When he sank down fainting the children loosed their hold on either side, Montgomery standing still in a frightened wonder, but Kate hastening indoors for help. Rushing breathlessly into the sitting-room where Miss Eunice was quietly arranging some yellow 'mums in a quaint gla.s.s jar, she caught the lady's hand with a vehemence which sent the flowers in one direction, the pretty jar in another.

"Oh, Aunt Eunice! Come quick, 'cause now he truly must be dead, after all. Quick, quick!"

"Katharine--my dear! Why will you do such startling things? My precious jar that has held flowers for us these generations just rescued from destruction! And the poor flowers themselves--"

"Oh, don't bother! Please, please come. There's only Monty out there, and I--I did what I could, but he's dead, anyway."

"Dead, child? Sir Philip dead?" asked Miss Maitland, her thoughts instantly reverting to the only ailing member of the household.

"No, Aunt Eunice, but a person, a man--Uncle Moses."

Then, indeed, did Eunice's own hand tremble so that she set the jar she had just preserved back on the mantel while her face paled in distress.

But she caught the girl's guiding hand firmly in her own, called to Susanna in the kitchen, and on the brief journey to the "further barn"

learned the main facts of the affair.

Two hours later Katharine and Montgomery sat down in the kitchen to a dinner of bread and milk, while over the rest of the house hung a strange silence which made even its former quietude seem noisy by contrast. Aunt Eunice had gone to lie down, being greatly shaken by the sad accident, which, while being much less tragic than the death Katharine had reported, was trouble sufficiently serious. In the kitchen chamber above, Moses' own room, they could hear Susanna softly stepping about in list slippers, only the jar of the floor beams betraying her movements, and occasionally a m.u.f.fled voice, strangely unlike the gruff tones of the hired man, would float down to them. Sir Philip lay purring himself to sleep, after a strenuous season of unrest, during which n.o.body had had time to protect him from mischievous Punch. As for the latter, he had been fatigued by his trip to and from the forest, as well as his manoeuvres with the Angora, and now took his own rest by sleeping with one eye open.

The children themselves were weary. Katharine from the excitement of the morning, and Montgomery from physical exercise. He had never done so many useful things in his life as he had crowded into the s.p.a.ce of two short hours. It was he who had summoned the doctor, run back and forth between that gentleman's office and Miss Maitland's house, carried a plain statement of facts to Madam Sturtevant, as well as a highly furbished one to every householder between the two mansions, and had manfully attended to Mr. Jones's noon "ch.o.r.es." He had, indeed, already a wild ambition to be engaged in the hired man's place, since the doctor said that that sufferer would be laid up in bed for at least three months.

"I'd r-r-rather do ch.o.r.es any day than go to s-s-school," he announced to his companion, swallowing a large bit of bread at the same time, and thereby causing that young person to tilt her nose upwards, disdainfully.

"You ought to be as nice in your manners out here alone with me as you would be in the real dining-room with Aunt Eunice and grown-up company,"

she reproved, daintily balancing her own spoon with an ease which the other would scarcely admit to himself that he admired.

"F-f-fudge. You ain't c-c-com--pany no more. You belong, don't you?"

"I--I guess so. I begin to hope so, for this is the most delightfully happening place I ever was in. Though I never was in, to stay, but one other. First you fell over a precipice, and then I found a nest of little turkeys all dead, out in the black currant-bushes, Susanna says they are, that had stolen themselves--whatever that is. Then that mystery of a bra.s.s bound box; and now Uncle Moses breaking his bones, and so much going on. But--Montgomery Sturtevant! That box! What did become of it? Would we dare, do you suppose we might go back to the woods and find it? It was all your fault. If I hadn't let you carry it--All this about poor Uncle Moses has put it out of my mind, but now it comes back and it's more important than he is. I'm sure of it. We must find it. Come, quick!"

Katharine pushed back from the table and; sprang to her feet, her weariness forgotten in this fresh anxiety.

But Monty was neither anxious nor excited; at least, not about the box, though he held it scarcely less important than she did. He was busy over a "sum" in mental arithmetic, a branch of study he little favored, though it had now come to a.s.sume considerable importance to him. Yet the problem was beyond his capacity, though this keen-witted girl might solve it. He'd try her. Therefore, still gurgling his milk, he spluttered:

"S-s-s-ay, Katy! if a man, if a m-m-man can earn a dollar a day doin'

c-c-ch.o.r.es, all the c-c-ch.o.r.es, how much can a boy earn doin'

h-h-ha-half of 'em?"

"Not a single cent, if I had to pay him, and he were such a boy as you.

A boy so mean he'd take a bra.s.s bound box out of a girl's hands and lose it for her, and then wouldn't budge to go get it. You do try me so, Montgomery! And there's one thing I know. That is, that if I had the management of you I'd break you of that detestable habit of stuttering, or know the reason why. It's all nonsense. You can talk as well as anybody else, only you're too lazy. Now, will you come?"

