"What was that?" I said, sleepily.
"Oh, nothing," replied Halse. "The wind rattled the window, I guess."
I recollect thinking, that there was no wind that night, and I believe I said so, but I was very sleepy, and although I thought it queer that Halse should be sitting up to hear the wind, I soon fell into a drowse again and probably snored, for my room-mate often accused me of that offense.
I had not fallen soundly asleep, however, when I again heard the tapping at the window. A sly impulse, suggested probably by Halstead's demeanor, prompted me to play 'possum and pretend that I had not waked this time.
I even went on breathing hard, on that pretense.
Halstead was still sitting on the bed. He listened for a moment to my counterfeit breathing, then slid easily off and approached the window.
It was already raised a little and rested on a New Testament which Gram always kept in our room. Halse gently shoved the window higher and put out his head. The air of the quiet country night was very still, and I heard a hoarse whisper from the ground outside, although I could not distinguish the words.
"Yes," whispered Halstead in reply.
Then the whisper below resumed.
"I don't want to do that," said Halstead.
The whisper outside rejoined, at some length.
"Perhaps," answered Halse.
The other whisper continued.
"When?" asked Halstead.
The whisper replied for some moments.
"By eleven," Halse then said. "Not before."
Then there was a good deal of whispering beneath, and Halstead replied, "Well, I'll be there."
Not long after, he crept back to bed, I meantime continuing my fraudulent hard breathing, although by this time I was very much awake and consumed by curiosity and suspicion. For at least half an hour, Halse tossed and turned about, seeming to be very restless and uneasy; in fact, he was still turning, when I fell asleep in very truth.
When I first waked next morning, I did not recollect this circumstance of the previous evening; in fact, it did not come into my mind till we had gone out to milk the cows. I then began to think it over earnestly and continued doing so throughout the forenoon. At first I had no thought of telling any one what I had heard, for although Halse had recently threatened me, I did not wish to play the spy on him.
But the idea that something wrong was on foot grew very strong within me. The more I pondered the circumstances the more certain I felt of it.
At length I concluded to speak of it to Theodora; for some reason my choice of a confidante fell instinctively on her.
We were "cultivating" the corn that forenoon with old Sol, and hoeing it for the second time. Finally, I made an excuse to go to the house for a jug of sweetened water. While preparing it, I found opportunity to call Theodora into the wood-shed, and first exacting a promise of secrecy from her, I told her what had occurred the previous evening.
She seemed surprised at first, then terrified, and I went back to the field with my jug, leaving her greatly disturbed.
When we came in at noon, she motioned me aside in the pantry and said hurriedly, that I must tell Addison and ask him to speak with her after dinner.
Twice during the afternoon we saw Theodora out in sight of the corn-field, and I knew that she was anxiously looking for a word or sign from Addison. At last, towards supper time, taking advantage of a few minutes when Halse had gone to the horse pasture with old Sol, I briefly mentioned the thing to Addison and proffered Theodora's request for an interview.
Addison listened with a frown. "I think I know who that was under the window," said he. "Halse has been running round with him, on the sly, for a month, and they've got some kind of a 'dido' planned out."
"Suppose it is anything bad?" I queried.
"Oh, I don't know," said Ad, impatiently. "Bad enough, I'll warrant you.
If it is the fellow I think it is, he is an out-and-out 'tough' and a blackguard. One of those chaps that are hanging round Tibbett's rum shop out at the Corners. You may be sure that a man of that stamp isn't whispering around under windows, for any good."
"Why, you don't suppose they were planning to steal, or rob, do you?" I asked, much startled.
"Who knows," replied Addison, coolly. "Halse is a strange boy. He is just rattle-headed and foolish enough to get coaxed into some scrape that will disgrace him and all the rest of us. I never saw a fellow in my life so lacking in good sense.
"Oh yes, I'll talk with Doad," continued Ad, somewhat impatiently. "Doad is a good girl. She thinks moral suasion and generosity will do everything. But if I had Halse to manage, I would put him under lock and key, every night," said Addison, striking his hoe sharply into the ground.
"And if we only let him alone, I guess he will get there, of his own accord," he added with a fine irony.
I saw quite plainly that, as Theodora had once said to me, Addison had no patience with Halstead and his but too evident weakness of character.
"I don't like to run to the Old Squire with all that I see and hear,"
Addison went on, in a low tone, for Gramp was hoeing only a few steps behind us, and Halstead was now coming back from the pasture. "For they all think now that I don't like Halse and that I am too hard on him. But they will find out who is in the right about it."
After supper I saw Theodora in earnest conversation with Addison, out in the garden by the bee-house. Doad was a great friend of the bees; if she were wanted and not in the house, we generally looked first for her in the garden, in the vicinity of the bee-house.
Later in the evening, after we had finished milking and were going into the dairy with our pails, Addison said to me that it was best, he thought, to say nothing to the old folks just yet. "Doad wants me to watch to-night and, if Halse gets up to go off anywhere, to stop him and coax him back to his room.
"It isn't a job I like," continued Addison, "but perhaps we had better try it; Doad thinks so.
"So if you can keep awake, till ten or eleven, you had better," Addison went on. "If he gets up to start off, ask him where he is going, and if he really starts, come and call me, and we will go after him. I can dress in a minute."
To this proposal I agreed, and I may add here that at about eleven o'clock we surprised Halse in the act of stealing away to the Corners, but after some parley and a scuffle with him, succeeded in getting him back to bed, and I lodged with Addison.
It was but a short night thenceforward till five o'clock in the morning.
Before going down-stairs we peeped into Halse's room, to see if he were there still. He lay soundly asleep. Addison closed the door softly.
"Poor noodle," said he, as we got the milk pails. "Let him snooze awhile. I suppose it isn't really his fault that he has got such a head on his shoulders. He is rather to be pitied, after all. He is his own worst enemy.
"I've heard," Ad continued in a low tone, as we opened the barnyard gate, "that Aunt Ysabel, Halse's mother, was a sort of queer, tempery, flighty person."
The Old Squire had got out a little in advance of us and sat milking.
"Good morning, boys," said he, looking up cheerily, as we passed.
"Another fine day. The whole country looks bright and smiling. Grand year for crops."
"We will not say a word to him about our scrape with Halse last night,"
Addison remarked to me. "There's no use plaguing him with it. We cost him so much and give him so much trouble, that I am ashamed to let him know of this."
When we took in the milk, Theodora was grinding coffee (and how good it smelled! She had just roasted it in the stove oven). "We got him back all right, with no great difficulty," Addison whispered to her, in passing.
"Oh, I'm so glad," she replied.
Halse had not come down; and pretty soon we heard the Old Squire call him, at which Addison laughed a little as he glanced at me. At breakfast Halstead looked somewhat glum; in fact, he did not look at Addison and me at all, if he could avoid it.
That forenoon we hoed corn again and talked a good deal of the Fourth of July celebration which was to come off at the village the following week.
Toward noon, however, word was sent us that the husband of a cousin of the Old Squire's who resided in the town adjoining, to the eastward, had suddenly died, and that the funeral was to be at two o'clock that afternoon.