"It is I--Mrs. Carleton! Quick, Malloy! Two men are trying to break in at the front door."

She heard the bound with which the old soldier leaped to the floor. She ran into the front room. One quick glance showed her Ransom's signal-light blazing across the mile of snow. One moment more, and, m.u.f.fled in red silk, her biggest lantern swung glowing in the window.

Then down the stairs she hurried to her children, just as Malloy, with his carbine, and Bridget, with a six-shooter, swept gallantly into action. She heard his fierce summons, "Who shtands there?" and listened breathlessly. No response. "Who's dhere, I say?" Dead silence. Not even scurrying footsteps. She crept to the window and peered out. No one near. She raised the sash, threw open a shutter, and gazed abroad. The little piazza was deserted, unless both were hiding inside the storm-house. No! See! Over among the willows by the stream there are shadowy figures and a sleigh.

"They've gone, Malloy! They are up the river-bank with a sleigh!" she called. And then she heard him furiously unbarring the parlor door preparatory to a rush. She heard it swing open, an impetuous sally, a collision, a crash, the clatter of a dropped carbine against the surrounding wood-work, a complication of anathemas and objurgations from the dark interior, and then a dialogue in choice Hibernian.

"Are ye hurted, Terence?"

"I am. Bad scran to the blagyards that left their thrunk behind 'em!"

Trunk! What trunk? She bore a light into the parlor, and revealed Malloy, with rueful visage, doubled up over a big wooden box planted squarely in the doorway. Robbers, indeed! Mrs. Bridget whisked him out of the way, ran and closed the children's door, and in another moment had lugged the big box into the parlor, and wrenched away the top. The two women were on their knees before it in an instant.

First they dragged forth a great flat paper box, damp and cool and moist, and this the widow opened tremblingly. A flat layer of white cotton, dry; then paper; a flat layer of white cotton, moist; and then, peep! Upon the fresh, green coils of smilax, rich with fragrance, sweet, moist, dewy, exquisite, lay store upon store of the choicest flowers--rose-buds and rose-blossoms in cream and yellow and pink and crimson, carnations in white and red, heliotrope and hyacinth, and fairest pansies, and modest little violets, and gorgeous tulips, even great callas--the first flowers she had seen in years. Oh, Captain Santa Claus! who taught you Christmas wooing? Where learned you such art as this? Beneath the box was yet another, bearing the stamp of the great Chicago firm, sealed, corded, just as he had got it from the agent that evening--Phil's longed-for suit. She hugged it with delight, while tears started to her dancing eyes. How good he was! How thoughtful for her and for her little ones! There, beneath, was the very white doll-carriage, blue lining, umbrella top, and all, wherein reposed a wondrous wax doll, the like of which Maud had never dreamed. There was a tin kitchen, with innumerable appendages. There was a glistening pair of club-skates of finest steel and latest patent, the very thing that Phil so longed for, and had so lovingly resigned. There were fur cap and gloves and boots for him, and such an elegant shawl for Mrs. Malloy! He could send them all he chose, and no offence. But to her--on her he could lavish only flowers.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "ONE MOMENT MORE, AND, m.u.f.fLED IN RED SILK, HER BIGGEST LANTERN SWUNG GLOWING IN THE WINDOW."]

And then her Irish allies returned to their slumbers, and left her to the rapture of arranging the new presents and the contemplation of her flowers; and she was hugging the big pasteboard box and gloating over her treasures when there was sudden noise without, a rush up the steps, and before she could drop her possessions the door flew open, and in came a wild-eyed, breathless captain of cavalry, gasping the apparently unwarrantable query, "What's the matter?"

For an instant she stared at him in astonishment. Holding tight her flowers, she gazed at his agitated face. "Nothing," she answered. "How could anything be wrong when you have been so--so--" But words failed her.

"Why! your red light's burning" he explained.

"I declare! I forgot all about it!"

Then another silence. He threw himself back in an arm-chair, breathing hard, and trying to recover his composure.

"Do you mean--didn't you mean to signal for help?" he finally asked.

"Yes, I did"--an arch and mischievous smile now brightening her face.

"When I swung it I wanted you to come quick and drive--yourself away."

Then she put down her box, and stepped impulsively towards him, two white hands outstretched, tears starting from her eyes, the color surging to her lovely face--"Where can I find words to thank you, Captain Santa Claus?"

He rose quickly, his face flushed and eager, his strong hands trembling.

"Shall I tell you?" he asked.

Her head was drooping now; her eyes could not meet the fervent love and longing in his; her bosom heaved with every breath. She could only stand and tremble when he seized her hands.

