in their room while they went downstairs to see something the matter with the heater. When they come up the trays had been skinned clean—'for a fac'!" exclaimed the excited Marty.

"What's that got to do with Mr. Haley?" demanded Uncle Jason, grimly.

"Why—he'd been in the room. I believe he don't deny he was there.
Nobody else was in the buildin' 'cept the janitor, and he was with
Massey and the others in the basement.

"Then coins jest disappeared—took wings and flewed away," declared
Marty with much earnestness.

"What was they wuth?" asked his father, practically.

"Dunno. A lot of money. Some says two thousand and some says five thousand. Whichever it is, they'll put him under big bail if they arrest him."

"Why, they wouldn't dare!" gasped Mrs. Day.

"Say! Massey and them others has got to save their own hides, ain't they?" demanded the suspicious Marty.

"Wal. 'Tain't common sense that any of the School Committee should have stolen the coins," Uncle Jason said slowly. "Mr. Massey, and Cross Moore, and Mr. Middler——"

"Mr. Middler warn't there," said Marty, quickly. "He'd gone to
Middletown."

"Joe Pellet and Crawford there?" asked Uncle Jason.

"All the committee but the parson," his son admitted.

"And all good men," Uncle Jason said reflectively. "Schoolhouse locked?"

"So they say," Marty declared. "That's what set them on Nelson. Only him and the janitor carry keys to the building."

"Who's the janitor?" asked Uncle Jason.

"Benny Thread. You know, the little crooked-backed feller—lives on Paige Street. And, anyway, there wasn't a chance for him to get at the coins. He was with the committee all the time they was out of the room."

"And are they sure Mr. Haley was in there?" asked Aunt 'Mira.

"He admits it," Marty said gloomily. "I don't know what's going to come of it all——"

"Hush!" said Uncle Jason suddenly. "Shut that door."

But it was too late, Janice had heard all. She came down into the kitchen, pale-faced and with eyes that blazed with indignation. She had not removed her hat.

"Come, Uncle Jason," she said, brokenly. "I want you to go downtown with me. If Nelson is in trouble we must help him."

"Drat that boy!" growled Uncle Jason, scowling at Marty. "He's a reg'lar big mouth! He has to tell ev'rything he knows all over the shop."

CHAPTER VIII

REAL TROUBLE

It seemed to Janice Day as though the drift of trouble, which had set her way with the announcement by her father of his unfortunate situation among the Yaqui Indians, had now risen to an overwhelming height.

'Rill's secret misgivings regarding Hopewell Drugg, little Lottie's peril of blindness, the general tendency of Polktown as a whole to suffer the bad effects of liquor selling at the tavern—all these things had added to Janice's anxiety.

Now, on the crest of the threatening wave, rode this happening to
Nelson Haley, an account of which Marty had brought home.

"Come, Uncle Jason," she said again to Mr. Day. "You must come with me. If Nelson is arrested and taken before Justice Little, the justice will listen to you. You are a property owner. If they put Nelson under bail——"

"Hold your hosses," interrupted Uncle Jason, yet not unkindly. "Noah didn't build the ark in a day. We'd best go slow about this."

"Slow!" repeated Janice.

"I guess you wouldn't talk about bein' slow, Jason Day, if you was arrested," Aunt 'Mira interjected.

"Ma's right," said Marty. "Mebbe they'll put him in the cell under the
Town Hall 'fore you kin get downtown."

"There ain't no sech haste as all that," stated Uncle Jason. "What's the matter of you folks?"

He spoke rather testily, and Janice looked at him in surprise. "Why, Uncle!" she cried, "what do you mean? It's Nelson Haley who is in trouble."

"I mean to eat my dinner fust of all," said her uncle firmly. "And so had you better, my gal. A man can't be expected to go right away to court an' put up every dollar he's got in the world for bail, until he's thought it over a little, and knows something more about the trouble."

"Why, Jason!" exploded Aunt 'Mira. "Of course Mr. Haley is innocent and you will help him."

"Hi tunket, Dad!" cried Marty. "You ain't goin' back on Nelson?"

Janice was silent. Her uncle did not look at her, but drew his chair to the table. "I ain't goin' back on nobody," he said steadily. "But I can't do nothing to harm my own folks. If, as you say, Marty, them coins is so vallible, his bail'll be consider'ble—for a fac'. If I put up this here property that we got, an'—an' anything happens—not that I say anythin' will happen—where'd we be?"

"What ever do ye mean, Jason Day?" demanded his wife. "That Nelson
Haley would run away?"

"Ahem! We don't know how strongly the young man's been tempted," said
Mr. Day doggedly.

"Uncle!" cried Janice, aghast.

"Dad!" exclaimed Marty.

"Jase Day! For the land's sake!" concluded Aunt 'Mira.

"Sit down and eat your dinner, Janice," said Uncle Jason a second time, ignoring his wife and son. "Remember, I got a duty to perform to your father as well as to you. What would Broxton Day do in this case?"

"I—I don't know, Uncle Jason," Janice said faintly.

"Fust of all, he wouldn't let you git mixed up in nothin' that would make the neighbors talk about ye," Mr. Day said promptly. "Now, whether Nelson Haley is innercent or guilty, there is bound ter be slathers of talk about this thing and about ev'rybody connected with it."

"He is not guilty, Uncle," said Janice, quietly.

"That's my opinion, too," said Mr. Day, bluntly. "But I want the pertic'lars, jest the same. I want to know all about it. Where there's so much smoke there must be some fire."

"Not allus, Dad," growled Marty, in disgust. "Smoke comes from an oak-ball, but there ain't no fire."

"You air a smart young man," returned his father, coolly. "You'll grow
up to be the town smartie, like Walky Dexter, I shouldn't wonder.
Nelson must ha' done somethin' to put himself in bad in this thing, and
I want to know what it is he done."

"He went into the schoolhouse," grumbled Marty.

"Howsomever," pursued Mr. Day, "if they shut Nelson Haley up on this charge and he ain't guilty, we who know him best will git together and bail him out, if that seems best."

"'If that seems best!'" repeated Aunt 'Mira. "Jason Day! I'm glad the
Lord didn't make me such a moderate critter as you be."

"You're a great friend of Nelse Haley—I don't think!" muttered Marty.

But Janice said nothing more. That Uncle Jason did not rush to Nelson's relief as she would have done had it been in her power, was not so strange. Janice was a singularly just girl.

The hurt was there, nevertheless. She could not help feeling keenly the fact that everybody in Polktown did not respond at once to Nelson's need.

That he should be accused of stealing the collection of coins was preposterous indeed. Yet Janice was sensible enough to know that there would be those in the village only too ready and willing to believe ill of the young schoolmaster.

Nelson Haley's character was not wishy-washy. He had made everybody respect him. His position as principal of the school gave him almost as much importance in the community as the minister. But not all the Polktown folk loved Nelson Haley. He had made enemies as well as friends since coming to the lakeside town.

There were those who would seize upon this incident, no matter how slightly the evidence might point to Nelson, and make "a mountain of a molehill." Nelson was a poor young man. He had come to Polktown with college debts to pay off out of his salary. To those who were not intimately acquainted with the school-teacher's character, it would not seem such an impossibility that he should yield to temptation where money was concerned.

But to Janice the thought was not only abhorrent, it was ridiculous. She would have believed herself capable of stealing quite as soon as she would have believed the accusation against Nelson.

Yet she could not blame Uncle Jason for his calm attitude in this event. It was his nature to be moderate and careful. She did not scold like Aunt 'Mira, nor mutter and glare like Marty. She could not, however, eat any dinner.

It was nerve-racking to sit there, playing with her fork, awaiting Uncle Jason's pleasure. Janice's eyes were tearless. She had learned ere this, in the school of hard usage, to control her emotions. Not many girls of her age could have set off finally with Mr. Day for the town with so quiet a mien. For she insisted upon accompanying her uncle on this quest. She felt that she could not remain quietly at home and wait upon his leisurely report of the situation.

First of all they learned that no attempt had been made as yet to curtail the young schoolmaster's liberty; otherwise the situation was quite as bad as Marty had so eagerly reported.

The collection of gold coins, valued at fifteen hundred dollars, had been left in the committee room next to the principal's office in the new school building. It being Saturday, the outer doors of the building were locked—or supposedly so.

Benny Thread, the janitor, was with the four committeemen in the basement for a little more than half an hour. During that half-hour Nelson Haley had entered the school building, using his pass key, had been to his office, and entered the committee room, and from thence departed, all while the committee was below stairs.

He had been seen both going in and coming out by the neighbors. He carried his school bag in both instances. The collection of coins was of some weight; but Nelson could have carried that weight easily.

