I was just as earnest as ever I was about anything in my life, and I guess Mr. Chester Downes realized it. He had gone away the night before in haste; but after thinking over the situation he believed that I could be browbeaten and my will set aside. He stared at me, with his dark, Indian-looking face reddening under the skin, and Paul had not looked at me more murderously the night before when we quarreled aboard the Wavecrest, than his father did now!
“Why, sir,” said Mr. Downes at last, “this is a most ridiculous thing for you to do. I can write to your mother—and I shall. She will demand that I attend her——”
“Until she does so, just take notice that you’re not to come here,” I interrupted. “That is, if you want Paul to stay out of jail.”
I turned on my heel then and walked back to the house, and he—after hesitating a half minute or so—turned likewise and stalked down the hill. I was pretty sure he would not come back—not in that tall hat, anyway—for before luncheon was over it had begun to rain and rained hard. There was a sharp wind from the northwest—nor’—nor’—west, to be exact—and everybody within a hundred miles of Cape Ann knows what that means. In all probability we were in for a long offshore gale.
So I risked going over the ferry that afternoon on an errand. I did not propose to get caught out on the Wavecrest again without provisions, and I purchased half a boat load of canned goods and the like, and a couple of cases of spring water. While I was hunting for a boat and a man to take my purchases aboard the sloop I ran against my cousin Paul.
He was not alone, and the instant I spied him with two hang-dog fellows, I knew he was—like the hen in the story—“laying for me!” Paul Downes knew half the riff-raff of Bolderhead which, like most small seaports, boasted more than a sufficient quantity of wharf-rats. Mr. Downes had been wont to expatiate to my mother on my taste for low company; but he must have had his own son in mind. Paul certainly picked sour fruit when he made friends along the water-front of Bolderhead!
“That’s the feller,” snarled my cousin—I could read his lips, although the trio was across the narrow street as I went along the docks—and I knew very well that he was hatching something against me with his two friends.
But they were not likely to pitch upon me here in broad daylight, so I paid them little heed at the moment. I found old Crab Bolster and his skiff to lighter my cargo across the inlet, and when the boy came down from the store with the barrow, Crab and I loaded the provisions and spring water into his boat. Paul and his companions looked on, whispering together now and then, from a neighboring wharf.
I was not wholly a fool if I was so well satisfied with my own smartness. My success in settling Mr. Chester Downes had of course given me an inflated opinion of myself; but I knew better than to overlook the possibility of my cousin being able to do me some mean trick, especially with the help of the two fellows he was with.
When Crab Bolster and I set off in the skiff for the Wavecrest, I saw Paul and his friends make for the ferry, and while I helped pull the skiff in the drizzle of rain that swept across the harbor, I saw the three board the ferryboat and land at the dock on the Neck near which we lived.