MR. PERCIVAL had spent a busy half-day in the open air, superintending matters on his farm. There were early potatoes to be dug, heavily laden branches of apple and pear trees to be propped up, and a small, low-lying piece of meadow-land to be mown. Slowly the deliberate oxen had plodded to and fro, with the heavy cart creaking and thumping behind them; while Tim or Ruel tramped beside, urging them on with an occasional “Haw! Ha’ Bright! Gee! Star!”
Mr. Percival was a good farmer, and nothing “shiftless” could be found on his place. The barn was always fresh and sweet, fences and walls upright; and even the pigs seemed to enjoy a clean, dry corner in their pen where they could lie in the sunshine and grunt contentedly in their sleep.
In the afternoon the men had their work well laid out, and the master retired for an hour or two, as was often his custom, to the “Den.” The little windows, above and on the side, were wide open, the air that floated in was cooled by the shadows of the many-elled old house. Now and then came the faint sounds of Tim’s encouraging shout to his oxen, a cackle or long-drawn crow from the poultry-yard, the bark of a dog, digging at a squirrel-hole under the wall.
Mr. Percival stretched himself out comfortably in an old cane-seat chair, having taken from its shelf a copy of Thackeray’s “Henry Esmond,” and began to read. As the story was perfectly familiar to him, he opened the book in the middle, striking into the narrative where Colonel Esmond—one of the finest gentlemen in story—went to the wars under gallant old General Webb.
The air was soft and warm, and the out-door rustle of wind and bough so soothing, after the hard forenoon’s work, that Mr. Percival’s fancy began to play him queer tricks. He thought that lovely Beatrix Esmond was nodding and smiling to him through the little casement, and he was about to speak to her when he returned to consciousness with a start, laughed to himself as he saw the bit of apple-bough, with sunlight playing on the leaves, that had tricked him; fixed his eyes on the book again, read six lines, and went sound asleep.
His dreams still followed the course of the book he had been reading. He thought he was in England, and that Ruel was the exiled heir to the throne, whom it was his business to support; but that aunt Puss persisted in wearing diamonds at court and purring constantly (the maltese kittens had trotted into the Den and one of them jumped into Mr. Percival’s lap) while Ruel himself proceeded to ride about the room on a base-ball bat, in a manner quite inconsistent with royal dignity. Beatrix then came on the scene, but she talked with a brogue and confided to him, Mr. Percival, that her real name was Bridget, and that she had a yoke of oxen which were trained to gallop off with a fire-engine at every alarm. In fact, the oxen (who had been all the time eating hay behind Ruel’s throne) now advanced, and holding a hose-pipe in their paws—they were now very large red cats, he noticed carelessly—began to play on the fire.
The curious part of it was that the hose-pipe did not play water at all, but cannon-balls. Indeed, it was not hose, on closer view, but cannon, which aunt Puss, commanding the English forces, was firing against the French.
Boom! Boom! went the cannon. The noise of the conflict was terrible. Aunt Puss stopped purring and rode off on one of the cats, which were now oxen once more.
Boom! Boom! Boom! It fairly shook the room—no, the fort—that is—yes—what!—could it be? Mr. Percival rubbed his eyes and sat upright in his chair. Thackeray had dropped upon the floor; a few gray hairs in his lap, and a fading sensation of warmth in the same locality, betrayed the recent presence of Kittie. But—
Boom! boom! boom! The cannonading went on! Now fairly awake, Mr. Percival recognized the fact that there was an energetic pounding against the floor directly beneath his feet.
“Bless me!” exclaimed the good man aloud, jumping up and surveying the carpet suspiciously, “what can it be?”
The cellar, he knew, extended under the Den. That is, the base of the old chimney had been there, and—ah! that long disused passage! The little stone chamber under the arches, where one could stifle so easily, the girls had thought! A muffled cry, sounding strangely like “Help!” now accompanied the blows, which seemed lessening in force.
Hesitating no longer, and dismissing from his mind the silly ghost-stories that had been handed down in the family, from old times, he knelt and tore up the strip of straw matting that covered the spot at which the blows seemed to be directed; at the same time knocking back, in answer.
“It may be some of the boys’ fun,” he said to himself, “but it won’t do to run any risks.”
The straw matting being removed, there appeared a square, dimly marked out in the flooring, by the edges of boards which had apparently been let in, long after the neighboring portions.
“The old trap-door!”
Mr. Percival recognized the place instantly; at the same time he was puzzled to know how to act. For the door had long ago been removed, and these short sections of planks nailed down in its place.
“Hold on!” he shouted. “I’ll be back in a minute!”