The committee, upon returning to the second floor and finding the trays empty, had at once sent for Nelson and questioned him. In their first excitement over the loss of the coins, they had been unwise enough to state the trouble and their suspicions to more than one person. In an hour the story, with many additions, had spread over Polktown. A fire before a high wind could have traveled no faster.

Uncle Jason listened, digested, and made up his mind. Although a moderate man, he thought to some purpose. He was soon satisfied that the four committeemen, having got over their first fright, would do nothing rash. And Janice had much to thank her uncle for in this emergency; for he was outspoken, once having formed an opinion in the matter.

Finding the four committeemen in the drugstore, Uncle Jason berated them soundly:

"I did think you four fellers was safe to be let toddle about alone. I swan I did! But here ye ac' jest like ye was nuthin' but babies!

"Jest because ye acted silly and left that money open for the fust comer to pocket, ye hafter run about an' squeal, layin' it all to the fust person that come that way. If Mr. Middler or Elder Concannon had come inter that school buildin', I s'pose it'd ha' been jest the same. You fellers would aimed ter put it on them—one or t'other. I'm ashamed of ye."

"Wal, Jase Day, you're so smart," drawled Cross Moore, "who d'ye reckon could ha' took the coins?"

"Most anybody could. Mr. Haley sartinly did not," Uncle Jason returned, briskly.

"How d'ye know so much?" demanded Massey, the druggist.

"'Cause I know him," rejoined Mr. Day, quite as promptly as before.

"Aw—that's only talk," said Joe Pellet, pulling his beard reflectively. "Mr. Haley's a nice young man——"

"I've knowed him since ever he come inter this town," Mr. Day interrupted, with energy. "He's too smart ter do sech a thing, even if he was so inclined. You fellers seem ter think he's an idiot. What! steal them coins when he's the only person 'cept the janitor that's knowed to have a key to the school building?

"Huh!" pursued Uncle Jason, with vast disgust. "You fellers must have a high opinion of your own judgment, when you choosed Mr. Haley to teach this school. Did ye hire a nincompoop, I wanter know? Why! if he'd wanted ever so much ter steal them coins, he'd hafter been a fule ter done it in this way."

"There's sense in what ye say, Jason," admitted Mr. Crawford.

"I sh'd hope so! But there ain't sense in what you fellers have done—for a fac! Lettin' sech a story as this git all over town. By jiminy! if I was Mr. Haley, I'd sue ye!"

"But what are we goin' ter do, Jason?" demanded Cross Moore. "Sit here an' twiddle our thumbs, and let that feller 't owns the coins come down on us for their value?"

"You'll have to make good to him anyway," said Mr. Day, bluntly. "You four air responserble."

"Hi tunket!" exploded Joe Pellet. "And let the thief git away with 'em?"

"Better git a detecertif, an' put him on the case," said Mr. Day. "Of course, you air all satisfied that nobody could ha' got into the schoolhouse but Mr. Haley?"

"He an' Benny is all that has keys," said Massey.

"Sure about this here janitor?" asked Uncle Jason, slowly.

"Why, he was with us all the time," said Crawford, in disgust.

"And he's a hardworkin' little feller, too," Massey added. "Not a thing wrong with Benny but his back. That is crooked; but he's as straight as a string."

"How's his fambly?" asked Uncle Jason.

"Ain't got none—but a wife. A decent, hard-working woman," proclaimed the druggist. "No children. Her brother boards with 'em. That's all."

"Well, sir!" said Uncle Jason, oracularly. "There air some things in this worl' ye kin be sure of, besides death and taxes. There's a few things connected with this case that ye kin pin down. F'r instance: The janitor didn't do it. Nelse Haley didn't do it. None o' you four fellers done it."

"Say! you goin' to drag us under suspicion, Jase?" drawled Cross Moore.

"If you keep on sputterin' about Nelse Haley—yes," snapped Mr. Day, nodding vigorously. "Howsomever, there's still another party ter which the finger of suspicion p'ints."

"Who's that?" was the chorus from the school committee.

"A party often heard of in similar cases," said Mr. Day, solemnly.
"His name is Unknown! Yes, sir! Some party unknown entered that
building while you fellers was down cellar, same as Nelson Haley did.
This party, Unknown, stole the coins."

"Aw, shucks, Jase!" grunted Mr. Cross Moore. "You got to give us
something more satisfactory than that if you want to shunt us off'n
Nelson Haley's trail," and the other three members of the School
Committee nodded.

CHAPTER IX

HOW NELSON TOOK IT

Something more than mere curiosity drew Janice Day's footsteps toward the new school building. There were other people drawn in the same direction; but their interest was not like hers.

Somehow, this newest bit of gossip in Polktown could be better discussed at the scene of the strange robbery itself. Icivilly Sprague and Mabel Woods walked there, arm in arm, passing Janice by with side glances and the tossing of heads.

Icivilly and Mabel had attended Nelson's school the first term after Miss 'Rill Scattergood gave up teaching; but finding the young schoolmaster impervious to their charms, they had declared themselves graduated.

They were not alone among the older girls who found Nelson provokingly adamant. He did not flirt. Of late it had become quite apparent that the schoolmaster had eyes only for Janice Day. Of course, that fact did not gain Nelson friends among girls like Icivilly and Mabel in this time of trial.

Janice knew that they were whispering about her as she passed; but her real thought was given to more important matters. Uncle Jason had told her just how the affair of the robbery stood. There was a mystery—a deep, deep mystery about it.

In the group about the front gate of the school premises were Jim Narnay and Trimmins, the woodsmen. Both had been drinking and were rather hilarious and talkative. At least, Trimmins was so.

"Wish we'd knowed there was all that cash so free and open up here in the schoolhouse—heh, Jim?" Trimmins said, smiting his brother toper between the shoulders. "We wouldn't be diggin' out for no swamp to haul logs."

"You're mighty right, Trimmins! You're mighty right!" agreed the drunken Narnay. "Gotter leave m' fambly—hate ter do it!" and he became very lachrymose. "Ter'ble thing, Trimmins, f'r a man ter be sep'rated from his fambly jest so's ter airn his livin'."

"Right ye air, old feller," agreed the Southerner. "Hullo! here's the buddy we're waitin' for. How long d'ye s'pose he'll last, loggin?"

Janice saw the ex-drug clerk, Jack Besmith, mounting the hill with a pack on his back. Rough as the two lumbermen were, Besmith looked the more dissolute character, despite his youth.

The trio went away together, bound evidently for one of Elder
Concannon's pieces of woodland, over the mountain.

Benny Thread came out of the school building and locked the door importantly behind him. Several of the curious ones surrounded the little man and tried to get him into conversation upon the subject of the robbery.

"No, I can't talk," he said, shaking his head. "I can't, really. The gentlemen of the School Committee have forbidden me. Why—only think! It was more by good luck than good management that I wasn't placed in a position where I could be suspected of the robbery. Lucky I was with the committeemen every moment of the time they were down cellar. No, I am not suspected, thanks be! But I must not talk—I must not talk."

It was evident that he wanted to talk and he could be over-urged to talk if the right pressure was brought to bear. Janice came away, leaving the eagerly curious pecking at him—the one white blackbird in the flock.

Uncle Jason had given her some blunt words of encouragement. Janice felt that she must see Nelson personally and cheer him up, if that were possible. At least, she must tell him how she—and, indeed, all his friends—had every confidence in him.

Some people whom she met as she went up High Street looked at her curiously. Janice held her head at a prouder angle and marched up the hill toward Mrs. Beaseley's. She ignored these curious glances.

But there was no escaping Mrs. Scattergood. That lover of gossip must have been sitting behind her blind, peering down High Street, and waiting for Janice's appearance.

She hurried out of the house, beckoning to the girl eagerly. Janice could not very well refuse to approach, so she walked on up the hill beyond the side street on which Mrs. Beaseley's cottage stood, and met the birdlike little woman at her gate.

"For the good land's sake, Janice Day!" exploded Mrs. Scattergood. "I was wonderin' if you'd never git up here. Surely, you've heard abeout this drefful thing, ain't you?"

Janice knew there was no use in evasion with Mrs. Scattergood. She boldly confessed.

"Yes, Mrs. Scattergood, I have heard about it. And I think Mr. Cross Moore and those others ought to be ashamed of themselves—letting people think for a moment that Mr. Haley took those coins."

"Who did take 'em?" asked the woman, eagerly. "Have they found out?"

"Why, nobody but the person who really is the thief knows who stole the coins; but of course everybody who knows Nelson at all, is sure that it was not Mr. Haley."

"Wal—they gotter lay it to somebody," Mrs. Scattergood said, rather doubtfully. "That's the best them useless men could do," she added, with that birdlike toss of the head that was so familiar to Janice.

"If there'd been a woman around, they'd laid it on to her. Oh! I know 'em all—the hull kit an' bilin' of 'em."

