Davy humped his shoulders rebelliously. "I ain't stuck on helpin' that MacDonald coon to 'lope with nobody," he grumbled. "Don't you mind the time he took after us?"
The orphan chuckled. "Cracky! he did lambaste you, though, didn't he? Sawed-Off told the doc on us, though, the time we took the wheel off his buggy. We've promised, anyhow," he continued righteously.
"Yes, an' I'd have to help Elsie anyhow," added Davy, with an air of crushing responsibility. "Ye see, she's a sort o' a sister, ye know, Tim, 'count o' Jean."
Tim made a horrible grimace. "Well, come on! Let's think o' somethin' good an' awful to do to Sawed-Off!" he cried, anxious to change the subject.
All winter the double wooing of Miss Long had caused great excitement in the village. Folks declared it was scandalous the way Ella Anne carried on with those two fellows of hers, never giving either one more chance than the other, and it would be a caution if she wasn't left again, the way she was when young McQuarry married the squaw.
Ella Anne's conduct caused consternation in the Long family, too. The young lady was suspected of favoring young MacDonald, while her parents strongly encouraged Mr. Wilmott. Sawed-Off was decidedly "well fixed," with his cattle and his cheese factory, while the young fellow from the Highlands was a gay lad, with never an acre to his name, and no match for a girl who had had a year's music lessons, not to speak of all the other attainments of Miss Long.
So far, Davy and Tim had been quite impartial, and had strewn both suitors' paths with such difficulties that the younger man had finally laid violent hands upon them; and Sawed-Off had complained to the respective authorities set over each. The latter treatment had not troubled the mischief-makers much. Mrs. Munn declared that talking always did harm, and talking to boys was worse than useless. Jake and Hannah bewailed their eldest's sudden fall from grace, and wondered if his growing intimacy with John McIntyre was having an evil effect upon the child. And there it ended. The boys still continued their attentions to the rival lovers, and so closely had they watched the proceedings that on the last night of May they were in possession of a secret plot for the morrow, which the lovers fondly believed to be their own.
Hidden behind the Longs' cedar hedge one night, the eldest orphan had overheard some whispers between Ella Anne and the young Lochinvar. They were going to run away, Tim had gathered—have a regular elopement, like Evelina and Daring Dick, in the book he and Davy had just read. "The night before the mill starts," young MacDonald had whispered, "everybody'll be too busy to notice." Well, the mill started to-morrow! And besides that, Davy, who had been on the lookout while his fellow conspirator lay beneath the hedge, had spied Sawed-Off Wilmott come crawling from behind the lilac bushes at the Longs' gate, and go sneaking down the road. So the boys were anticipating high times. Sawed-Off would certainly be along to prevent the elopement, and they had determined to be on the watch, and miss none of the sport. And here, like two chivalrous knights, at the request of a distressed damsel, they had pledged themselves to help the lovers! Elsie was evidently in the plot with Ella Anne, and evidently neither girl guessed at Sawed-Off's perfidy. Tim jumped up in excitement and began to swagger up and down, his hands in his pockets. It was as good as Daring Dick's dilemmas, this situation. Elsie would certainly admire him, and consider him the cleverest young man in the village. They must perform some glorious deed that very night.
"What'll we do?" asked Davy. He was a ready helper when Tim was on the warpath, but the orphan's more fertile brain always supplied the material for their misdeeds.
Tim's eyes grew luminous. "Say! he's scared stiff about the banshee that yells down in the Drowned Lands. He'll be comin' up that way soon's it gets dark. If he seen a ghost there, he'd cut an' run, an' never come back."