Cole of Spyglass Mountain

by Arthur Preston Hankins

“No, sir—I never heard o’ that.”

The superintendent stared at Joshua until he was vastly uncomfortable, but the fact is that the man did not see the boy before him at all. Presently he roused himself, assumed a businesslike attitude, and began a string of platitudes to the effect that Joshua would profit by obeying all of the rules and regulations. This in a droning, parrotlike voice, and when he had finished he pressed a bell button and a boy much older than Joshua, dressed in uniform, came into the room. He stood waiting while the superintendent scribbled a note and folded it.

“This is Number Fifty-six thirty-five,” said the superintendent. “Take him in hand and outfit him. Then turn him over to the Juvenile Department, and give this note to Mr. Clegg.”

“Yes, sir,” said the monitor, and looked toward Joshua to indicate that he was to follow him.

In a stuffy room in the main building, where there were great piles of uniforms on curtain-protected shelves, the monkey-capped boy and two assistants outfitted the newcomer, causing him to strip, whereupon they made caustic remarks about his bared anatomy. They rifled his pockets, found a pocket knife, and quarreled over it among themselves. The new ownership finally settled upon, they deposited Joshua’s old clothes in a locker, and while he was donning the new the largest of the boys smacked him smartly on the bare body with the flat of his hand and enjoined him to make greater speed. Joshua turned, the battle fire of his fighting ancestors in his gray-blue eyes. His fists doubled, and he assumed an attitude of defense, while the three monitors grinned at him tantalizingly. Then Joshua remembered the words of Detective Dickinson: “Don’t fight back. Stand for anything they hand you, and you’ll win out in the end.” So, while the three old-timers laughed and winked, he backed up against the wall and continued his dressing. It was alum-bitter medicine, but already he was planning how to run away and continue his interrupted journey westward. He dared not fight back and perhaps jeopardize his chances of escape.

When he was ready he was taken through long corridors and out at a side door, thence across a wide space of ground to another brick building. Here, before long, Joshua found himself in the presence of Mr. Beaver Clegg, head of the Juvenile Department.

Mr. Beaver Clegg, Joshua thought, was the owner of the ugliest face he had ever seen on a human being. He was thin, but not exceptionally tall. He wore a baggy gray suit, and his linen, in its soiled state, did not set a good example for his wards. Joshua looked at him curiously as he read the note from the superintendent. He noticed the nose, twisted to one side, and bumpy at the end; the curious eyes, neutral in color but inclining toward slate-blue, and cocked out of all proportion, one of them appearing much smaller than the other and set lower in the face; the thick lips, corrugated and crooked, contrasting strangely with the bony face; the square, hairless jaw; the swarthy, mottled skin.

But when this ugliest of men looked up at Joshua and smiled a great transformation took place. The colorless eyes seemed to glow with warmth. The twisted lips somehow seemed to straighten miraculously, and there was nothing hideous about the big, yellow uneven teeth that showed between them. Joshua was reminded of the face of Abraham Lincoln, that tall, gaunt man whose very homeliness endears him to the heart of the nation that he served. Joshua did not know it until later, but he had been placed in the care of Beaver Clegg simply because his mother had been a Florence. He rightly belonged in a department for older wards, but the superintendent knew his subordinates, and had conferred this boon upon the son of the daughter of the founder of the institution.

“Well, Joshua,” said Mr. Clegg, in a voice that went with his face when the smile was upon it, “what have you been up to? Sit down there and tell me all about it. Don’t be backward; don’t be afraid. Just begin at the beginning and tell me the truth. And with me, Joshua, the truth always pays. But more of that later. Now tell me your story. You’ll be talking to your friend.”

It was a long story, and at first the boy talked haltingly. But as he saw the deep, kindly interest in Clegg’s eyes, as he leaned his elbows on the desk and cupped his battle-ship chin in his bony hands, his confidence grew and he talked more freely. When he began speaking of the adventure with the slug Mr. Clegg suddenly scraped forward his chair and leaned closer. His eyes seemed to grow darker and darker until their indifferent blue had changed to a deep, velvety purple, as a cat’s eyes change with its varying moods.