Very nimbly, for a man of his years, he hurried out of the room, and presently returned with tools—an axe, a large, heavy chisel, a saw, and a kind of sharp-pointed hammer, like an ice-pick. With the aid of these, he soon had the end of one board, then another, pried up. It must be confessed that he was startled by the apparition that emerged from the opening thus effected. Could that be Tom! A face, deadly white, but streaked with perspiration and dust, and bleeding from a bruise on the forehead; clothes, hands, every part of him, covered with dirt; eyes half-blinded by the sudden light, form trembling from head to foot; it was altogether a strange figure to come up through uncle Will’s floor—but Tom it was, beyond a doubt.
“O uncle Will,” he sobbed brokenly, the tears running over his mud-stained cheeks, “I’m so sorry. Here’s the watch!”
And to Mr. Percival’s utter bewilderment, the boy laid Pet’s little watch in his hands, safe and whole.
It was a long story, but Tom managed to tell it. At the very first, he spoke with a shudder of the Indian, and Mr. Percival despatched Ruel and Tim to the woods, rightly judging that the pursuit of Tom had ceased. The men returned within a few minutes and reported that Sebattis had been seen limping away toward the road, covered with mud. He had turned and shaken his fist at them, but on the whole seemed more frightened than angry, and mainly anxious to get as far away from the farm as possible.
“And now about the watch,” said Mr. Percival gravely, but kindly, as soon as the farm-hands had left the room.
Tom hung his head still lower, but launched manfully into his confession.
“I took it out of Pet’s pocket for fun,” he said, “very soon after we started on our walk, that morning. Then I tucked it into Kitty’s sacque, with the chain hanging out.”
“Where Moll saw it!” exclaimed Mr. Percival, a light breaking in on him.
“Yes, sir, I suppose so. After that, we came to the Indians, and Pet fell into the pond, and I forgot all about it. Just as I was going to bed, I heard the girls say something about a watch being lost, and it came to me that it was my fault. I felt awfully about it that night, and hardly slept a bit. Next morning I tried to get a chance to tell you about it—do you remember, sir? but you were busy; and instead of making you hear, or owning up at once, about my carelessness and foolish trick, I thought I would put it off; perhaps the watch would be found; perhaps the Indians took it, after all.”
“But why didn’t you tell me frankly, that afternoon, my boy?”
“I was ashamed to; and after the trial, it was all the harder. Then—I found the watch! It was tucked into an old stump, near the spot where the Indian babies, the little pappooses, had been playing. I suppose one of them had picked it up and hidden it there.
“Now was the time, I know, sir, when I ought to have told. But every minute made it harder. I was afraid Randolph would be ashamed of me, and the girls wouldn’t like me, and you would be angry for all the trouble I had made, and the expense of the sheriffs and everything. Besides,” continued the boy eagerly, “really and truly, sir, I did mean, every day, to give the watch back—every day. But—somehow—it grew harder and harder, and I didn’t. It began to seem now as if I had stolen it!”
It was a poor, miserable story of a weak boy’s foolishness; for Tom was weak, and cowardly, too. A little manliness at the start would have prevented all the shame and wretchedness.
Don’t you see how he could do it? Do you wonder how he could wish to keep the secret, for such silly reasons?
Stop a moment. Are you quite sure that you yourself would have done differently? Have you not, even now, some little uncomfortable secret hidden in your heart, that you had rather father or mother would not know? If you have, let me beg you to turn down a leaf, or put in a book-mark, at this very page, and go this moment to those dear hearts who are so ready to hear everything and forgive everything with that wonderful love of theirs which is most of anything on earth, like the love of our Father above.
Tom kept nothing back, but related all his faults, his concealments, his misgivings. At length his narrative reached the point at which we stopped in the last chapter, where he felt the passage narrowing, and the Indian following behind.
“I made one more push,” he said, “and this time wasn’t I glad to find that the tunnel was just a little larger? It was like an hour-glass; and I had passed the narrowest part, in the middle! As soon as I was sure of this, I felt about for some means to block the passage of the Indian. I dug with all my might into the earth, and pretty soon struck a good-sized rock. This almost filled the space, and, with the loose dirt around it, I hoped would discourage Sebattis—as I guess it did.
“I struck my forehead on a sharp stone and made it bleed, though I didn’t know that till just now. At the end of the tunnel was a little stone chamber and a half a dozen wooden steps leading up to the floor. These were so old that they crumbled when I stepped on them; but I managed to climb up on the side wall, and strike with a rock on the boards overhead. I was afraid every moment that the Indian might be upon me, and oh! I was so glad when I heard your voice!”
What further words passed between the repentant boy and his uncle, Tom never told. An hour later he came out of the Den, walked up to Pet (who had returned from her ride) with a white face but firm step, and placing the watch and chain in her hands, said, with trembling lips,
“I took it for fun, Pet, and was ashamed to tell—”
He could get no further, and Pet, after one glance at his face, forgave him on the spot. Nor did she ever ask him a single question about her lost watch.