The big clock in the hall was solemnly striking one.

Oliver was wondering, as he came down to breakfast next morning, what his cousin would say in explanation of their midnight expedition, but discovered that Cousin Jasper had adopted the simple expedient of saying nothing at all. The matter was not even referred to until just as they were leaving the table, and then only indirectly.

"I should have thought of it before," their host said, "that it might give you some pleasure to take out the car. Use it every day, if you wish, and take Jennings or not, just as it suits you. I have real confidence in your driving, Oliver."

It was surprising how completely matters were put upon another footing by what he had said. If Cousin Jasper had confidence in him, Oliver thought, he need no longer feel like a neglected outsider, one who was of no use or worth in the household.

"Get your hat, Janet," he urged promptly.

He had not an instant's hesitation in deciding where they would go first.

Just as Cousin Jasper was entering his study he turned back to say:

"Now about your Cousin Eleanor----"

But Oliver either did not or would not hear, as he sped away toward the garage. Perhaps Cousin Jasper understood the smile that Janet gave him, for he smiled himself and said no more.

In the very shortest time possible, Oliver and Janet were bowling along the smooth white road with all the blue and golden sunlight of a cool June morning about them. Oliver laughed when he thought of his dusty progress along that way the day before. There was little danger of his running away now, for the dreaded Cousin Eleanor was quite forgotten and he was certain that the time would not pa.s.s slowly since he had acquired this splendid new plaything.

He wondered, as the highway spun away beneath the swift wheels, which of the crossroads that he pa.s.sed was the one that he had traveled the evening before, but the night had been so dark and their speed so great that he was quite unable to decide. It was only after exploring a good many of Medford Valley's lesser thoroughfares, after awkward turns in narrow byroads that proved to be mere blind alleys, that they began to come closer and closer to the foot of the hill. Not being able to find a direct path, Oliver finally drew up beside the low stone wall and plunged, on foot, through the high gra.s.s of the orchard.

"Wait until I see if they are here," he instructed Janet, "and then I will come back for you."

His new acquaintances were sitting on the bench beside the doorway as he came up the hill, Polly in a very trim blue dress and without her ap.r.o.n, but the Beeman in his same dilapidated overalls. The girl had a notebook on her knee and was putting down records at her father's dictation.

"Here is our friend in need, of yesterday," said the Beeman cordially as Oliver came up the path, "but we can't put him to work to-day because we are just about to set off to fetch some new beehives. There are more colonies than I thought that need dividing, and I find I am out of hives."

"Let me get them for you," Oliver offered at once, and explained the presence of his sister in the car below.

"Polly can go with you to show you the way," the Beeman agreed willingly. "John Ma.s.sey, who makes our hives for us, lives a good many miles away, at the upper end of Medford Valley. I shall be glad to save the time of going myself. Come to the top of the hill, so that I can point out the direction of the road to you."

They took the little path beyond the house, leading upward to the very summit of the hill. In the direction from which Oliver had come, up the gentler incline of the southern slope, the view was narrowed by the woods and the orchard, showing only the long vista that led away toward the high ridge opposite and the blue dip of shining sea. On the eastern face of the hill, however, the ground fell away steeply to a sweep of river and a broad stretch of green farming country. It lays below like a vast sunken garden, with great square fields for lawns and clumps of full-leaved, rounded trees for shrubbery. The yellow-green of wheat and the blue-green of oats stretched out, a smooth expanse that rippled and crinkled as the wind and the sweeping shadow of a cloud went slowly down the valley. There were no country houses of high-walled, steep-roofed magnificence here, only comfortable farm dwellings with wide eaves and generous barns, a few with picturesque, pointed silos and slim, high-towering windmills.

"Most of that farming land belongs to your Cousin Jasper," the Beeman said, while Oliver, too intent upon staring at the view below him, failed to wonder how he happened to know so much of their affairs.

"That whole portion of the valley was waste, swampy ground at one time; it was an uncle of Jasper Peyton's who drained the land thirty years ago and built dikes to keep the river back. He arranged to rent it out to tenant farmers, for he said one man should own the whole to keep up the dikes and see that the stream did not come creeping in again. Medford River looks lazy and sleepy enough, but it can be a raging demon when the rains are heavy and the water comes up. Your cousin owns all of it still except for a portion up there at the bend of the stream. That has pa.s.sed out of his hands lately. It is at the far end, on the last farm, that John Ma.s.sey lives."

Oliver from this vantage point could pick out the intricate succession of lanes and highroad that he must take to cross the river and reach John Ma.s.sey's place, showing from here as only a dot of a gray house at the angle of the stream. The sunshine was very clear and hot over the valley below, but the oak tree spread its broad shadow all about them and bowed its lofty head to a fresh, salt-laden wind.

"See how still the trees are along the river," said the Beeman, "but the oak tree is never quiet. The breeze comes past that gap in the hills, yonder where you can look through to the sea, and it seems never to stop blowing. So we call this place the Windy Hill."

The three set off on their errand very gayly in the big car, although Polly and Janet, in the back seat together, were a little shy and silent at the very first. At the end of a mile, however, they were beginning to warm toward each other and had set up a brisk chatter before they had gone three.

"I knew Janet would like Polly," Oliver was thinking. "She is the sort of girl I like myself, not like Cousin Eleanor. The kind that makes you feel that your clothes and your manners are all wrong and that you haven't anything to say--those are the girls I can't stand."

He quite forgot that this harsh judgment of his unknown relative was not based upon any real evidence.

