Reels and Spindles: A Story of Mill Life

by Evelyn Raymond

With a kiss and a hand pressure, which revealed the depth of their friendship, Mary departed, and Amy turned to the open window to watch the cloud shadows drift over the lovely valley, wherein the Ardsley leaped and sparkled. As she gazed, thinking of many things, she became conscious, in an idle sort of fashion, that Fayette had passed out of doors, and was walking close beneath, or along the building's wall, and in a stealthy manner, suspicious in itself.

"Heigho! What now, I wonder. He's up to some mischief, I'm afraid. How queer he is at times. Why, even when he was told that Mr. Wingate knew him for the person who horsewhipped him last Christmas and had refused to take any notice of it, except to thank Uncle Fred for his rescue—even then Fayette would not say that he thought my cousin good. All he did say was: 'Well, he better not. He knows too much. If he locked me up or had me fined, I'd lick him again soon's I got out. He ain't no fool. But that don't make me feel any different. He ain't jailed me, but he's got my money. Mine; I dug it out the cellar an' blasted, to the risk o' my life. He keeps it, when he's got a bank full, they say. Kept Balaam, too, or give him to one of them Metcalf youngsters. Well, his time'll come. I'm not forgettin', if I do keep my mouth shut for a spell.'"

Recalling this speech, Amy tried to put herself in the half-wit's place, which effort made her pity him the more, yet watch his present man[oe]uvres none the less closely. But presently he disappeared in a distant lower doorway, and she forgot him and returned to her happy day-dreams.

Fayette had bided his time. On such an afternoon, at such an hour, he judged that nobody would be in the mill building save the distant watchman and that indefatigable toiler, Archibald Wingate, with whom was the half-wit's present business. He had seen the last whisk of Mary's blue skirt disappearing above the back-stairway, and, knowing that Amy and she were waiting for Hallam, concluded that the trio had departed together.

So he entered the little basement door gleefully. All seemed propitious, yet he meant once more and carefully to examine the preparations he had made, to see if there was any flaw anywhere. He was so absorbed, so excited, that he scarcely breathed as he crept slowly along the inside of the wall, just as a moment before he had passed along its outer surface. At one spot he paused and tried a simple-looking tube that had been brought from the outside, through a convenient aperture, into the inside of the building. The thing looked harmless, yet it ran along the groove where the floor and wall joined, clear into that cheery inner office, where Archibald Wingate sat that very moment, signing his name to one of the most generous letters of his life.

"There," he reflected, as he leaned back in his chair and tossed aside his pen; "there, that is foolish enough to satisfy even my impractical small kinswoman, bless her! A thousand dollars isn't much, but it's—a thousand dollars; and when I double it by another thousand, which has never been buried by any ancient ancestress, it makes a tidy sum for a foundling lad. Poor 'Bony,' he hates me like poison. I wonder, when he finds out that I've done this for him, when I place it in his hands myself, and tell him, furthermore, that I have asked Fred Kaye to send west for several more of those burros he's given us a sample of, and that one is for the 'Rep-Dem-Prob' himself—I wonder, will there rise in his stunted heart some perception of what life should mean; of what it shall mean, during my last brief hold of it, to me? and all because of a girl's bright trustfulness and love."

It was a day for musings. Even Fayette, intent on evil, had his own—like Amy and the lonely old man in the silent office. He wondered, pausing for a moment, how "it would feel to be blown up. That day when I found the money he's took from me, if I'd had a bigger charge of powder, would I ha' knowed what struck me, if it had gone off sudden? Hmm. I almost hate to do it. He seems—he'll never guess, though, and he hadn't any right. He's been again' me from the first. I'll do it. He hain't had no mercy—I won't, neither."

So he crept softly back to the low entrance, and stooping, struck a match. The match burned well, and in an instant had communicated its own flame to the cheap fuse that ran along the wall. In the far-off office, concealed beneath the mill owner's desk, there was already waiting a powerful explosive, which Fayette had purloined from the store of the workmen who were excavating for the new wing of the building. In a moment more the fuse would have burned unnoticed to its fatal end, and an awful crime, of whose enormity the dull criminal had no real comprehension, would have been committed.

But Hallam had caught the prevailing mood. He, like the others left lingering about the silent building, had fallen into a reverie which, judging by his bright expression, was full of happiness. For many months, and for the first time in his life, he had kept a secret from his father and Amy. If that can be called a secret which was known also to Cleena, to Uncle Frederic, and to Fayette, upon whose aid alone the success of this mystery had depended. The lad had been faithful. At most times his help had been rendered freely, out of love and sympathy; at others there had been compulsion on Cleena's side and from the other one of the quartette, who had himself suffered false blame and the disgrace of suspicion because of the secret.