Wendell tumbled into his clothes and tiptoed, as noiselessly as in him lay, down the broad old-fashioned stairs, and still another flight to the basement. He did not dare risk the noise of the front door, so he emerged from the kitchen into the back alley, and thence to the street. Not a person was in sight. Only a black and white cat prowled the gutters. A strange silence covered the city. Even the surging, seething roar of West End children at play, which rises all the evening, was stilled. Wendell’s running footsteps, beating rhythmic time on the brick pavement of Old Boston, alone broke the stillness. No traffic policemen presided over Beacon Street. He gained the Common, skirted the Frog Pond, and faced Flag Staff Hill and, brave boy though he was, he did tremble in his boots.
The frequent electric lights along the thoroughfares that bound the Common drew glowing lines of light around it; and there were bright lights at the intersection of the walks. But here, on the gentle slope of Flag Staff Hill, under the tall elms, a great black shadow lay. No Boston boy, born and reared among the historic traditions of the Commonwealth, but knows the somber legend of this site, that under this soil lie buried the Quakers and the pirates whom Puritan zeal executed on this spot in the early days of the colony. Cold chills ran up and down Wendell’s spine as he stood here in the shadow and listened for the stroke of midnight. Presently it boomed forth from the old church on Mount Vernon Street—the same metal voice that struck the hour to the poet Longfellow when he stood on the bridge at midnight. Now was the fateful moment! And do you know, whether it was magic or whether it was scare I can’t say, but Wendell couldn’t for the life of him remember that charm that was to summon the Kobold! The striking of the clock, bringing with it the memory of that well known poem which he had learned in school, had driven every bit of verse out of his mind, except his Cousin Virginia’s irreverent version of the same poem:—
“I stood on the bridge at midnight,
As the clocks were striking three,
And a cabman drove across the bridge
And hitched his horse to me.”
On the eleventh stroke of the old church bell, the Park Street Church at Brimstone Corner took up the echo. Wendell by a mighty effort recalled the charm before the second sonorous voice had died on the still air.
“Green hill, green hill, open to me.
I would the wise old Kobold see,”
repeated Wendell.
Suddenly another electric light on the path below sprang into brightness, and sent a light streak across the shadow of the elms. For a moment Wendell fancied, and decided that it must be only fancy, that the ground trembled slightly under his feet. Then, before his eyes there came a crack in the earth, as if a giant seed were germinating and pushing up a shoot. The crack widened. It became a tunnel extending apparently into the very heart of the hill; and suddenly, like a cut moving-picture film that jerks a sudden change upon the screen, he saw that the mouth of the tunnel was occupied by an unexpected grotesque figure that could be none other than the Kobold.
Wendell had expected that the Kobold would look somewhat like the Pixie, but they had nothing in common except smallness of stature. The Kobold was about the size of a six-year-old, and had white hair and white whiskers and a very long white beard that reached to his waist. He appeared to be wearing a belted velvet suit, with full sleeves and breeches, and he was very stout and stocky.
“Who summons me?” he said with dignity.
“I do,” said Wendell advancing boldly, now that there was need for action. “I should like to know how to free the Beauteous Maiden from your spell.”