ALLIES.

The question concluding the preceding chapter of this history took more than a moment or so to answer, as the reader may suppose. Open-mouthed, as well as open-eared, with their packages, one by one, dropped heedlessly in the grassy path that led up from the little dock, “Obed Probasco and Loreta his wife” halted before Philip, still ejaculating, questioning, and with their astonishment of one kind giving place to that of another as Philip proceeded with his story. He leaned against the fence and, talking now with one, now the other, related his strange experience. The amazed New England couple turned and looked into each other’s eyes at every few sentences, with many a “My gracious me!” “Did ever any body hear the like?” “You don’t mean that you”—did so and so; and by Obed’s frequent “Well, this beats all creation, fur as I know it!” Even Touchtone’s anxiety and their[202] curiosity as to Gerald could not retard their eagerness to learn all the facts.

The couple bore every appearance of homely thrift and simplicity of character; of being, in short, precisely the kind of people Touchtone had hoped. It is, perhaps, needless to say that Philip’s narrative was only of the circumstances since the hour of departure from the Old Province. Mr. Belmont and his persecution he left till a more convenient season.

“An’ you mean to tell me that that poor boy an’ you have been shut up here two days? No other soul about the place? An’ he sick on your hands half the time?” gasped the distressed Mrs. Obed.

“That’s just what I mean,” replied Touchtone.

“Never heard such an astonishin’ story in my life,” repeated Probasco. “What would you ’a’ done, though, if you hadn’t brought up here? Well, it stumps me; that’s all.”

“The hand of the Lord’s in it, no mistake!” declared Mrs. Obed. “I can’t say how welcome you’ve been to any thing an’ to every thing of ours that the old house there’s got inside it. You couldn’t ’a’ better pleased me an’ my[203] husband here, Mr. Tombstone—I mean Mr. Touchtone—I b’lieve you said that was your name, didn’t you?—than by just makin’ free of every blessed corner of it. But dear, dear! If I’d only been to home.”

“Yes, it’s queer luck! Wife an’ I’ve both been over on shore. We had to go across to Chantico to the funeral of a nephew of ours, that died very sudden. We stuck fast there by my bein’ sick. The very time that such a thing as this came straight up to our doors!”

“Queer luck?” repeated the farmer’s wife. “You’d better just say queer Providence, Obed! It’s been awful unhandy for you, Mr. Touchtone—made things so much harder for you an’ the little boy. But I guess if Providence could save you both bein’ dashed overboard with those poor souls in that boat, he could help you to get along with a lot o’ my stale stuff to eat, an’ not a hand to help you to any thing better. Our house wide open, was it? Well, I don’t know where you’d ’a’ got in if’t been us left it last! But,” she continued, turning in sudden vexation to her husband, “that’s the very identical good-bye time old[204] Murtagh’ll play us such a trick! After all his straight up an’ down promises that he’d never leave the place one minute! An’ the cow, too!”

“Yes, I’ve had enough of Murtagh,” assented the farmer, sharply, “an’ I guess we’ll find the obligations on our side, sir. Murtagh’s a man we’ve had on the place to help us, an’ he don’t appear to have no more responsibleness than a grasshopper, let alone his drinking. Wife an’ I’ve been in a worry the hull time we was obliged to stay across the strait. But we didn’t look for his acting this way.”

It appeared that the derelict Murtagh had indeed been left in charge by his master; and that that neglectful hireling of the household must have scarcely waited for his employers’ backs to be turned than he had betaken himself to his own little skiff and gone off shoreward, too. “Most likely, on one of his regular high old sprees!” surmised the exasperated farmer. “This is the end of Pat Murtagh’s working for me!”

“Well, come, come, don’t let’s stand another minute here,” said Mrs. Probasco, realizing that the necessary explanations on both sides were[205] finished; “that boy you’ve got with you mustn’t be left alone. Perhaps he’s not so sick as you think. I hope he’s been asleep while we’ve been puttin’ you through such a long catechism. Let’s all hurry, to make up for it. Obed, don’t you rattle that gate; an’ do you take off your boots before you get to the kitchen door. Thanky, Mr. Touchtone, let them things lay just where they be; there’s nobody to steal ’em, you know. Come along, quick, both of you.”