Janice tried to smile at this; but the woman's beadlike eyes seemed to be boring with their glance right through the girl and this made her extremely uncomfortable.

"I expect you feel pretty bad, Janice Day," went on Mrs. Scattergood. "But it's allus the way. You'll find as you grow older that there ain't much in this world for females, young or old, but trouble."

"Why, Mrs. Scattergood!" cried the girl, and this time she did call up a merry look. "What have you to trouble you? You have the nicest time of any person I know—unless it is Mrs. Marvin Petrie. No family to trouble you; enough to live on comfortably; nothing to do but go visiting—or stay at home if you'd rather——"

"Tut, tut, tut, child! All is not gold that glitters," was the quick reply. "I ain't so happy as ye may think. I have my troubles. But, thanks be! they ain't abeout men. But you've begun yours, I kin see."

"Yes, I am troubled because Mr. Haley is falsely accused," admitted
Janice, stoutly.

"Wal—yes. I expect you air. And if it ain't no worse than you believe—Wal! I said you was a new-fashioned gal when I fust set eyes on you that day comin' up from the Landing in the old Constance Colfax; and you be."

"How am I different from other girls?" asked Janice, curiously.

"Wal! Most gals would wait till they was sure the young man wasn't goin' to be arrested before they ran right off to see him. But mebbe it's because you ain't got your own mother and father to tell ye diff'rent."

Janice flushed deeply at this and her eyes sparkled.

"I am sure Aunt 'Mira and Uncle Jason would have told me not to call on Nelson if they did not believe just as I do—that he is guiltless and that all his friends should show him at once that they believe in him."

"Hoity-toity! Mebbe so," said the woman, tartly. "Them Days never did have right good sense—yer uncle an' aunt, I mean. When I was a gal we wouldn't have been allowed to have so much freedom where the young fellers was consarned."

Janice was quite used to Mrs. Scattergood's sharp tongue; but it was hard to bear her strictures on this occasion.

"I hope it is not wrong for me to show my friend that I trust and believe in him," she said firmly, and nodding good-bye, turned abruptly away.

Of herself, or of what the neighbors thought of her conduct, Janice Day thought but little. She went on to Mrs. Beaseley's cottage, solely anxious on Nelson's account.

She found the widow in tears, for selfishly immured as Mrs. Beaseley was in her ten-year-old grief over the loss of her "sainted Charles," she was a dear, soft-hearted woman and had come to look upon Nelson Haley almost as her son.

"Oh, Janice Day! what ever are we going to do for him?" was her greeting, the moment the girl entered the kitchen. "If my poor, dear Charles were alive I know he would be furiously angry with Mr. Cross Moore and those other men. Oh! I cannot bear to think of how angry he would be, for Charles had a very stern temper.

"And Mr. Haley is such a pleasant young man. As I tell 'em all, a nicer and quieter person never lived in any lone female's house. And to think of their saying such dreadful things about him! I am sure I never thought of locking anything away from Mr. Haley in this house—and there's the 'leven sterling silver teaspoons that belonged to poor, dear Charles' mother, and the gold-lined sugar-basin that was my Aunt Abby's, and the sugar tongs—although they're bent some.

"Why! Mr. Haley is jest one of the nicest young gentlemen that ever was. And here he comes home, pale as death, and won't eat no dinner. Janice, think of it! I allus have said, and I stick to it, that if one can eat they'll be all right. My sainted Charles," she added, stating for the thousandth time an uncontrovertible fact, "would be alive to this day if he had continued to eat his victuals!"

"I'd like to speak to Mr. Haley," Janice said, finally "getting a word in edgewise."

"Of course. Maybe he'll let you in," said the widow. "He won't me, but I think he favors you, Janice," she added innocently, shaking her head with a continued mournful air. "He come right in and said: 'Mother Beaseley, I don't believe I can eat any dinner to-day,' and then shut and locked his door. I didn't know what had happened till 'Rene Hopper, she that works for Mrs. Cross Moore, run in to borry my heavy flat-iron, an' she tol' me about the stolen money. Ain't it awful?"

"I—I hope Nelson will let me speak to him, Mrs. Beaseley," stammered
Janice, finding it very difficult now to keep her tears back.

"You go right along the hall and knock at his door," whispered Mrs. Beaseley, hoarsely. "An' you tell him I've got his dinner down on the stove-hearth, 'twixt plates, a-keepin' it hot for him."

Janice did as she was bidden as far as knocking at the door of the front room was concerned. There was no answer at first—not a sound from within. She rapped a second time.

"I am sorry, Mrs. Beaseley; I could not possibly eat any dinner to-day," Nelson's voice finally replied.

There was no tremor in the tone of it. Janice knew just how proud the young man was, and no matter how bitterly he was hurt by this trouble that had fallen upon him, he would not easily reveal his feelings.

She put her lips close to the crack of the door. "Nelson!" she whispered. "Nelson!" a little louder.

She heard him spring to his feet and overturn the chair in which he had been sitting.

"Nelson! it's only me," Janice quavered, the pulse beating painfully in her throat. "Let me in—do!"

He came across the room slowly. She heard him fumble at the key and knob. Then the door opened.

"Oh, Nelson!" she repeated, when she saw him in the darkened parlor.

The pallor of his face went to her heart. His hair was disheveled; his eyes red from weeping. After all, he was just a big boy in trouble, and with no mother to comfort him.

All the maternal instincts of Janice Day's nature went out to the young fellow. "Nelson! Nelson!" she cried, under her breath. "You poor, poor boy! I'm so sorry for you."

"Janice—you——" He stammered, and could not finish the phrase.

She cried, emphatically: "Of course I believe in you, Nelson. We all do! You must not take it so to heart. You will not bear it all alone, Nelson. Every friend you have in Polktown will help you."

She had come close to him, her hands fluttering upon his breast and her eyes, sparkling with teardrops, raised to his face.

"Oh, Janice!" he groaned, and swept her into his arms.

CHAPTER X

HOW POLKTOWN TOOK IT

That was a very serious Saturday night at the old Day house, as well as at the Beaseley cottage. Aunt 'Mira had whispered to Janice before the girl had set forth with her uncle in the afternoon:

"Bring him home to supper with ye, child—the poor young man! We got to cheer him up, betwixt us. I'm goin' to have raised biscuits and honey. He does dote on light bread."

But Nelson would not come. Janice had succeeded in encouraging him to a degree; but the young schoolmaster was too seriously wounded, both in his self-respect and at heart, to wish to mingle on this evening with any of his fellow-townsmen—even those who were his declared friends and supporters.

"Don't look for me at church to-morrow, either, Janice," the young man said. "It may seem cowardly; but I cannot face all these people and ignore this disgrace."

"It is not disgrace, Nelson!" Janice cried hotly.

"It is, my dear girl. One does not have to be guilty to be disgraced by such an accusation. I may be a coward; I don't know. At least, I feel it too keenly to march into church to-morrow and know that everybody is whispering about me. Why, Janice, I might break down and make a complete fool of myself."

"Oh, no, Nelson!"

"I might. Even the children will know all about it and will stare at me. I have to face them on Monday morning, and by that time I may have recovered sufficient self-possession to ignore their glances and whispers."

And with that decision Janice was obliged to leave him.

"The poor, foolish boy!" Aunt 'Mira said. "Don't he know we all air sufferin' with him?"

But Uncle Jason seemed better to appreciate the schoolmaster's attitude.

"I don't blame him none. He's jest like a dog with a hurt paw—wants ter crawl inter his kennel and lick his wounds. It's a tough propersition, for a fac'."

"He needn't be afraid that the fellers will guy him," growled Marty.
"If they do, I'll lick 'em!"

"Oh, Marty! All of them?" cried Janice, laughing at his vehemence, yet tearful, too.

"Well—all I can," declared her cousin. "And there ain't many I can't, you bet."

"If you was as fond of work as ye be of fightin', Marty," returned Mr.
Day, drily, "you sartin sure'd be a wonderful feller."

"Ya-as," drawled his son but in a very low tone, "maw says I'm growin' more'n more like you, every day."

"Marty," Janice put in quickly, before the bickering could go any further, "did you see little Lottie? It was so late when I came out of Mrs. Beaseley's, I ran right home."

"I seed her," her cousin said gloomily.

"How air her poor eyes?" asked Aunt 'Mira.

"They're not poor eyes. They're as good as anybody's eyes," Marty cried, with exasperation.

"Wal—they say she's' goin' blind again," said tactless Aunt 'Mira.

"I say she ain't! She ain't!" ejaculated Marty. "All foolishness. I don't believe a thing them doctors say. She's got just as nice eyes as anybody'd want."

"That is true, Marty," Janice said soothingly; but she sighed.

The door was open, for the evening was mild. On the damp Spring breeze the sound of a husky voice was wafted up the street and into the old Day house.

