CHAPTER V.
WILL BECOMES A HERO.
It was during this winter, his sixteenth year, when Will entered upon the footing of a successful “business man,” that two important adventures befell him.
The first was on one cold Saturday in November just before the snow fell. The gray sky warned the boy that a storm was likely to set in, and as he needed more firewood for the heater he resolved to go into the grove and pick up all the dead branches which the wind had blown from the trees, and to put them in piles so that Nick Wells, the carter, could come for them on Monday morning. So he put some luncheon in his basket and, telling his mother he would not be home for supper, hastened away to the grove, leaving Egbert to care for the fire in the “office”.
There was plenty of dead wood lying around the grove, and Will worked steadily piling it up until evening approached and it grew dusk. He was just about to stop work and return home when he heard a sound of footsteps approaching, and stood silent a little way from the path to watch Mr. Jordan pass by on his regular evening walk, which he permitted nothing to interrupt.
To Will’s astonishment the man stopped abruptly in the middle of the grove and gazed earnestly at an oak tree. Then, exactly as he had done on that other evening when Will had watched him, he walked up to the tree and passed his hand hurriedly up and down the rough bark, returning almost immediately to the path to continue on his way.
This repetition of the same curious action Will had before noticed filled the boy with surprise, and puzzled him greatly. What possible object could Mr. Jordan have in feeling of the bark of an oak tree situated in the center of a deserted grove, where few people ever passed?
But while he pondered the matter darkness fell upon the grove, and he was obliged to hasten home to relieve Egbert.
It snowed a little during the night, and all day Sunday a thin white mantle lay upon the frozen ground. Mr. Jordan took his usual evening walk, and Will looked after him thoughtfully, wondering if he made a regular practice of stopping to feel the bark of the oak tree. But he made no attempt to follow his mother’s boarder, as the boy would have considered it a mean trick to spy upon the man, however peculiar he might be.