Dannie went to bed, but not to sleep. He could not forget his grandfather’s mighty anger; and the old man’s declaration, made with such terrible emphasis, kept ringing in his ears, “No better deed could be done by any one than to pull their accursed stakes from the ground and fling ’em, one and all, into the water of the brook.”
After a while he rose and looked out of the window. The country was flooded with moonlight. The woods and fields were bathed in it. The willows that marked the sinuous course of the brook were transformed into shivering masses of silver. The public road, leading to the west, wound, luminously gray, through the meadow and under the trees. Black, in the shadowed face of the ridge, lay the mouth of the gap, and white and clear-cut against it shone out the marble column that marked the sacred grave. Dannie imagined that he could almost see the line of stakes set by the engineers, starting at the big rock in the potato field, cutting down by the corner of the meadow, across the road, through the graveyard, and into the gap. He wondered how long it would be before the railroad would be built, before the trains would be rolling by, before the greensward of the burial place would be cut and slashed and torn by the picks and spades of workmen, before the graves themselves would tremble and shrink beneath the strain and stress of ponderous engines and thundering trains. The thing was too dreadful to contemplate. And again, more clear, more distinct, more impressive than ever, the words of Abner Pickett rang through his mind, “No better deed could be done by any one than to pull their accursed stakes from the ground and fling ’em, one and all, into the water of the brook.”
Then there came into his mind a thought that, all in a moment, set his heart throbbing tumultuously, and his breast heaving with excitement. Well, why not? Abner Pickett had declared that no better deed could be done by any one. If that were true, was not Abner Pickett’s grandson the one to do it? And if it were to be done, could there be a more favorable time in which to do it than this glorious moonlight night? If, when the morning dawned, those hated stakes had disappeared, would not Abner Pickett be again in possession of every right in his own land, with the power to keep it; and would not the insult to the dead be properly avenged?
The more Dannie thought of the scheme, the more firmly it took possession of his mind, the more thoroughly he became convinced that it was right and just for him to carry out the desire so forcibly expressed by his grandfather. From the very nature of the enterprise it was apparent to him that he could take no one into his confidence. Whatever was done must be done by him alone. And there was no time to lose. He began, mechanically, to put on his clothes, and finished the task in nervous haste. He crept down the stairs in his stocking feet, with his shoes in his hand, found his cap, slid back the bolt on the hall door, and passed out on the front porch. Max, the dog, came from the woodhouse, barking softly, and, leaping up on him, tried to lick his face.
“Down, old fellow, down! No, you can’t go. Back to your box; back!”
He led the way back to the woodhouse, ordered the dog to his bed again, found his own hatchet, and then passed hurriedly down the path to the gate. Once in the road, he began to run, and did not stop till he had reached the fence marking the western limit of the potato field. He climbed hastily over and began to hunt for the last stake set by the surveyors. When he found it he loosened it with two blows of his hatchet, pulled it from the ground, and started back to find the next one. This also he removed, and kept on down the line, treating all stakes in his course in the same way. When he crossed the road and came to the border of the brook he threw his armful of stakes into the water and, standing there triumphantly, he saw them float away. Then he climbed over the stone wall and entered the graveyard. He found the stake set in the centre of the plot, pulled it from its fastening in the greensward, and flung it gleefully after the others. He felt that he had now given this cherished half-acre again wholly into the possession of his grandfather, and that he had, so far as in him lay, avenged the insult to the dead.
But he did not stop here. He had no thought of doing so. He was flushed with his triumph, and the spirit of destruction was aflame in his breast. Following down the line of survey, he drew stake after stake from the yielding soil, and consigned them all to the mercy of the stream. Already he had entered the gap. The full moon that shone down between the precipitous walls of the gorge made the road that wound along the base of the northerly cliff almost as light as day. For half a mile there was scarcely room for the road and the brook to pass through, so narrow was the space between the towering heights on either side. Some of the stakes indeed were set in the bed of the stream, while others encroached on the travelled track of the highway. Some of them, in the shadow of rock or tree or bush, Dannie had to search to find. But not one escaped his vigilance—not one. And when, at last, he emerged from the gap and came out on the eastern face of the ridge that flanked the Delaware, he had not left a mark or a monument behind him to indicate that a corps of engineers had ever passed that way.
Here the road forks; one branch going to the north and reaching Port Lenox, the up-river town, the other descending rapidly to the village of Fisher’s Eddy on the south. But the brook, unchecked, goes straight on, down the rugged hillside, churned into foam, dashed into spray, leaping from rock to rock, losing itself at last in the slow-moving flood of the Delaware. Dannie stood for a moment looking out over the broad valley and the shining river, and down at the few twinkling lights of the village to the south. Then he turned again to his yet uncompleted task. The line of survey followed the public road to the north, keeping somewhat above it in its descent, and for nearly half a mile farther the boy had no trouble in finding the stakes, tearing them from their beds and flinging them down the steep declivity into the tangle of rocks and brushwood below. When he had gone to the limit of his grandfather’s land, he stopped and turned back. He was tired. He did not know how late it might be. He felt that he must hurry home. So he hastened up the road, along the easterly face of the hillside now falling into shadow, and entered the mouth of the gorge. Between the great rock faces, now bright in the moonlight, now dark in the shade, he trudged wearily. When he was halfway through the glen, he heard the sound of voices ahead of him. He stood still and listened. Men were talking in subdued tones. There was a splash in the water, the crackling of dry brush, the tapping of wood as though some one were driving stakes, the clinking of steel as though a chain were being dragged along the ground. Then, from behind a projecting ledge, a man advanced into the moonlight, and, before Dannie, in his surprise and fear, could either speak or run, the light of a lantern was flashed into his face.