"Hello!" grunted Uncle Jason, "who's this singin' bird a-comin' up the hill? Tain't never Walky a-singin' like that, is it?"

"It's Walky; but it ain't him singin'," chuckled Marty.

"Huh?" queried Uncle Jason.

"It's Lem Parraday's whiskey that's doin' the singin'," explained the boy. "Hi tunket! Listen to that ditty, will ye?"

"'I wish't I was a rock
A-settin' on a hill,
A-doin' nothin' all day long
But jest a-settin' still,'"

roared Walky, who was letting the patient Josephus take his own gait up Hillside Avenue.

"For the Good Land o' Goshen!" cried Aunt 'Mira. "What's the matter o' that feller? Has he taken leave of his senses, a-makin' of the night higeous in that-a-way? Who ever told Walky Dexter 't he could sing?"

"It's what he's been drinking that's doing the singing, I tell ye," said her son.

"Poor Walky!" sighed Janice.

The expressman's complaint of his hard lot continued to rise in song:

"'I wouldn't eat, I wouldn't sleep,
I wouldn't even wash;
I'd jest set still a thousand years,
And rest myself, b'gosh!'"

"Whoa, Josephus!"

He had pulled the willing Josephus (willing at all times to stop) into the open gateway of the old Day place. Marty went out on the porch to hail him.

"'I wish I was a bump
A-settin' on a log,
Baitin' m' hook with a flannel shirt
For to ketch a frog!

"And when I'd ketched m' frog,
I'd rescue of m' bait—
An' what a mess of frog's hind laigs
I wouldn't have ter ate!'"

"Come on in, Walky, and rest your voice."

"You be gittin' to be a smart young chap, Marty," proclaimed Walky, coming slowly up the steps with a package for Mrs. Day and his book to be signed.

The odor of spirits was wafted before him. Walky's face was as round and red as an August full moon.

"How-do, Janice," he said. "What d'yeou think of them fule committeemen startin' this yarn abeout Nelson Haley?"

"What do folks say about it, Walky?" cut in Mr. Day, to save his niece the trouble of answering.

"Jest erbeout what you'd think they would," the philosophical expressman said, shaking his head. "Them that's got venom under their tongues, must spit it aout if they open their lips at all. Polktown's jest erbeout divided—the gossips in one camp and the kindly talkin' people in t'other. One crowd says Mr. Haley would steal candy from a blind baby, an' t'other says his overcoat fits him so tight across't the shoulders 'cause his wings is sproutin'. Haw! haw! haw!"

"And what d' ye say, Mr. Dexter?" asked Aunt 'Mira, bluntly.

The expressman puckered his lips into a curious expression. "I tell ye what," he said. "Knowin' Mr. Haley as I do, I'm right sure he's innercent as the babe unborn. But, jefers-pelters! who could ha' done it?"

"Why, Walky!" gasped Janice.

"I know. It sounds awful, don't it?" said the expressman. "I don't whisper a word of this to other folks. But considerin' that the schoolhouse doors was locked and Mr. Haley had the only other key besides the janitor, who air Massey and them others goin' to blame for the robbery?"

"They air detarmined to save their own hides if possible," Uncle Jason grumbled.

"Natcherly—natcherly," returned Walky. "We know well enough none o' them four men of the School Committee took the coins, nor Benny Thread, neither. They kin all swear alibi for each other and sartain sure they didn't all conspire ter steal the money and split it up 'twixt 'em. Haw! haw! haw! 'Twouldn't hardly been wuth dividin' into five parts," he added, his red face all of a grin.

"That sounds horrid, Mr. Dexter," said Aunt 'Mira.

"Wal, it's practical sense," the expressman said, wagging his head. "It's a problem for one o' them smart detecatifs ye read abeout in the magazines—one o' them like they have in stories. I read abeout one of 'em in a story. Yeou leave him smell the puffumery on a gal's handkerchief and he'll tell right away whether she was a blonde or a brunette, an' what size glove she wore! Haw! haw! haw!

"This ain't no laughing matter, Walky," Mr. Day said, with a side glance at Janice.

"Better laff than cry," declared Walky. "Howsomever, folks seed Mr.
Haley go into the schoolhouse and come out ag'in——"

"He told the committee he had been there," Janice interrupted.

"That's right, too. Mebbe not so many folks would ha' knowed they'd seen him there if he hadn't up and said so. Proberbly there was ha'f a dozen other folks hangin' abeout the schoolhouse, too, at jest the time the coin collection was stole; but they ain't remembered 'cause they didn't up and tell on themselves."

"Oh, Walky!" gasped the girl, startled by the suggestion.

"Wal," drawled the expressman, in continuation, "that ain't no good to us, for nobody had a key to the door but him and Benny Thread."

"I wonder——" murmured Janice; but said no more.

"It's a scanderlous thing," Walky pursued, receiving his book back and preparing to join Josephus at the gate. "Goin' ter split things wide open in Polktown, I reckon. 'Twill be wuss'n a church row 'fore it finishes. Already there's them that says we'd oughter have another teacher in Mr. Haley's place."

"Oh, my!" cried Aunt 'Mira.

"Ain't willin' ter give the young feller a chance't at all, heh?" said
Mr. Day, puffing hard at his pipe. "Wall! we'll see abeout that."

"We'd never have a better teacher, I tell 'em," Walky flung back over his shoulder. "But Mr. Haley's drawin' a good salary and there's them that think it oughter go ter somebody that belongs here in Polktown, not to an outsider like him."

"Hi tunket!" cried Marty, after Walky had gone. "There ye have it. Miss Pearly Breeze, that used ter substi-toot for 'Rill Scattergood, has wanted the school ever since Mr. Haley come. She'd do fine tryin' to be principal of a graded school—I don't think!"

"Oh, don't talk so, I beg of you," Janice said. "Of course Nelson won't lose his school. If he did, under these circumstances, he could never go to Millhampton College to teach. Why! perhaps his career as a teacher would be irrevocably ruined."

"Now, don't ye take on so, Janice," cried Aunt 'Mira, with her arm about the girl. "It won't be like that. It can't be so bad—can it, Jason?"

"We mustn't let it go that fur," declared her spouse, fully aroused now. "Consarn Walky Dexter, anyway! I guess, as Marty says, what he puts in his mouth talks as well as sings for him.

"I snum!" added the farmer, shaking his head. "I dunno which is the biggest nuisance, an ill-natered gossip or a good-natered one. Walky claims ter feel friendly to Mr. Haley, and then comes here with all the unfriendly gossip he kin fetch. Huh! I ain't got a mite o' use fer sech folks."

Uncle Jason was up, pacing the kitchen back and forth in his stocking feet. He was much stirred over Janice's grief. Aunt 'Mira was in tears, too. Marty went out on the porch, ostensibly for a pail of fresh water, but really to cover his emotion.

None of them could comfortably bear the sight of Janice's tears. As
Marty started the pump a boy ran into the yard and up the steps.

"Hullo, Jimmy Gallagher, what you want?" demanded Marty.

"I'm after Janice Day. Got a note for her," said the urchin.

"Hey, Janice!" called her cousin; but the young girl was already out on the porch.

"What is it, Jimmy? Has Nelson——"

"Here's a note from Miz' Drugg. Said for me to give it to ye," said the boy, as he clattered down the steps again.

CHAPTER XI

"MEN MUST WORK WHILE WOMEN MUST WEEP"

Janice brought the letter indoors to read by the light of the kitchen lamp. Her heart fluttered, for she feared that it was something about Nelson. The Drugg domicile was almost across the street from the Beaseley cottage and the girl did not know but that 'Rill had been delegated to tell her something of moment about the young schoolmaster.

Marty, too, was eagerly curious. "Hey, Janice! what's the matter?" he whispered, at her shoulder.

"Mr. Drugg has to be away this evening and she is afraid to stay in the house and store alone. She wants me to come over and spend the night with her. May I, Auntie?"

"Of course, child—go if you like," Aunt 'Mira said briskly. "You've been before."

Twice Mr. Drugg had been away buying goods and Janice had spent the night with 'Rill and little Lottie.

"Though what protection I could be to them if a burglar broke in, I'm sure I don't know," Janice had said, laughingly, on a former occasion.

She went upstairs to pack her handbag rather gravely. She was glad to go to the Drugg place to remain through the night. She would be near Nelson Haley! Somehow, she felt that being across the street from the schoolmaster would be a comfort.

When she came downstairs Marty had his hat and coat on. "I'll go across town with ye—and carry the bag," he proposed. "Going to the reading room, anyway."

"That's nice of you, Marty," she said, trying to speak in her usual cheery manner.

Janice was rather glad it was a moonless evening as she walked side by side with her cousin down Hillside Avenue. It was one of the first warm evenings of the Spring and the neighbors were on their porches, or gossiping at the gates and boundary fences.

