“Better go home and learn which is which of the commandments,” she said, “but tell me first who was with you, and why he isn’t here too. I saw his tracks,—bigger than yours. I b’lieve ’twas Jack Percy, and that he put you up to it. Was it Jack?”
Instantly the expression of Paul’s face changed, and was more like that of a man of twenty than a boy of ten.
“I can’t tell you who was with me,” he said. “I promised I wouldn’t, and I’ve never told a lie. He didn’t put me up to it, either. He didn’t know the melon was here till I told him. He was sick, too,—sicker than I. I’m sorry I did it. I’m not half a bad sort of feller, and I hope you’ll forgive me. Will you?”
Miss Hansford had cut the melon in two, and, putting a big slice of the red, juicy fruit on a plate, she offered it to Paul and said: “I’ll think about it. Sit down and eat a piece.”
“No, thanks. No more melon for me,” he replied, and, feeling sure he was forgiven, he bade her good morning and went whistling off in the direction of the woods, where Jack Percy was lying under a clump of oaks, waiting to hear the result of the interview.
“Well, what did she say? I see you have escaped alive,” he said, as Paul joined him. “Rich, wasn’t it?” he continued, rolling in the sand and kicking as Paul related his experience. “I don’t wonder the old lady looked daggers at the commandment business. I wish I could have seen her, and I did. I say, Paul,” and Jack stopped rolling, and, creeping up under the shade of the bushes, went on, very soberly for him: “I went to sleep while waiting for you, and had the queerest dream. I thought Miss Hansford killed you or me,—seemed more as if it was me, although I could see it all; could see the one who lay here dead, just where I am lying, and could hear the talking ’round him, and see Miss Hansford, the most scared of them all, trying to lift me up and saying he isn’t dead,—he mustn’t be dead. It was me then, and I woke up with a kind of cramp in my stomach,—some of that confounded melon is there yet. Guess I had a kind of nightmare, but it seemed awful real. I shouldn’t wonder if she did kill me some time, she hates me so.”
“No, she won’t; her bark is a heap worse than her bite. Why, we got to be right chummy, and she offered me some of the melon. I really like the old lady,” Paul said, while Jack made a grimace, and then lay perfectly still, with his hands folded under his head, thinking of the dream which had so impressed him.
Meanwhile Miss Hansford, who had watched Paul until he disappeared from sight, was talking to herself about him as she went about her morning work.
“That’s a fine boy,” she said, “if he did steal my watermelon, and I’d trust him any where, if he don’t know the eighth commandment. I b’lieve t’other one was Jack Percy,—the worst limb I ever knew. Calls the camp-meetin’ a circus and me the clown! I’d like to——”
She jammed a griddle down hard on the stove in token of what she’d like to do to the reprobate Jack, who had dreamed that she killed him under the scrub oaks. Then she turned her thoughts to the Ralstons. It was only that summer that they had taken possession of the big house on the knoll overlooking the sea. Carpenters had been there at work early in May, removing walls inside to throw the rooms together, cutting the windows down to the floor, building piazzas and porches and bay windows here and there, until the house was so changed that there was little left of the original except the look-out on the roof and the immense chimney, which Mrs. Ralston clung to for the sake of the fireplaces, and because there was nothing like it on the Island. Once she thought to tear down the inclosure to the smugglers’ room in the cellar, entrance to which was through a concealed door under a closet stairs, but Paul, who was with her, begged her to leave it for his play-room. He knew all the stories of his ancestor, who was said to have filled the place from time to time with smuggled goods, which were sold at a high price and made the old sea captain rich. This, however, was so many years before that the smuggler taint had died out, except as some ill-natured people revived the story, with a sneer at the Ralston wealth, the foundation of which was laid in the cellar of the Ralston House. Paul, boy-like, was rather pleased with the idea of so renowned an ancestor, and, during his stay in Oak City, while the repairs were going on, used to spend half his time on the roof, pretending that he was watching for the Vulture returning from its long voyage and tacking about here and there until a white flag from the look-out told that the coast was clear. The other half of his time he spent in the Smugglers’ room, playing at hiding from the police, while Tom Drake, a boy about his own age, and son of the man who had charge of the place, acted the part of policeman and thundered for admittance against the door of the basement. Was there an influence in the atmosphere surrounding the two boys which prompted them to play at what in many of its details became a reality in after years. I think so, for I believe there comes to many of us at times a glimpse of what seems familiar, because we have been unconscious actors in something like it before. To Paul, however, only the present was tangible, and he enjoyed it thoroughly and played at smugglers and pirates and robbers and prisoners, in the queer room built around the big chimney.