at Farmer Ellison.
"I want a licking, I guess," she said.
Farmer Ellison's face relaxed into a grim smile.
"A licking," he repeated. "Well, I reckon you deserve it, all right, if not for one thing, then for something else."
"I guess I do," said Bess Thornton.
"Well, what do you want me to do about it?" queried Farmer Ellison, looking puzzled. "Can't old Mother Thornton give it to you?"
"No," replied the girl. "She's sick. And besides, she didn't know what I was going to do. I did it all myself, early this morning."
Farmer Ellison looked up quickly. An expression of suspicion stole over his face. He looked at the girl's bedraggled dress.
"What have you been up to?" he asked, sternly.
"I've been stealing," replied the girl. "'Twas – 'twas – "
Farmer Ellison sprang up from his seat.
"'Twas you, then, down by the shore?" he cried. "Confound it! I knew I didn't need them burdock bitters all the time I was takin' 'em. Stealing my trout, eh? Don't tell me you caught any?"
"Only three."
The girl half whispered the reply.
Farmer Ellison seized the girl by an arm and shook her roughly.
"Bring them back!" he cried. "Where are they?"
"I can't," stammered the girl; "they're cooked."
He shook her again.
"You ate my trout!" he cried. "Pity they didn't choke you. Didn't you feel like choking – eating stolen trout, eh?"
"Gran' did," said the girl, ruefully. "But 'twas a bone, sir. She didn't know they were stolen till I told her."
The sound of Farmer Ellison's wrathful voice had rung through the house, and at this moment a woman entered the room. At the sight of her, Bess Thornton suddenly darted away from the man's grasp, ran to Mrs. Ellison, hid her face in her dress and sobbed.
"I didn't think 'twas so bad," she said. "I – I won't do it again – ever."
Mrs. Ellison, whose face expressed a tenderness in contrast to the hardness of her husband's, stroked the girl's hair softly, seated herself in a rocking chair, and drew the girl close to her.
"What made you take the fish?" she inquired softly.
"Well, gran' said we ought to have the whole place by rights – "
Mrs. Ellison directed an inquiring glance at her husband.
"She's been complaining that way ever since I bought it," he said.
"And gran' was sick and I thought she'd like some of the trout," continued the girl. "She's got rheumatics and can't work this week, you know."
"But wouldn't it have been better to ask?" queried Mrs. Ellison, kindly. "Didn't you feel kind of as though it was wrong, eating something you had no right to take?"
"I didn't," answered the girl, promptly. "I didn't eat any. I was going to, though, till gran' said what she did – "
"Then you haven't had anything to eat to-day?" asked Mrs. Ellison, feeling a sudden moisture in her own eyes.
"No," said the girl.
"And what makes your dress so wet? Did you fall in?"
"No-o-o," exclaimed the girl. "I swam the pool. And I did it all the way under water. I didn't think I could, and I almost died holding my breath so long. But I did it."
There was a touch of pride in her tone.
"James," said Mrs. Ellison. "Leave her to me. I'll say all that's needed, I don't think she'll do it again."
"Indeed I won't – truly," said Bess Thornton.
Farmer Ellison walked to the door, with half a twinkle in his eye. "Clear across the pool under water," he muttered to himself. "Sure enough, I didn't need them burdock bitters."
A few minutes later, Bess Thornton, seated at the breakfast table in the Ellison home, was eating the best meal she had had in many a day. A motherly-looking woman, setting out a few extra dainties for her, wiped her eyes now and again with a corner of her apron.
"She'd have been about her age," she whispered to herself once softly, and bent and gave the girl a kiss.
When Bess Thornton left the house, she carried a basket on one arm that made Grannie Thornton stare in amazement when she looked within.
"No, no," she said, all of a tremble, as the girl drew forth some of the delicacies, and offered them to her. "Not a bit of it for me. I'll not touch it. You can. And see here, don't go up on the hill again, do you hear? Keep away from the Ellisons'."
She had such a strange, excited, almost frightened way with her that the child urged her no further, but put the basket away, put of her sight.
"Mrs. Ellison asked me to come again," she said to herself, sighing. "I don't see why gran' should care."
CHAPTER V
SOME CAUSES OF TROUBLE
It was early of a Saturday afternoon, warm and sultry. Everything in the neighbourhood of the Half Way House seemed inclined to drowsiness. Even the stream flowing by at a little distance moved as though its waters were lazy. The birds and the cattle kept their respective places silently, in the treetops and beneath the shade. Only the flies, buzzing about the ears of Colonel Witham's dog that lay stretched in the dooryard, were active.
They buzzed about the fat, florid face of the colonel, presently, as he emerged upon the porch, lighted his after-dinner pipe and seated himself in a big wooden arm-chair. But the annoyance did not prevent him from dozing as he smoked, and, finally, from dropping off soundly to sleep.
He enjoyed these after-dinner naps, and the place was conducive to them. The long stretch of highway leading up from Benton had scarcely a country wagon-wheel turning on it, to stir the dust to motion. In the distance, the mill droned like a big beehive. Near at hand only the fish moved in the stream – the fish and a few rowboats that swung gently at their ropes at the end of a board-walk that led from the hotel to the water's edge.
The colonel slumbered on. But, far down the road, there arose, presently, a cloud of dust, amid which there shone and glittered flashes of steel. Then a line of bicyclists came into view, five youths, with backs bent and heads down, making fast time.
On they came with a rush and whirr, the boy in front pointing in toward the Half Way House. The line of glistening, flying wheels aimed itself fair at Colonel Witham's dog, who roused himself and stood, growling hoarsely, with ears set back and tail between his legs.
Then the screeching of five shrill whistles smote upon the summer stillness, the wheels came to an abrupt stop, and the five riders dismounted at a flying leap at the very edge of Colonel Witham's porch. The colonel, startled from sweet repose by the combined noise of whistles, buzzing of machines, shouts of the five riders and the yelping of his frightened dog, awoke with a gasp and a momentary shudder of alarm. He was enlightened, if not pacified, by a row of grinning faces.
"Why, hello, Colonel Witham," came a chorus of voices. "Looks like old times to see you again. Thought we'd stop off and rest a minute."
Colonel Witham, sitting bolt upright in his chair, and mopping the perspiration from his brow with an enormous red handkerchief, glared at them with no friendly eyes.
"Oh, you did, hey!" he roared. "Well, why didn't you bring a dynamite bomb and touch that off when you arrived? Lucky for you that dog didn't go for you. He'll take a piece out of some of you one of these days." (Colonel Witham did not observe that the dog, at this moment, tail between legs, was flattening himself out like a flounder, trying to squeeze himself underneath the board walk.) "What do you want here, anyway?"
"Some bottled soda, Colonel," said the youngest boy, in a tone that would seem to indicate that the colonel was their best friend. "Bottled soda for the crowd. My treat."
"Bottled monkey-shines and tomfoolery!" muttered Colonel Witham,