What about? Ah! too well did Janice Day know the general subject of conversation this night in Polktown.

"Come on, Janice," grumbled Marty. "Don't let any of those old cats stop you. They've all got their claws sharpened up."

"Hush, Marty!" she begged, yet feeling a warm thrill at her heart because of the boy's loyalty.

"There's that old Benny Thread!" exploded Marty, as they came out on the High Street. "Oh! he's as important now as a Billy-goat on an ash-heap. You'd think, to hear him, that he'd stole the coins himself—only he didn't have no chance't. He and Jack Besmith wouldn't ha' done a thing to that bunch of money—no, indeed!—if they'd got hold of it."

"Why, Marty!" put in Janice; "you shouldn't say that." Then, with sudden curiosity, she added: "What has that drug clerk got to do with the janitor of the school building?"

"He's Benny's brother-in-law. But Jack's left town, I hear."

"He's gone with Trimmins and Narnay into the woods," Janice said thoughtfully.

"So he's out of it," grumbled Marty. "Jack went up to Massey's the other night to try to get his old job back, and Massey turned him out of the store. Told him his breath smothered the smell of iodoform in the back shop," and Marty giggled. "That's how Jack come to get a pint and wander up into our sheep fold to sleep it off."

"Oh, dear, Marty," sighed Janice, "this drinking in Polktown is getting to be a dreadful thing. See how Walky Dexter was to-night."

"Yep."

"Everything that's gone wrong lately is the fault of Lem Parraday's bar."

"Huh! I wonder?" questioned Marty. "Guess Nelse Haley won't lay his trouble to liquor drinking."

"No? I wonder——"

"Here's the library building, Janice," interrupted the boy. "Want me to go any further with you?"

"No, dear," she said, taking the bag from him. "Tell Aunt 'Mira I'll be home in the morning in time enough to dress for church."

"Aw-right."

"And, Marty!"

"Yep?" returned he, turning back.

"I see there's a light in the basement of the library building. What's going on?"

"We fellers are holding a meeting," said Marty, importantly. "I called it this afternoon. I don't mind telling you, Janice, that we're going to pass resolutions backing up Mr. Haley—pass him a vote of confidence. That's what they do in lodges and other societies. And if any of the fellers renege tonight on this, I'll—I'll—Well, I'll show 'em somethin'!" finished Marty, very red in the face and threatening as he dived down the basement steps.

"Oh, well," thought Janice, encouraged after all. "Nelson has some loyal friends."

She came to the store on the side street without further incident. She looked across timidly at Nelson's windows. A lamp burned dimly there, so she knew he was at home.

Indeed, where would he go—to whom turn in his trouble? Aside from an old maiden aunt who had lent him enough of her savings to enable him to finish his college course, Nelson had no relatives alive. He had no close friend, either young or old, but herself, Janice knew.

"Oh, if daddy were only home from Mexico!" was her unspoken thought, as she lifted the latch of the store door.

There were no customers at this hour; but it was Hopewell Drugg's custom to keep the store open until nine o'clock every evening, and Saturday night until a much later hour. Every neighborhood store must do this to keep trade.

"I'm so glad to see you, Janice," 'Rill proclaimed, without coming from behind the counter. "You'll stay?"

"Surely. Don't you see my bag?" returned Janice gaily. "Is Mr. Drugg going to be away all night?"

"He—he could not be sure. It's another dance," 'Rill said, rather apologetically. "He feels he must play when he can. Every five dollars counts, you know, and Hopewell is sure that Lottie will have to go back to the school."

"Where is the dance?" asked Janice gravely. "Down at the Inn?"

"Yes," replied the wife, quite as seriously, and dropping her gaze.

"Oh! I hear my Janice! I hear my Janice Day!" cried Lottie's sweet, shrill voice from the rear apartment and she came running out into the store to meet the visitor.

"Have a care! have a care, dear!" warned 'Rill. "Look where you run."

Janice, seeing more clearly from where she stood in front of the counter, was aware that the child ran toward her with her hands outstretched, and with her eyes tightly closed—just as she used to do before her eyes were treated and she had been to the famous Boston physician.

"Oh, Lottie dear!" she exclaimed, taking the little one into her arms. "You will run into something. You will hurt yourself. Why don't you look where you are going?"

"I do look," Lottie responded pouting. Then she wriggled all her ten fingers before Janice's face. "Don't you see my lookers? I can see—oh! so nicely!—with my fingers. You know I always could, Janice Day."

'Rill shook her head and sighed. It was plain the bride was a very lenient stepmother indeed—perhaps too lenient. She loved Hopewell Drugg's child so dearly that she could not bear to correct her. Lottie had always had her own way with her father; and matters had not changed, Janice could see.

"Mamma 'Rill," Lottie coaxed, patting her step-mother's pink cheek, "you'll let me sit up longer, 'cause Janice is here—won't you?"

Of course 'Rill could not refuse her. So the child sat there, blinking at the store lights like a little owl, until finally she sank down in the old cushioned armchair behind the stove and fell fast asleep. Occasionally customers came in; but between whiles Janice and the storekeeper's wife could talk.

The racking "clump, clump, clump," of a big-footed farm horse sounded without and a woman's nasal voice called a sharp:

"Whoa! Whoa, there! Now, Emmy, you git aout and hitch him to that there post. Ain't no ring to it? Wal! I don't see what Hope Drugg's thinkin' of—havin' no rings to his hitchin' posts. He ain't had none to that one long's I kin remember."

"Here comes Mrs. Si Leggett," said 'Rill to Janice. "She's a particular woman and I am sorry Hopewell isn't here himself. Usually she comes in the afternoon. She is late with her Saturday's shopping this time."

"Take this basket of eggs—easy, now, Emmy!" shrilled the woman's voice. "Handle 'em careful—handle 'em like they was eggs!"

A heavy step, and a lighter step, on the porch, and then the store door opened. The woman was tall and raw-boned. She wore a sunbonnet of fine green and white stripes. Emmy was a lanky child of fourteen or so, with slack, flaxen hair and a perfectly colorless face.

"Haow-do, Miz' Drugg," said the newcomer, putting a large basket of eggs carefully on the counter. "What's Hopewell givin' for eggs to-day?"

"Just what everybody else is, Mrs. Leggett. Twenty-two cents. That's the market price."

"Wal—seems ter me I was hearin' that Mr. Sprague daowntown was a-givin' twenty-three," said the customer slowly.

"Perhaps he is, Mrs. Leggett. But Mr. Drugg cannot afford to give even a penny above the market price. Of course, either cash or trade—just as you please."

"Wal, I want some things an' I wasn't kalkerlatin' to go 'way daowntown ter-night—it's so late," said Mrs. Leggett.

'Rill smiled and waited.

"Twenty-two's the best you kin do?" queried the lanky woman querulously.

"That is the market price."

"Wal! lemme see some cheap gingham. It don't matter abeout the pattern. It's only for Emmy here, and it don't matter what 'tis that covers her bones' long's it does cover 'em. Will this fade?"

"I don't think so," Mrs. Drugg said, opening the bolt of goods so that the customer could get at it better.

Janice watched, much amused. The woman pulled at the piece one way, and then another, wetting it meantime and rubbing it with her fingers to ascertain if the colors were fast. She was apparently unable to satisfy herself regarding it.

Finally she produced a small pair of scissors and snipped off a tiny piece and handed it to Emmy. "Here, Emmy," she said, "you spit aout that there gum an' chew on this here awhile ter see if it fades any."

Janice dodged behind the post to hide the expression of amusement that she could not control. She wondered how 'Rill could remain so placid and unruffled.

Emmy took the piece of goods, clapped it into her mouth with the most serious expression imaginable, and went to work. Her mother said:

"Ye might's well count the eggs, Miz' Drugg. I make 'em eight dozen and ten. I waited late for the rest of the critters ter lay; but they done fooled me ter-day—for a fac'!"

Emmy having chewed on the gingham to her mother's complete satisfaction, Mrs. Leggett finished making her purchases and they departed. Then 'Rill and her guest could talk again. Naturally the conversation almost at the beginning turned upon Nelson Haley's trouble.

"It is terrible!" 'Rill said. "Mr. Moore and those others never could have thought what they were doing when they accused Mr. Haley of stealing."

"They were afraid that they would have to make good for the coins, and felt that they must blame somebody," Janice replied with a sigh.

"Of course, Hopewell went right over to tell the schoolmaster what he thought about it as soon as the story reached us. Hopewell thinks highly of the young man, you know."

"Until this thing happened, I thought almost everybody thought highly of him," said Janice, with a sob.