To her surprise and to her shame, also, he neither resented her sharp speech nor her reply to his money question. Leaning forward, his blue eyes took on an earnestness which effectually dispelled all notion of vanity in their possessor, demanding:

"C-c-c-could you do it? C-c-can you? _W-w-w-wi-will you?_"

"Yes, I might, could, would, and should--if you'd go find my bra.s.s bound box!"

"Cross your heart, honest Injun, h-h-hope to d-d-die?"

"No. Neither one. Just plain 'Yes.' I know a way. I've read all about it in the Cyclopedia in the big bookcase. I hunted it up right away, that first day after the first night when I--I mocked you. I made up my mind then, and I never unmake minds, that if you'd be decent I'd cure you.

It's nothing but a dreadful bad habit, anyway, and easy done. But not until you find my--the--Aunt Eunice's bra.s.s bound box."

He was gone and back in a flash.

Katharine, starting to follow, paused in the middle of the floor, arrested by the sight of him standing in one doorway with the glittering casket in his hands, and of Miss Maitland in another staring at that which he held as if she saw a ghost.

CHAPTER VIII.

HAY-LOFT DREAMS

All the pretty pink color which had hitherto tinged the lady's cheek had vanished, and she visibly trembled, so that Katharine darted forward to her support. But Aunt Eunice raised her hand protestingly, and tottered forward to the nearest chair. With dry, white lips, she asked in a voice so low it could barely be heard:

"Montgomery Sturtevant, where--where did you find _that_?"

Her appearance alarmed both the children, who fancied she, also, was about to faint as Moses had done, yet she did not fall nor did her gaze waver; and impelled by its sternness to make reply, Monty finally stammered:

"H-h-h-hay-m-m-ow."

"Hay-mow! Impossible!" returned Miss Maitland, becoming a bit more natural in appearance, while Kate indignantly turned upon her playmate, demanding and denying:

"How dare you? He didn't. 'Twas I--under a tree in your own big forest.

I dug it up and fetched it--he fetched--there wasn't a hay-mow anywhere near it. Oh, Aunt Eunice, it's the Magic Treasure. It holds the key to all the world--to all the good things in the world, anyway. And you're the wonderful Wise Woman will open it and let us use the gold and diamonds and precious stones to make all the poor people rich and glad.

'Tis yours, I know, and quick, quick!"

With a bound she seized the box from Monty's hands and brought it to the disturbed lady, who, when the girl would have placed it on her lap, recoiled as from some venomous thing.

"No, no! Don't bring it to me. I wouldn't touch it. It has wrought evil already, and so great--"

Then she abruptly paused and steadfastly regarded the quaint old casket which, as Katharine had discovered, seemed to have neither lock nor fastening, and was in itself a marvellous piece of mechanism. As she gazed her thought was busy as painful, but out of the chaos one idea at last grew clear: The Bra.s.s Bound Box must be safely hidden and none must know that it had ever been found. To hide it she would have to touch it, no matter how unwillingly. But the secret of its existence must be kept, although that secret was already in the possession of these two others.

She called them to her and held out her hands now for the box. They approached her with a sort of awe, for there was that still in her face which altered its ordinary kindliness. Not that it was unkind, for there was even more than usual sweetness in the glance she gave Montgomery, yet he felt as if he had been guilty of some terrible sin without in the least knowing what or why.

"Children, you are young to be asked to promise so serious a thing as I now ask you, but you must promise it, and you must keep your word. Will you?"

"I never broke my word in my life, Aunt Eunice! I wouldn't begin now after I've grown to be such a big girl," said Katharine, promptly. "But it's honest to tell you I hate promises, and I never feel so tempted to lie as when I've made one. I'd rather not promise, if you please; and I guess--I guess I'd rather not hear any secret. I'll go out and let you tell it to Monty alone."

Montgomery shot out a restraining hand and clutched her vanishing skirts, while a faint smile stole to Miss Maitland's lips at this evidence of moral cowardice. The boy felt, and with justice, that it was "Kitty Quixote" who had got him into this sc.r.a.pe, with her wild woodland adventures and her fairy-tales, and that it was but fair she should share in it.

"Unfortunately, you already know it. What you must promise is--that you will never, never speak of this box or its strange reappearance to any person, young or old. I shall put it out of sight where it will not be easily found again, and then forget it. You must forget it, too. You are Sturtevant and Maitland, descendants of honorable men and women, and for the sake of your forebears you must hide this thing."

It was all so solemn that Katharine shivered, yet could not help wondering a little. "Forebears"--that meant dead people; and how could it harm people already dead to have that box found, even supposing it to be full of poisons or other dreadful stuff, as she now began to imagine?

Now, if Kate merely shivered and speculated, poor Montgomery was in an ague. When he fixed his great eyes upon Aunt Eunice's face they were so full of terror that she pitied him, and tried to comfort, saying:

"Don't look so frightened, dear. It's only to keep from speaking of what has happened this morning. That's easy, isn't it? Besides, you are so young you will not remember long. Other things will drive it from your minds. At least, I trust so. In any case, you are in honor bound."