"Kate, will you take back what you said to-day?"

She stole one glance into his pa.s.sionate, pleading eyes, and her head drooped lower.

"_Can't_ you take it back, Kate?"

A moment's pause. At last the answer. "How can I, unless--unless you take back what you--what caused it?"

Never before had the little Carletons waked to such a radiant Christmas morning. Never had the Forties known so royal a Christmas-tree. Never before was "Uncle Hal's" so thronged with beaming faces and happy hearts. But among all the little ones whom his love and thoughtfulness had blessed there was no face that shone with bliss more radiant, with joy more deep and perfect, than that of Captain Santa Claus.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "CAPTAIN SANTA CLAUS."]

THE MYSTERY OF 'MAHBIN MILL.

CHAPTER I.

Placid and homelike enough were all its surroundings, one would say. It seemed the very last place to look for romance or mystery--the very last place in the world to be confronted by a foul and savage crime. There was not a shadow on the bright, breeze-ruffled mill-pond whereon the ducks were splashing and quacking noisily. Not a willow drooped its mourning branches over the sunny shallows above, or the foaming, rushing, tumbling torrent below the dam. Not a tree with heavy, spreading foliage stood guard between the sunshine and the sh.o.r.es.

Nothing but a few pert, st.u.r.dy young hickories fringed the banks, bolt upright in the broad glare of the noon-tide, and proclaiming in their very att.i.tude their detestation of all that was vague, dark, or shadowy.

There were no beetling cliffs--no firs, no pines, no dark hemlocks--nothing in the least suggestive of gloom or tragedy. The valley lay broad and open. Cosy homesteads and cottages gleamed here and there along the slopes, nestled in little groves of their own. Orchards, a vineyard, many fields of waving, yellowing grain, broad pastures dotted with drowsy sheep and drowsier, clover-fed cattle; bright green patches every now and then where the sugar-maples huddled together in rustling gossip; and smiling farms and winding, well-kept country roads lay north and south. Westward, a few hundred yards, the gleaming bosom of the island-dotted lake into which the mill-stream poured its swirling waters; eastward, a short mile, the roofs and chimneys of the thriving county town; and then, over towards the distant railway, a creamy spire, with the sacred emblem of the cross glinting and shimmering in the sunlight, peeped through the fringe of waving tree-tops. All was quiet, rural beauty. All told of peace, life, contentment, and prosperity this lovely July morning of the centennial year--all save the hush and awe that hung about old 'Mahbin mill.

Over by the waste weir, with musical splash and laughter and faint little clouds of spray, a tumbling sheet of water was disappearing into the cool depths below; but here, in the broad, beaten roadway around the worn threshold, was impressive silence. The busy whir and hum and clatter was all stilled, though elsewhere this had been a bustling Monday morn. Men spoke in low, awe-stricken whispers, and went on tip-toe over the creaking floor within. Peace and contentment, life and prosperity, flooding sunshine, laughing-water, merry-throated birds made glad the scene around; but within was silence and mystery and death.

Here, p.r.o.ne on the flour-dusted floor of the old office lay all that was mortal of gray-haired Sam Morrow, the miller, murdered by murder most foul, as one and all could see; and young d.i.c.k Graham, his right-hand man for years, had gone, gone no one knew whither.

In all its peaceful history, Nemahbin had known no such sight or sensation as this. Thirty years had the old mill been the rallying-point of the farmers, to the exclusion of the attractions of the tavern in the little town. Morrow was a character--a man who read and remembered, a man who took the papers and had an opinion, backed by good reasoning, of public men and public affairs of the day. He grew to be an authority on many and most subjects, but he never grew to be popular. Morrow had an ugly temper when crossed, a lashing, venomous tongue when angered, and, of late, there had been growing up among the farmers who drove thither with their grain a suspicion that old Sam, in his grasping, money-loving greed had become unscrupulous. In this there was rank injustice. Crabbed and ill-tempered as the man had often been, surly and rough of speech as he had become, there did not live a more rigidly honest man--his word was his bond. His own dealings were beyond question, and six months before his death no man within a thirty-mile radius of Nemahbin had ever been heard to hint at such a thing as sharp practice at 'Mahbin mill.