"Oh, my dear!" cried 'Rill, tearful herself, "there is such gossip in Polktown. So many people are ready to make ill-natured and untruthful remarks about one——"

Janice knew to what secret trouble the storekeeper's wife referred. "I know!" she exclaimed, wiping away her own tears. "They have talked horridly about Mr. Drugg."

"It is untruthful! It is unfair!" exclaimed Hopewell Drugg's wife, her cheeks and eyes suddenly ablaze with indignation. To tell the truth, she was like an angry kitten, and had the matter not been so serious, Janice must have laughed at her.

"They have told all over town that Hopewell came home intoxicated from that last dance," continued the wife. "But it is a story—a wicked, wicked story!"

Janice was silent. She remembered what she and Marty and Mrs. Scattergood had seen on the evening in question—how Hopewell Drugg had looked as he staggered past the street lamp on the corner on his way home with the fiddle under his arm.

She looked away from 'Rill and waited. Janice feared that the poor little bride would discover the expression of her doubt in her eyes.

CHAPTER XII

AN UNEXPECTED EMERGENCY

'Rill seemed to understand what was in Janice's mind and heart. She kept on with strained vehemence:

"I know what they all say! And my mother is as bad as any of them. They say Hopewell was intoxicated. He was sick, and the bartender mixed him something to settle his stomach. I think maybe he put some liquor in it unbeknown to Hopewell. Or something!

"The poor, dear man was ill all night, Janice, and he never did remember how he got home from the dance. Whatever he drank seemed to befuddle his brain just as soon as he came out into the night air. That should prove that he's not a drinking man."

"I—I am sorry for you, dear," Janice said softly. "And I am sorry anybody saw Mr. Drugg that evening on his way home."

"Oh, I know you saw him, Janice—and Marty Day and my mother. Mother can be as mean as mean can be! She has never liked Hopewell, as you know."

"Yes, I know," admitted Janice.

"She keeps throwing such things up to me. And her tongue is never still. It is true Hopewell's father was a drinking man."

"Indeed?" said Janice, curiously.

"Yes," sighed 'Rill Drugg. "He was rather shiftless. Perhaps it is the nature of artists so to be," she added reflectively. "For he was really a fine musician. Had Hopewell had a chance he might have been his equal. I often think so," said the storekeeper's bride proudly.

"I know that the elder Mr. Drugg taught the violin."

"Yes. And he used to travel about over the country, giving lessons and playing in orchestras. That used to make Mrs. Drugg awfully angry. She wanted him to be a storekeeper. She made Hopewell be one. How she ever came to marry such a man as Hopewell's father, I do not see."

"She must have loved him," said Janice wistfully.

"Of course!" cried the bride, quite as innocently. "She couldn't have married him otherwise."

"And was Hopewell their only child?"

"Yes. He seldom saw his father, but he fairly worshiped him. His
father was a handsome man—and he used to play his violin for Hopewell.
It was this very instrument my husband prizes so greatly now. When Mr.
Drugg died the violin was hid away for years in the garret.

"You've heard how Hopewell found it, and strung it himself, and used to play on it slyly, and so taught himself to be a fiddler, before his mother had any idea he knew one note from another. She was extremely deaf at the last and could not hear him playing at odd times, up in the attic."

"My!" said Janice, "he must have really loved music."

"It was his only comfort," said the wife softly. "When he was twenty-one what little property his father had left came to him. But his mother did not put the violin into the inventory; so Hopewell said: 'Give me the fiddle and you can have the rest.'"

"He loved it so!" murmured Janice appreciatively:

"Yes. I guess that was almost the only time in his life that Hopewell really asserted himself. With his mother, at least. She was a very stubborn woman, and very stern; more so than my own mother. But Mrs. Drugg had to give in to him about the violin, for she needed Hopewell to run the store for her. They had little other means.

"But she made him marry 'Cinda Stone," added 'Rill. "Poor 'Cinda! she was never happy. Not that Hopewell did not treat her well. You know, Janice, he is the sweetest-tempered man that ever lived.

"And that is what hurts me more than anything else," sobbed the bride, dabbling her eyes with her handkerchief. "When they say Hopewell gets intoxicated, and is cruel to me and to Lottie, it seems as though—as though I could scratch their eyes out!"

For a moment Hopewell's wife looked so spiteful, and her eyes snapped so, that Janice wanted to laugh. Of course, she did not do so. But to see the mild and sweet-tempered 'Rill display such venom was amusing.

The store door opened with a bang. The girl and the woman both started up, Lottie remaining asleep.

"Hush! Never mind!" whispered Janice to 'Rill. "I'll wait on the customer."

When she went out into the front of the store, she saw that the figure which had entered was in a glistening slicker. It had begun to rain.

"Why, Frank Bowman! Is it you?" she asked, in surprise.

"Oh! how-do, Janice! I didn't expect to find you here."

"Nor I you. What are you doing away up here on the hill?" Janice asked.

Frank Bowman did not look himself. The girl could not make out what the trouble with him was, and she was puzzled.

"I guess you forgot I told you I was moving," he said hesitatingly.

"Oh, I remember! And you've moved up into this neighborhood?"

"Not exactly. I am going to lodge with the Threads, but I shall continue to eat Marm Parraday's cooking."

"The Threads?" murmured Janice.

"You know. The little, crooked-backed man. He's janitor of the school. His wife has two rooms I can have. Her brother has been staying with them; but he's lost his job and has gone up into the woods. It's a quiet place—and that's what I want. I can't stand the racket at the hotel any longer," concluded the civil engineer.

But Janice thought he still looked strange and spoke differently from usual. His glance wandered about the store as he talked.

"What did you want to buy, Frank?" she asked. "I'm keeping store to-night." She knew that 'Rill would not want the young man to see her tears.

"Oh—ah—yes," Bowman stammered. "What did I want?"

At that Janice laughed outright. She thought highly of the young civil engineer, and she considered herself a close enough friend to ask, bluntly:

"What ever is the matter with you, Frank Bowman? You're acting ridiculously."

He came nearer to her and whispered: "Where's Mrs. Drugg?"

Janice motioned behind her, and her face paled. What had happened?

"I—I declare I don't know how to tell her," murmured the young man, his hand actually trembling.

"Tell her what?" gasped Janice.

"Or even that I ought to tell her," added Frank Bowman, shaking his head.

Janice seized him by the lapel of his coat and tried to shake him.
"What do you mean? What are you talking about?" she demanded.

"What is the matter, Janice?" called 'Rill's low voice from the back.

"Never mind! I can attend to this customer," Janice answered gaily.
"It's Frank Bowman."

Then she turned swiftly to the civil engineer again and whispered:
"What is it about? Hopewell?"

"Yes," he returned in the same low tone.

"What is the matter with him?" demanded the girl greatly worried.

"He's down at the Inn——"

"I know. He went there to play at a dance tonight. That's why I am here—to keep his wife company," explained Janice.

"Well," said Bowman. "I went down to get some of my books I'd left there. They're having a high old time in that big back room, downstairs. You know?"

"Where they are going to have the Assembly Ball?"

"Yes," he agreed.

"But it's nothing more than a dance, is it?" whispered Janice.
"Hopewell was hired to play——"

"I know. But such playing you never heard in all your life," said Bowman, with disgust. "And the racket! I wonder somebody doesn't complain to Judge Little or to the Town Council."

"Not with Mr. Cross Moore holding a mortgage on the hotel," said
Janice, with more bitterness than she usually displayed.

"You're right there," Bowman agreed gloomily.

"But what about Hopewell?"

"I believe they have given him something to drink. That Joe Bodley, the barkeeper, is up to any trick. If Hopewell keeps on he will utterly disgrace himself, and——"

Janice clung to his arm tightly, interrupting his words with a little cry of pity. "And it will fairly break his wife's heart!" she said.

CHAPTER XIII

INTO THE LION'S DEN

Janice Day was growing up.

What really ages one in this life? Emotions. Fear—sorrow—love—hate—sympathy—jealousy—all the primal passions wear one out and make one old. This young girl of late had suffered from too much emotion.

Nelson Haley's trouble; her father's possible peril in Mexico; the many in whom she was interested being so affected by the sale of liquor in Polktown—all these things combined to make Janice feel a burden of responsibility that should not have rested upon the shoulders of so young a girl.

"Frank," she whispered to Bowman, there in the front of the dusky store, "Frank, what shall we do?"

"What can we do?" he asked quite blankly.

"He—he should be brought home."

"My goodness!" Bowman stammered. "Do you suppose Mrs. Drugg would go down there after him?"

"She mustn't," Janice hastened to reply, with decision; "but I will."

"Not you, Janice!" Bowman exclaimed, recoiling at the thought.

"Do you suppose I'd let you tell Mrs. Drugg?" demanded the girl, fiercely, yet under her breath.

"He's her husband."

"And I'm her friend."

