The yard, or garden, was then viewed, as suggested; and certainly it did not seem as though care or labor had been bestowed on it for many years. It was overrun with a growth of luxuriant weeds and thistles; and Charles,—the head plotter till Henry should arrive,—after escaping, by a hair’s breadth, from being swallowed up in an out-of-the-way and only partially covered old well, concluded that they had had glory enough for one day, and proposed that they should go home.
So the heroic four turned their faces homewards, and jogged on, plotting and exultant.
That night one of them was troubled with fitful and uneasy dreams, in which he saw Marmaduke struggle manfully with frightful monsters, fashioned of old clothes and villains; whilst hideous French whales soared overhead, winked their wicked eyes, and swore they would catch every boy and dismember him in the deserted and spectre-peopled house.
When the dreamer of this dream awoke, he muttered: “Well, this is a presentiment; but, to prove that presentiments are humbugs, I’ll go through with this plot of ours, if—”
Further comment is needless.
It is cruel in a romancer to anticipate, but sometimes it is necessary in order to make both ends meet. In this case, it is justifiable; therefore it may be said that as soon as the holidays began, frequent journeys were made to ‘Nobody’s House,’ and the sound of the hammer and the saw, together with strains of popular airs, rang out in its deserted chambers. The plotters worked with a will, and with the utmost disregard for the noxious vermin which abounded in their midst, and which they did not attempt to exterminate. Their efforts were rewarded; for the house was so transformed that the ghosts, who, in their heart of heart, they fancied inhabited it, would have failed to recognize it.
In the upper story a dangerous place was found, where a person might fall through the floor. This was marked out and avoided.
In this world everything proves useful one day or another; and this house, after lying idle all these years, after being a nuisance to its owner, a by-word in the community and a reproach to it, was at last to prove of the greatest usefulness to these boys and to the writer of this history.
It is now in order to return and chronicle the events that took place before the holidays opened.