He had not been a happy man. His home life had been far from sweet and peaceful. Ten years ago his patient and devoted wife had died--worn out, some neighbors were good enough to say, by his outbreaks of fury and his cutting injustice. But he had loved her, loved her well, and he mourned her bitterly. Two children she had left him: one a son, high-spirited, impulsive, and wilful, between whom and his father there waged incessant feud while he was at home, and between whom and that same father there pa.s.sed frequent letters of most loving description when the boy was placed at boarding-school. Young Sam had been liberally provided for when he went away, and his pocket-money was unstinted. The boy was not vicious, but the restraints of school discipline seemed to tempt him from one mad exploit to another, and, after two years of sorely tried patience, the authorities of the school requested his withdrawal. Sam was fifteen then, a bright, quick-witted fellow, a leader in all boyish sports and mischief, and immensely popular among the farm folk around Nemahbin. His chum and intimate friend from early boyhood had been d.i.c.k Graham; like himself, an only son of an idolizing mother, but, unlike himself, compelled to labor for her support. When young Sam had been sent away to school after his mother's death, the old man was noticed on several consecutive days hovering uncertainly about the little country store where his boy's friend was working from morn till night doing hard jobs and thankfully carrying home his scanty wages at the end of the week. One day he bl.u.s.tered in on the "boss" with brief ceremony:

"Murphy," said he, "you work that boy too hard, and pay him too little.

If you don't double his wages, I will, and take him out to the mill to boot." Murphy was vastly angered at the proceeding, and Murphy's adherents voted around the fire that night that old Sam Morrow had no business to be "spilin' the market for boys," and undermining other folk's concerns in that way; but the miller stuck to his word; Murphy would not agree, and at the end of the month d.i.c.k Graham moved out to the mill, where his bright face, and cheery, alert ways, soon deepened the interest old Sam felt in him for his own boy's sake. Then he moved Mrs. Graham out there, and placed her and her boy in the cottage near the mill-house, as his own home was termed. And then the minister of the pretty church over towards the railway had come over to call on Mr.

Morrow--who was not of the fold--and to shake hands with him, and when he went away he bent down and kissed pretty little Nellie--the miller's only daughter, and his darling--and had asked that his own little girls might come over to make her acquaintance and to gather pond lilies. All this had happened ten years back, when Nellie was a blue-eyed, sunny-haired child, and Sam was in his first turbulent year at school.

Little Nell had to go to her own school very soon. It lay across country over where the minister lived, and many was the time in the rough spring weather when d.i.c.k Graham had to carry her over the rushing brooks that burst across the roadway from the deep-drifted slopes of snow. He was a splendid, st.u.r.dy boy of fifteen then--manly, truthful, independent; and loyally he strove to serve his benefactor in the clattering old mill, and still more loyally he watched over the bonny child who seemed that master's all in all.

Things went smoothly enough, in all conscience, a year or two. d.i.c.k trudged off to evening school during the wintry season, and had found a good friend in that same minister, who lent him books and helped him along in his studies; but then Sam came home, virtually expelled from school, and then began a series of domestic troubles between father and son that brought sorrow and anxiety to all. Old Sam in his wrath would taunt the boy with having disgraced him, and young Sam in his flush of temper would threaten to quit his father's home for good and all. d.i.c.k strove to reason with his friend, but the boy was sensitive and stung to the quick. A kind word, a loving touch from his father would have melted his heart in an instant. He would have gone back to school full of apology and promises to amend; but his father's eyes were averted and his tongue edged with fire. Sam swore it was of no use to try and be patient. Then d.i.c.k went to the minister in his perplexity, and that worthy gentleman came strolling over to the mill, and looking over the ground, so to speak. His was a diplomatic mind, and it had reason to be.

It was easy to win the son's confidence. He, d.i.c.k, and Sam junior soon formed a trio of fast friends, and before long another scheme was broached; and, with some surly misgiving on old Morrow's part, Sam was sent to another and larger school. It was the old man's hobby that his boy should be well educated. But a plethora of pocket-money, said the authorities of the first establishment, had been the cause of his downfall, and now the old man sternly refused to give his son a cent.

All his expenses were to be met and paid, and the princ.i.p.al of the new school was to give him a certain trifling sum on holidays. There was no known trouble for a year as the result of this arrangement. The boy felt that he had amends to make and so did his best. A widowed sister of old Morrow had come to his home and taken charge of it and little Nell, and there was another era of comparative peace.

But to young Sam the school life was far from bright. Stinted now where he had formerly been indulged, he found himself forced into a position greatly contrasted with the prominence and popularity he had enjoyed among the youngsters of the year before. He was beginning to learn the lesson that sooner or later saddens and often embitters the brightest minds--the lesson that even here in free America money is the standard of even personal value. It was not so with Western boys before the war.