Bowman looked admiringly at the flushed face of the girl. "You are fine, Janice," he said. "But you're too fine to go into that place down there and get Drugg out of it. If you think it is your duty to go for the man, I'll go with you. And I'll go in after him."

"Oh, Mr. Bowman! If you would!"

"Oh, I will. I only wish we had your car. He may be unable to walk and then the neighbors will talk."

"It's got beyond worrying about what the neighbors say," said Janice wearily. "Now, wait. I must go and excuse myself to Mrs. Drugg. She must not suspect. Maybe it isn't as bad as you think and we'll get Hopewell home all right."

The storekeeper's wife had carried Lottie back to the sitting room.
The child was still asleep and 'Rill was undressing her.

"What is the matter, Janice?" she asked curiously. "Has Mr. Bowman gone? What did he want?"

"He didn't want to buy anything. He wanted to see me. I—I am going out with him a little while, Miss 'Rill."

The latter nodded her head knowingly. "I know," she said. "You are going across the street. I am glad Mr. Bowman feels an interest in Mr. Haley's affairs."

"Yes!" gasped Janice, feeling that she was perilously near an untruth, for she was allowing 'Rill to deceive herself.

"Will you put the window lamps out before you go, dear?" the storekeeper's wife said.

"Certainly," Janice answered, and proceeded to do so before putting on her coat and hat.

"Don't be long," 'Rill observed softly. "It's after eleven now."

Janice came and kissed her—oh, so tenderly! They stood above the sleeping child. 'Rill had eyes only for the half naked, plump limbs and body of the little girl, or she might have seen something in Janice's tearful glance to make her suspicious.

Janice thought of a certain famous picture of the "Madonna and Child" as she tiptoed softly from the room, looking back as she went 'Rill yearned over the little one as only a childless and loving woman does. Perhaps 'Rill had married Hopewell Drugg as much for the sake of being able to mother little Lottie as for any other reason.

Yet, what a shock that tender, loving heart was about to receive—what a blow! Janice shrank from the thought of being one of those to bring this hovering trouble home to the trusting wife.

Could she not escape it? There was her handbag on the end of the counter. She was tempted to seize it, run out of the store, and make her way homeward as fast as possible.

She could leave Frank Bowman to settle the matter with his own conscience. He had brought the knowledge of this trouble to the little store on the side street. Let him solve the problem as best he might.

Then Janice gave the civil engineer a swift glance, and her heart failed her. She could not leave that unhappy looking specimen of helplessness to his own devices.

Frank's pompadour was ruffled, his eyes were staring, and his whole countenance was a troubled mask. In that moment Janice Day realized for the first time the main duty of the female in this world. That is, she is here to pull the incompetent male out of his difficulties!

She thought of Nelson, thoughtful and sensible as he was, actually appalled by his situation in the community. And here was Frank Bowman, a very efficient engineer, unable to engineer this small matter of getting Hopewell Drugg home from the dance, without her assistance.

"Oh, dear me! what would the world be without us women?" thought Janice—and gave up all idea of running away and leaving Frank to bungle the situation.

The two went out of the store together and closed the door softly behind them. Janice could not help glancing across at the lighted front windows of Mrs. Beaseley's cottage.

"There's trouble over yonder," said young Bowman gently. "I went in to see him after supper. He said you'd been there to help him buck up, Janice. Really, you're a wonderful girl."

"I'm sorry," sighed Janice.

"What?" cried Frank.

"Yes. I am sorry if I am wonderful. If I were not considered so, then not so many unpleasant duties would fall my way."

Frank laughed at that. "I guess you're right," he said. "Those that seem to be able to bear the burdens of life certainly have them to bear. But poor Nelson needs somebody to hold up his hands, as it were. He's up against it for fair, Janice."

"Oh! I can't believe that the committee will continue this persecution, when they come to think it over," the girl cried.

"It doesn't matter whether they do or not, I fear," Bowman said, with conviction. "The harm is done. He's been accused."

"Oh, dear me! I know it," groaned Janice.

"And unless he is proved innocent, Nelson Haley is bound to have trouble here in Polktown."

"Do you believe so, Frank?"

"I hate to say it. But we—his friends—might as well face the fact first as last," said the civil engineer, sheltering Janice beneath the umbrella he carried. It was misting heavily and she was glad of this shelter.

"Oh, I hope they will find the real thief very quickly!"

"So do I. But I see nothing being done toward that. The committee seems satisfied to accuse Nelson—and let it go at that."

"It is too, too bad!"

"They are following the line of least resistance. The real thief is, of course, well away—out of Polktown, and probably in some big city where the coins can be disposed of to the best advantage."

"Do you really believe so?" cried the girl.

"I do. The thief was some tramp or traveling character who got into the schoolhouse by stealth. That is the only sensible explanation of the mystery."

"Do you really believe so?" repeated Janice.

"Yes. Think of it yourself. The committee and Benny Thread are not guilty. Nelson is not guilty. Only two keys to the building and those both accounted for.

"Some time—perhaps on Friday afternoon or early evening—this tramp I speak of crept into the cellar when the basement door of the schoolhouse was open, with the intention of sleeping beside the furnace. In the morning he slips upstairs and hides from the janitor and keeps in hiding when the four committeemen appear.

"He sees the trays of coins," continued Frank Bowman, waxing enthusiastic with his own story, "and while the committeemen are downstairs, and before Nelson comes in, he takes the coins."

"Why before Nelson entered?" asked Janice sharply.

"Because Nelson tells me that he did not see the trays on the table in the committee room when he looked in there. The thief had removed them, and then put the trays back. Had Nelson seen them he would have stopped to examine the coins, at least. You see, they were brought over from Middletown and delivered to Massey, who kept them in his safe all night. Nelson never laid eyes on them."

"I see! I see!" murmured Janice.

"So this fellow stole the coins and slipped out of the building with them. They may even be melted down and sold for old gold by this time; although that would scarcely be possible. At any rate, the committee will have to satisfy the owner of the collection. That is sure."

"And that is going to make them all just as mad as they can be," declared the girl. "They want to blame somebody——"

"And they have blamed Nelson. It remains that he must prove himself innocent—before public opinion, not before a court. There they have to prove guilt. He is guilty already in the eyes of half of Polktown. No chance of waiting to be proved guilty before he is considered so."

Janice flushed and her answer came sharply: "And how about the other half of Polktown?"

"We may be evenly divided—fifty-fifty," and Bowman laughed grimly. "But the ones who believe—or say that they believe—Nelson Haley guilty, will talk much louder than those who deny."

"Oh, Frank Bowman! you take all my hope away."

"I don't mean to. I want to point out to you—and myself, as well—that to sit idle and wait for the matter to settle itself, is not enough for us who believe Haley is guiltless. We've got to set about disproving the accusation."

"I—I can see you are right," admitted the girl faintly.

"Yes; I am right. But being right doesn't end the matter. The question is: How are we going about it to save Nelson?"

Janice was rather shocked by this conclusion. Frank had seemed so clear up to this point. And then he slumped right down and practically asked her: "What are you going to do about it?"

"Oh, dear me!" cried Janice Day, faintly, "I don't know. I can't think. We must find some way of tracing the real thief. Oh! how can I think of that, when here poor 'Rill and Hopewell are in trouble?"

"Never mind! Never mind, Janice!" said Frank Bowman. "We'll soon get Hopewell home. And I hope, too, that his wife will know enough to keep him away from the hotel hereafter."

"But, suppose she can't," whispered Janice. "You know, his father was given to drinking."

"No! Is that so?"

"Yes. Maybe it is hereditary——"

"Queer it didn't show itself before," said Bowman sensibly. "I am more inclined to believe that Joe Bodley is playing tricks. Why! he's kept bar in the city and I know he was telling some of the scatter-brained young fools who hang around the Inn, that he's often seen 'peter' used in men's drink to knock them out. 'Peter,' you know, is 'knock-out drops!'"

"No, I don't know," said Janice, with disgust. "Or, I didn't till you told me."

"Forgive me, Janice," the civil engineer said humbly. "I was only explaining."

"Oh, I'm not blaming you at all," she said. "But I am angry to think that my own mind—as well as everybody's mind in Polktown—is being contaminated from this barroom. We are all learning saloon phrases. I never heard so much slang from Marty and the other boys, as I have caught the last few weeks. Having liquor sold in Polktown is giving us a new language."

"Well," said Bowman, as the lights of the Inn came in sight, "I hadn't thought of it that way. But I guess you are right. Now, now, Janice, what had we better do? Hear the noise?"

"What kind of dance is it?" asked Janice, in disgust. "I should think that it was a sailor's dance hall, or a lumber camp dance. I have heard of such things."

"It's going a little too strong for Lem Parraday himself to-night, I guess. Marm shuts herself in their room upstairs, I understand, and reads her Bible and prays."