Leaving Obed to deprive his feet of their squeaky new coverings, Philip and Mrs. Probasco stepped lightly toward the kitchen and on tiptoe drew near the bedroom door.

Sure enough, Gerald’s slumber was profound. The kind-hearted woman followed Touchtone to the bedside in curiosity and pity. She beheld the face of this other of her two uninvited guests with a great stir in her motherly heart and a quick admiration of Gerald’s strange and just now singularly pathetic beauty. With a woman’s soft fingers she ventured to touch his skin, and with intent ear she listened to the sleeper’s breathing.

“He’s better than he was, I guess,” she said in a hushed voice to Philip. “His skin’s[206] damp, an’ he breathes in a good deal healthier way than I expected. Fever’s gone down as soon as it came up, I dare say. How han’some he is!—a reg’lar picture. From New York, did you say?”

Obed looked in at the door in anxious interest. “You stay here with him while I fly around and get things sort of settled and more ready for whatever’s best for us to do.” She glided out, closing the door after her. Smothered sounds, that now and then came from behind it, hinted to Philip as he sat that the flying around had begun to some purpose.

Excellent Mrs. Probasco! Whatever may have been the sentiments of your housekeeper’s heart at such a delayed home-coming and such a finding of your entire domestic establishment taken possession of by boys, and not only an asylum, but a hospital, all at once on your hands—whatever the amusement or vexation at the general upsetting of order on each side, you kept it all to yourself! She darted softly about. “Time enough for talk, by and by,” she said, sharply, to Obed, who was accustomed to act pretty much as she commanded. “Then we’ll talk. We know plenty to start right at.[207] We must just take care of these boys as well as we can, till they’re ready to leave us an’ go ahead on their journey. An’, by the way, Mr. Touchtone says they’d ought to get some sort of word to their friends right away, just as soon as we see how that boy is when he wakes. Of course they’d ought! So I advise you, after you been over the place, an’ done up all those chores old Murtagh’s kindly left for you, to get the boat ready for early to-morrow morning, when you can hurry over to Chantico.”

Obed hastened off, his Sunday go-to-meeting clothes exchanged for his every-day array, and disappeared down the garden with the chickens trooping after him in joyful expectancy; Mrs. Probasco kept at work, now and then slipping in to consult Touchtone or calling him to her.

Daylight began to wane. Gerald slept on, occasionally appearing to be just on the point of awakening, but always drifting back into sounder sleep again. Numerous, and with many hurried and whispered paragraphs of further explanation and questions and answers, were the interviews between Philip and his bustling hostess during the remnant of time[208] before candle-light. With its windows and doors wide open, and the smell of supper coming appetizingly from the kitchen, and with a general sense of human occupation about it, the old dwelling was already like a different place from its former mysterious self. The dog (“You will call him Towzer, but his real name’s Jock,” Mrs. Probasco protested) trotted about. Upper rooms were unsealed, and Touchtone stared about them, meeting nothing to excite his curiosity except one or two quaint and battered pieces of furniture that seemed in keeping with the old house rather than with any modern inmates.

And before long came history, bit by bit, from Mrs. Probasco or Obed. As Philip had expected, the farm and premises on Chantico Island were not owned, but rented, by them—had been so for many years, through an agent.

The dignified, isolated old dwelling, half farm-house, half mansion, still belonged in a family line once distinguished in the county for wealth and social position—the Jennisons. Other people might live in it, but it was always haunted by the atmosphere of stately earlier days and aristocratic occupants.

[209]

Who were, or had been, the Jennisons? Great had they been once, in that part of the State. Early Jennisons had bought the island and named it “Jennison’s Island,” in Revolutionary days. One famous grandfather had built the mansion and fitted it with fine old-fashioned furnishings, and loved it, and lived and died in it. In his day this ancient roof had sheltered many a guest of famous name. Under it gay levees had come off, and sumptuous dinners and country merry-makings, and lively weddings and solemn funerals. Two of the belles in th............