Money was a thing well-nigh unknown to them, but the "flush" days brought with them new ideas, and the ideas stuck fast long after the flush days had gone. Sam Morrow found that he was no longer the pet of the "best set." Money and reckless good-nature had won it for him in the old school; good-nature unbacked by money was no help here at the new.

Sam said nothing to his father, but his letters to d.i.c.k became more frequent. He stood to his work like a little man, and despite the sorrow and loneliness of that year he came home the better for it all. He had made excellent progress. His teacher had praised him; the minister put him through his paces and extolled him; and old Morrow, proud and pleased, wanted to unbend and send the boy back for his second year with some substantial token of his pleasure; but stubborn pride on both sides seemed to stand between father and son. Sam junior would ask nothing, and the old man's reply to the minister's well-meant suggestion was, "Well, if the boy wants money now let him come and say so." And this Sam swore he would not do, and so it ended.

Next year there was a catastrophe. Sam was now a stalwart, handsome young fellow of seventeen. "Ready to go to college," said his teachers.

One day old Morrow received a telegraphic despatch begging him to come at once to the school. He went, and in four days was home again with Sam and a broken heart. Small sums of money had been missed from time to time by various pupils of the school. Suspicion had fastened on a sharp boy who was believed to spend more money than he legitimately received.

A watch was kept, a search was made, and Sam Morrow was detected pa.s.sing at a store some of the marked money. Questioned as to where he got it, he for the time declined to answer, until told that he was suspected of the theft. He then confessed that it was part of a small sum Fielding, the sharp boy aforementioned, paid him from time to time for translating his Caesar for him. Fielding promptly, and with much apparent indignation, denied the story. Receiving such a.s.sistance and pa.s.sing off another boy's work as his own was an offence for which a pupil was always severely punished. The case rested as a question of veracity between the two boys, with the odds vastly in favor of Sam--for a few hours only, pending further investigation, but that investigation was fatal. At least twelve dollars of the missing money was found secreted in Sam's books and clothing. He had furiously denied everything; he protested in vain that he had no idea how it came there, but his lonely, solitary ways were remembered, his habits of hanging about the dormitories apparently at study when the boys were at play--and there was no one to stand up for him. Old Morrow came, listened in crushed silence, and took his boy home. Honest to the backbone himself, he was sore stricken to think that his son should steal. He had heard first the stories of the teachers and pupils before being ushered into the presence of the accused. All hot impulse and fury, he had come upon his lonely and friendless son, and when the poor fellow, bursting into tears in his misery and excitement of the moment, had thrown his arms about his father's neck, sobbing, "I have not done it, I am innocent," he had sternly unclasped the pleading hands and ordered him to prepare at once to go home with him. Sam seemed utterly stunned by his father's refusal to hear a word. He was almost crazed with misery when he reached home.

The minister and d.i.c.k listened to his story and believed it. Old Sam shut himself up; refused to see any one for some days, until Nellie's tears and pet.i.tions secured a brief interview for the worthy churchman.

This time the latter was not diplomatic. He believed the boy wronged from beginning to end. He told old Morrow in so many words that his pride and stubbornness were sin and shame, and roused the old man to such a pitch of wrath that he shrieked out his hope that the son who had disgraced him might never come before his sight again--and he never did. Sam Morrow heard the furious words. Pride came to his aid; and never saying a word of farewell to the friends whom he knew would strive to dissuade him, but clinging long to sweet twelve-year-old Nellie, and sobbing as though his heart would break, Sam left his father's roof that night. Five years had pa.s.sed away, and not one word was ever heard from him. The old man's curse had indeed come home to rest; his fading eyes were never more to be blessed by the sight of his son.

But this was only half of his misery. The minister left the house with his blood up; went forthwith to that school and was closeted some hours with his old friend the princ.i.p.al. Sam's side of the story had an intelligent advocate; a revulsion of feeling had set in; boys and men both began to recall good points about Morrow that had not occurred to them before, and queer things about that fellow Fielding. In less than a month after Sam's disappearance there came a letter to old Morrow one day which he read in gasping amaze, and then fell p.r.o.ne and senseless on the floor of the very office where he lay now p.r.o.ne and dead. Sam's story was true; Fielding had confessed even to having stolen the money and hiding portions of it in Sam's property, to divert suspicion from himself.

But now came a long illness in which old Morrow lay at death's door. He raved for his boy. He cursed his own mad folly and injustice. He did everything that could be suggested to bring the wanderer home again. The story went into the papers. Advertis.e.m.e.nts were circulated through the Western States. Even detectives were called upon, but to no purpose.