"Poor woman!"

"She's of the salt of the earth," said Bowman warmly. "But she can't help herself. Lem would do it. The Inn did not pay. And it is paying now. At least, he says it is."

"It won't pay them in the end if this keeps up," said Janice, listening to the stamping and the laughter and the harsh sounds of violins and piano. "Surely Hopewell isn't making all that—that music?"

"I'll go in and see. I shouldn't wonder if he was not playing at all now. Maybe one of the boys has got his fiddle."

"Oh, no! He'd never let that precious violin out of his own hands, would he?" queried Janice. "Why! do you know, Frank, I believe that is quite a valuable instrument."

"I don't know. But when I started uptown one of the visitors was teasing to get hold of the violin. I don't know the man. He is a stranger—a black-haired, foxy-looking chap. Although, by good rights, I suppose a 'foxy-looking' person should be red-haired, eh?"

Janice, however, was not splitting hairs. She said quickly: "Do go in;
Frank, and see what Hopewell is about."

"How'll I get him out?"

"Tell him I want to see him. He'll think something has happened to
'Rill or Lottie. I don't care if he is scared. It may do him good."

"I'll go around by the barroom door," said the young engineer, for they had come to the front entrance of the hotel.

Lights were blazing all over the lower floor of the sprawling building; but from the left of the front door came the sound of dancing. Some of the windows were open and the shades were up. Janice, standing in the darkness of the porch, could see the dancers passing back and forth before the windows.

By the appearance of those she saw, she judged that the girls and women were mostly of the mill-hand class, and were from Middletown and Millhampton. She knew the men of the party were of the same class. The tavern yard was full of all manner of vehicles, including huge party wagons which carried two dozen passengers or more. There was a big crowd.

Janice felt, after all, as though she had urged Frank Bowman into the lion's den! The dancers were a rough set. She left the front porch after a while and stole around to the barroom door.

The door was wide open, but there was a half-screen swinging in the opening which hid all but the legs and feet of the men standing at the bar. Here the voices were much plainer. There were a few boys hanging about the doorway, late as the hour was. Janice was smitten with the thought that Marty's boys' club, the foundation society of the Public Library and Reading Room, would better be after these youngsters.

"Why, Simeon Howell!" she exclaimed suddenly. "You ought not to be here. I don't believe your mother knows where you are."

The other boys, who were ragamuffins, giggled at this, and one said to young Howell:

"Aw, Sim! Yer mother don't know yer out, does she? Better run home,
Simmy, or she'll spank ye."

Simeon muttered something not very complimentary to Janice, and moved away. The Howells lived on Hillside Avenue and he was afraid Janice would tell his mother of this escapade.

Suddenly a burst of voices proclaimed trouble in the barroom. She heard Frank Bowman's voice, high-pitched and angry:

"Then give him his violin! You've no right to it. I'll take him away all right; but the violin goes, too!"

"No, we want the fiddle. He was to play for us," said a harsh voice. "There is another feller here can play instead. But we want both violins."

"None of that!" snapped the engineer. "Give me that!"

There was a momentary struggle near the flapping screen. Suddenly Hopewell Drugg, very much disheveled, half reeled through the door; but somebody pulled him back.

"Aw, don't go so early, Hopewell. You're your own man, ain't ye?
Don't let this white-haired kid boss you."

"Let him alone, Joe Bodley!" commanded Bowman again, and Janice, shaking on the porch, knew that it must be the barkeeper who had interfered with Hopewell Drugg's escape.

The girl was terror-stricken; but she was indignant, too. She shrank from facing the half-intoxicated crowd in the room just as she would have trembled at the thought of entering a cage of lions.

Nevertheless, she put her hand against the swinging screen, pushed it open, and stepped inside the tavern door.

CHAPTER XIV

A DECLARATION OF WAR

The room was a large apartment with smoke-cured and age-blackened beams in the ceiling. This was the ancient tap-room of the tavern, which had been built at that pre-Revolutionary time when the stuffed catamount, with its fangs and claws bared to the York State officers, crouched on top of the staff at Bennington—for Polktown was one of the oldest settlements in these "Hampshire Grants."

No noisier or more ill-favored crew, Janice Day thought, could ever have been gathered under the roof of the Inn, than she now saw as she pushed open the screen. Tobacco smoke poisoned the air, floating in clouds on a level with the men's heads, and blurring the lamplight.

There was a crowd of men and boys at the door of the dance hall. At the bar was another noisy line. It was evident that Joe Bodley had merely run from behind the bar for a moment to stop, if he could, Hopewell Drugg's departure. Hopewell was flushed, hatless, and trembling. Whether he was intoxicated or ill, the fact remained that he was not himself.

The storekeeper clung with both hands to the neck of his violin. A greasy-looking, black-haired fellow held on to the other end of the instrument, and was laughing in the face of the expostulating Frank Bowman, displaying a wealth of white teeth, and the whites of his eyes, as well. He was a foreigner of some kind. Janice had never seen him before, and she believed he must be the "foxy-looking" man Frank had previously mentioned.

It was, however, Joe Bodley, whom the indignant young girl confronted when she came so suddenly into the room. Most of the men present paid no attention to the quarreling group at the entrance.

"Come now, Hopewell, be a sport," the young barkeeper was saying. "It's early yet, and we want to hear more of your fiddling. Give us that 'Darling, I Am Growing Old' stuff, with all the variations. Sentiment! Sentiment! Oh, hullo! Evening, Miss! What can I do for you?"

He said this last impudently enough, facing Janice. He was a fat-faced, smoothly-shaven young man—little older than Frank Bowman, but with pouches under his eyes and the score of dissipation marked plainly in his countenance. He had unmeasured impudence and bravado in his eyes and in his smile.

"I have come to speak to Mr. Drugg," Janice said, and she was glad she could say it unshakenly, despite her secret emotions. She would not give this low fellow the satisfaction of knowing how frightened she really was.

Frank Bowman's back was to the door. Perhaps this was well, for he would have hesitated to do just what was necessary had he known Janice was in the room. The young engineer had not been bossing a construction gang of lusty, "two-fisted" fellows for six months without many rude experiences.

"So, you won't let go, eh?" he gritted between his teeth to the smiling foreigner.

With his left hand in his collar, Frank jerked the man toward him, thrust his own leg forward, and then pitched the fellow backward over his knee. This act broke the man's hold upon Drugg's violin and he crashed to the floor, striking the back of his head soundly.

"All right, Mr. Drugg," panted Frank. "Get out."

But it was Janice, still confronting Bodley, that actually freed the storekeeper from his enemies. Her eyes blazed with indignation into the bartender's own. His fat, white hand dropped from Hopewell's arm.

"Oh, if the young lady's really come to take you home to the missus, I s'pose we'll have to let you go," he said, with a nasty laugh. "But no play, no pay, you understand."

Janice drew the bewildered Hopewell out of the door, and Frank quickly followed. Few in the room had noted the incident at all.

The three stood a minute on the porch, the mist drifting in from the lake and wetting them. The engineer finally took the umbrella from Janice and raised it to shelter her.

"They—they broke two of the strings," muttered Hopewell, with thought for nothing but his precious violin.

"You'd better cover it up, or it will be wet; and that won't do any fiddle any good," growled Frank, rather disgusted with the storekeeper.

But there was something queer about Hopewell's condition that both puzzled Janice and made her pity him.

"He is not intoxicated—not as other men are," she whispered to the engineer.

"I don't know that he is," said Frank. "But he's made us trouble enough. Come on; let's get him home."

Drugg was trying to shelter the precious violin under his coat.

"He has no hat and the fiddle bag is gone," said Janice.

"I'm not going back in there," said the civil engineer decidedly. And then he chuckled, adding:

How Janice Day Won

HOW JANICE DAY WON

HELEN BEECHER LONG

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

HOW JANICE DAY WON

CHAPTER I

TROUBLE FROM NEAR AND FAR

CHAPTER II

"TALKY" DEXTER, INDEED!

"JUAN DICAMPA."

CHAPTER III

"THE SEVENTH ABOMINATION"

CHAPTER IV

A RIFT IN THE HONEYMOON

CHAPTER V

"THE BLUEBIRD—FOR HAPPINESS"

CHAPTER VI

THE TENTACLES OF THE MONSTER

CHAPTER VII

SWEPT ON BY THE CURRENT

CHAPTER VIII

REAL TROUBLE

CHAPTER IX

HOW NELSON TOOK IT

CHAPTER X

HOW POLKTOWN TOOK IT

CHAPTER XI

"MEN MUST WORK WHILE WOMEN MUST WEEP"

CHAPTER XII

AN UNEXPECTED EMERGENCY

CHAPTER XIII

INTO THE LION'S DEN

CHAPTER XIV

A DECLARATION OF WAR