Not a ripple of a leaf showed above him as he passed straight up the mountain to the old house, for the watchful eye looking out to see. Billy was a great deal like an Indian in his goings and comings, and Billy was wary. Had he not seen the winking light? Billy was taking no chances. Smoothly folded in his hip pocket he carried a leaf of the New York paper wherein was offered a large reward for information concerning jewels and bonds and other property taken from the Shafton country home on pretense of setting free the son. Also there was a stupendous reward offered for information concerning the son, and Billy's big thought as he crept along under the trees with all the stealth of a wild thing, was that here was another thirty pieces of silver multiplied many times, and he wasn't going to take it! He could, but he wouldn't! He was going to give these folks the information they wanted, but he wasn't going to get the benefit of it. That was going to be his punishment. He had been in hell long enough, and he was going to try to pull himself out of it by his good works. And he would do it in such a way that there wouldn't be any chance of the reward being pressed upon him. He would just fix it so that nobody would particularly know he had anything to do with the clews. That was Billy all over. He never did a thing half way. But first he must find out if there was anybody about the old house. He couldn't get away from those three winks he had seen.
So, feeling almost relieved for a moment Billy left his wheel on guard and crept around to his usual approach at the back before he came out in the open. And then he crept cautiously to the cellar window where he had first entered the house. He gripped Pat's old gun with one hand in his pocket, and slid along like a young snake, taking precaution not to appear before the cellar window lest his shadow should fall inside. He flattened himself at last upon the grass a noticeless heap of gray khaki trousers and brown flannel shirt close against the house. One would have to lean far out of a window to see him, and there he lay and listened awhile. And presently from the depths beyond that grated window he heard a little scratch, scratch, scratch, tap, tap, tap, scratch, tap, scratch, tap, steadily, on for sometime like his heart beats, till he wasn't sure he was hearing it at all, and thought it might be the blood pounding through his ears, so strange and uncanny it seemed. Then, all at once there came a puff, as if a long breath had been drawn, like one lifting a heavy weight, and then a dull thud. A brief silence and more scratching in soft earth now.
He listened for perhaps an hour, and once a footstep grated on the cement floor, and coals rattled down as if they were disturbed. Once too a soft chirrup from up above like the call of a wood bird, only strangely human and the sounds in the cellar ceased altogether, till another weird note sounded and they began again.
When he was satisfied with his investigations he began slowly to back away from his position, lifting each atom of muscle slowly one at a time till his going must have been something like the motion picture of a bud unfolding, and yet as silent as the flower grows he faded away from that cellar window back into the green and no one was the wiser. An hour later the watchful eye at the little half moon opening in the shutter might have seen a little black speck like a spider whizzing along on the Highroad and turning down toward Sabbath Valley, but it never would have looked as if it came from Stark mountain, for it was headed straight from Lone Valley. Billy was going home to get cleaned up and make a visit to the parsonage. If that guy was still there he'd see how quick he would leave! If there wasn't one way to make him go there was another, and Billy felt that he held the trick.
But as fate would have it Billy did not have to get cleaned up, for Miss Severn stood on the front porch looking off toward the mountains with that wistful expression of hers that made him want to laugh and cry and run errands for her anywhere just to serve her and make her smile, and she waved her hand at Billy, and ran down to the gate to speak to him.
“Billy, I want to ask you,—If you were to see Mark Carter—of course you mightn't, but then you might—you'll let him know that we are of course his friends, and that anything he wants done, if he'll just let us know—”
“Sure!” said Billy lighting off his wheel with a downward glance at his dirty self, all leaves and dust and grime, “Sure, he'd know that anyhow.”
“Well, Billy, I know he would, but I mean, I thought perhaps you might find something we could do,—something maybe without letting him know. He's very proud about asking any help you, know, and he wouldn't want to bother us. You may discover something he—needs—or wants done—while—he is away—and maybe we could help him out, Father or Mother or I. You'll remember, won't you Billy?”
“Sure!” said Billy again feeling the warm glow of her friendliness and loyalty to Mark, and digging his toes into the turf embarrassedly. Then he looked up casually as he was about to leave:
“Say is there a guy here named Shafton? Man from n'Yark?”