When they reached the floor of the valley they found it as level as a table, with a straight road running from end to end, along which they sped in a whirling cloud of dust. Other cars pa.s.sed them, driven by prosperous farmers, the growl and clatter of motor tractors sounded from the fields on either hand. Halfway up the valley the character of the places seemed to change, the houses had the look of needing paint, the weeds were taller along the fences, and there were no silos nor tractors to be seen. As they neared John Ma.s.sey's house, the road came close to the river, with the high, gra.s.s-covered bank of earth that was the dike rising at their left as they drove along.

They were obliged to stop where some horses were walking in the road ahead of them and seemed slow in making way. The big gray and brown creatures were dragging huge flat stones, each hooked to the traces with an iron chain, scuffling and sc.r.a.ping along in the dust.

"I'm sorry," said the sunburned man who drove the last team, looking back to where the car waited in the road. "We'll make room in a minute, but the horses are doing all they can."

"We are in no hurry," responded Oliver. "Where are you taking the stones and what are they for?"

"To mend the dike, quite a way downstream. It takes a lot of patching to keep banks like these whole and strong, but they guard some valuable land. The dike looks as though it needed repairs up here at this end, but n.o.body does much to it. Mr. Peyton has us go over his section of the banks every year."

The horses moved forward, leaving room for them to pa.s.s, and the car went on.

John Ma.s.sey's house was the last one at the end of the road, a little place with a roof that needed new shingles and with sagging steps leading up to the door. Oliver, with some difficulty, squeezed the big car through the gate and followed the rutty driveway to the open s.p.a.ce behind the house. There was a stretch of gra.s.s, a well, two straggling apple trees, and a row of beehives. An inquisitive cow came to the gate of the barnyard and thrust her head over it to stare at them with the frank curiosity of a country lady who sees little of strangers.

"Here is John Ma.s.sey," said Polly, as a rather heavy-faced, shabby man with kindly blue eyes came out of one of the barns. "My father gave him some of these beehives and taught him how to make new ones. He is very clever at it, and it means a good deal to him to make ours, for he is very poor. He works very hard on his farm, but it never seems to be much of a success."

The hives were brought out and paid for and stowed in the back of the car. Oliver was just making ready for the somewhat difficult feat of backing the car around in the narrow s.p.a.ce between house and barn, when there came a rattling of wheels through the gate and a loud, rasping voice was heard calling for John Ma.s.sey.

"That's Mr. Anthony Crawford," said the farmer, who had been standing by the car admiring wistfully its shining sides and heavy tires. "He owns this place and he comes up here nearly every day to see how I'm farming it. I don't accomplish much with him always around to give me sharp words and never a dollar for improvements. I've told him a hundred times that the dike ought to be looked after this year or we'll be having a flood, but he always says he guesses it will hold.

Yes, sir, I'm coming."

The calls had grown too loud to be disregarded, although it was plain that John Ma.s.sey was in no haste to obey the summons. In a moment the owner of the voice came jingling and rattling around the corner of the house, the same narrow-faced, gray-eyed man that Oliver had met on the road, driving the same bony, knock-kneed horse.

"Whoa, there, whoa!" cried the driver, for the old white steed had caught sight of the car and was testifying to its dislike of it by grotesque prancings and sidlings that threatened to wreck the ramshackle trap. "Here, get out of my way!" he ordered Oliver, "that is, if you know how to handle that snorting locomotive that you think you're driving."

Red with anger, Oliver started his engine and embarked upon a maneuver that was difficult at best, and, under the present unfavorable circ.u.mstances, proved to be nearly impossible. He turned the car half round, collided with a pigsty, backed into the barnyard fence, and narrowly missed taking a wheel off Anthony Crawford's decrepit wagon. That gentleman a.s.sisted the process with jeering remarks and criticisms, while Oliver grew redder and redder with fury and embarra.s.sment. At last, however, the car was turned and stood for a moment in the driveway, facing the white horse which seemed to have resigned itself to the presence of the puffing monster and to be very reluctant to move.

"I have got out of your way, now will you be good enough to get out of mine?" said Oliver very slowly, lest the rage within him should break out into open insult.

In spite of his anger he could not help noticing that the man before him moved with a curious easy grace, and that when he smiled, with a white flash of teeth, he was almost attractive. It was impossible to deny that, except for his thin lips and his hard gray eyes, he was handsome.

"He must be about Cousin Jasper's age," Oliver thought as he sat looking at him while the other stared in return.

"I should like to pa.s.s," the boy persisted, since the other made no move.

"So you shall, Mr. Oliver Peyton," returned the man, "only don't expect me to move as fast or as gracefully as you did. You wonder how I know your name, I suppose. Well, if that precious Cousin Jasper of yours and mine were a little more outspoken about his affairs, you would know all about me. If you want to know where I live, just look over the back wall of your cousin's garden. Do it some time when he isn't looking, for he doesn't love to think of what lies behind that wall where the fruit trees are trained so prettily and where the trees and shrubs grow so high."

He had made way at last and the car moved forward, but he turned to shout a last bitter word after them.

"If you want to know one of your Cousin Jasper's meanest secrets, look over the wall."

CHAPTER IV

THE GARDEN WALL

It was very early when Oliver rolled out of bed next day, sleepy but determined. He had decided, at first, to pay no attention to Anthony Crawford's suggestion, made evidently with malicious purpose; he had, indeed, almost forgotten it by the time he and Janet reached home. But Janet had remembered, and she had brought up the question that evening as they went up to their own quarters rather later than usual, since Cousin Jasper had been sitting with them in the library and had seemed unwilling that they should leave him.

"There is something very wrong in this house," declared Janet.

"Hotchkiss doesn't know what it is, Mrs. Brown doesn't."