The Rival Campers; Or, The Adventures of Henry Burns

by Ruel Perley Smith

It might have been noticed, too, that through it all a certain careful vigilance on the part of the ghosts was observed, as though they feared that if surprised by a chance visitor they would have some trouble in vanishing.

Every few minutes throughout the day they made by turns a careful survey of the cove and also of the bay, sweeping it with a powerful field-glass. No more than two of the ghosts ever took their sleep at the same time, and that, too, during the day. When night came they all redoubled their vigilance and remained awake and alert. As darkness shut down they left the house, one of them going out on the bluff and hiding in a cleft of the rock, where he could overlook the cove and the bay, the others hiding in the woods near the house, and keeping watch on all its approaches.

They were very patient and very careful; for two of them, who would have answered to the names of Burton and Mason, knew that the men for whom they watched, and who they knew would surely come within a brief time now, were the men for whom they had hunted for years, and by whose capture they should win other rewards and settle scores of long standing.

Curiously enough, for the next two days and nights a perfect contagion of watching seemed to have spread through the village. Mr. Kemble, as he was known to all, was a most annoyed man, and concealed his annoyance only with difficulty. If, by chance, he hobbled up the road of an afternoon, and wandered off into the woods or fields, he was sure to come upon some one of the boys, who seemed surprised enough to see him, and was sure to remain with him till he returned to the hotel.

If he hired a horse and went up the island for a drive, he was sure to fall in most unexpectedly with Henry Burns, spinning along on his wheel, and could not shake him off. If he felt strong enough to get into a rowboat and start out, weakly, across the cove, groaning at the effort it cost him, he invariably fell in with Tom and Bob, gliding along quietly in their canoe, and they would insist on accompanying him, and pointing out to him the beauties of the scenery along the shores.

He would have considered far more seriously the attention they paid to his movements by night, if he had but known of them. If he could have seen six pairs of eyes, striving to discern him as he appeared on the hotel roof, or have known of the youths who watched lest he cross the cove under cover of night, to say nothing of those who awaited his coming on the bluff itself, he might have worried more than he did, and perhaps have played a shrewder game.

But neither did he nor any one else, other than they who watched, know of it. And so it was that when, a little before sunset on the third day after the arrival of the ghosts in the haunted house, and while Mr. Kemble sat on the front piazza of the hotel, looking through a field-glass off on to the bay, admiring its beauties with Mrs. Carlin, who thought him such an unfortunate man,—and while, as he looked, he saw the very yacht for which he had waited anxiously for days, he surely believed that there was no one in the village who would regard it with other than the usual curiosity that fishermen and yachtsmen have for a strange craft.

In this, unfortunately for him, he was mistaken. There were others besides him who, on seeing the sail emerge from between the islands, regarded it with equal interest and even more excitement. Henry Burns, being deeply interested in it, came and sat down beside Mrs. Carlin long enough to hear Mr. Kemble remark that he believed the yacht was the Eagle, with his friends; in which case he should spend the night aboard with them, and leave the harbour early in the morning, if the wind availed.

Henry Burns then quietly took his departure, sauntering along until some cottages shut him out from the view of the hotel, and then starting off on a run as hard as ever he could toward the Warren cottage. He paused long enough at the cottage to communicate the news to young Joe, who was the first one he met, and then, calling out that he would return as quickly as he could, he ran through the woods down to the shore.

Going up the cove some distance, Henry Burns launched a rowboat and pulled rapidly across, landing some ways above the bluff. Then he struck down through the woods for the haunted house.