The Great Quest. Charles Boardman Hawes
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or other. There must be more than enough to buy the Adventure. He's been cashing in notes and mortgages all over the county, and I'm told the bank is holding it for him in gold coin."
"In gold!" I cried.
"Gold coin," he repeated. "It's rumored round the county that Neil Gleazen's holding something over him that's frightened him into doing this and that, exactly according to order."
"Where did you hear that?" I demanded.
It was so precisely what I myself had been thinking that it seemed as if I must have talked too freely; yet I knew that I had held my tongue.
"Oh, one place and another," he replied. Then, changing the subject, he remarked, "There'll be a grand time in town to-morrow, what with speeches and all. I'd like to have brought my wife to see it, but I was afraid it would make it harder for her when I leave."
"She doesn't want you to go?"
"Oh, she's glad for me to have the chance, but she's no hand to bear up at parting."
Conversing thus, we drove on into the twilight and falling dusk, till we came so near the town that we could see ahead of us the tavern, all alight and cheerful for the evening.
"I wonder," Abe cried eagerly, "who'll be sitting by the table with a hot supper in front of him, and Nellie Nuttles to fetch and carry."
I was hungry after my day's drive and could not help sharing Abe's desire for a meal at the tavern, which was known as far as Boston and beyond for its good food; but I had no permission thus wantonly to spend Uncle Seth's money, so I snapped the whip and was glad to hear the louder rattling of wheels as the horses broke into a brisk trot, which made our own supper seem appreciably nearer.
And who, indeed, would be sitting now behind those lighted windows? Abe's question came back to me as we neared the tavern. The broad roofs seemed to suggest the very essence of hospitality, and as if to indorse their promise of good fare, a roar of laughter came out into the night.
As we passed, I looked through one of the windows that but a moment since had been rattling from the mirth within, and saw—I looked again and made sure that I was not mistaken!—saw Neil Gleazen, red-faced and wild-eyed, standing by the bar with a glass raised in his hand.
The sight surprised me, for although Gleazen, like almost everyone else in old New England, took his wine regularly, in all the months since his return he had conducted himself so soberly that there had been not the slightest suggestion that he ever got himself the worse for liquor; and even more it amazed me to see beside him one Jed Matthews who was, probably, the most unscrupulous member of the lawless crew with whom Gleazen was said to have associated much in the old days, but of whom he had seen, everyone believed, almost nothing since he had come home.
As we drove on past the blacksmith shop, I saw the smith smoking his pipe in the twilight.
"It's a fine evening," I called.
"It is," said he, coming into the road. And in a lower voice he added, "Did you see him when you passed the inn?"
"Yes," I replied, knowing well enough whom he meant.
"They've called me a fool," the smith responded, "but before this night's over we'll see who's a fool." He puffed away at his pipe and looked at me significantly. "We'll see who's a fool, I or them that has so much more money and wisdom than I."
He went back and sat down, and Abe and I drove on, puzzled and uncomfortable. The smith was vindictive. Could he, I wondered, be right?
A good supper was keeping hot for us in the brick oven, and we sat down to it with the good-will that it merited; but before we were more than half through, my uncle burst in upon us. He seemed harassed by anxiety, and went at once to the window, where he stood looking out into the darkness.
"Have you heard anything said around town?" he presently demanded, more sharply, it seemed to me, than ever.
"I've heard little since I got back," I returned. "Only the smith's ravings. He was in an ill temper as we passed. But I saw Neil Gleazen at the inn drinking with Jed Matthews."
"The ungrateful reprobate!" Uncle Seth cried with an angry gesture. "He's drawn me into this thing hand and foot—hand and foot. I'm committed. It's too late to withdraw, and he knows it. And now, now for the first time, mind you, he's starting on one of his old sprees."
"He's not a hard drinker," I said. "In all the time he's been in Topham he's not been the worse for liquor, and this evening, so far as I could see, he was just taking a glass—"
"You don't know him as he used to be," my uncle cried.
"A glass," put in Abe Guptil; "but with Jed Matthews!"
"You've hit the nail on the head," Uncle Seth burst out—"with Jed Matthews. God save we're ruined by this night's work. If he should go out to Higgleby's barn with that gang of thieves, my good name will go too. I swear I'll sell the brig."
Uncle Seth wildly paced the room and scowled until every testy wrinkle on his face was drawn into one huge knot that centred in his forehead.
The only sounds, as Abe and I sat watching him in silence, were the thumping of his feet as he walked and the hoarse whisper of his breathing. Plainly, he was keyed up to a pitch higher than ever I had seen him.
At that moment, from far beyond the village, shrilly but faintly, came a wild burst of drunken laughter. It was a single voice and one strange to me. There was something devilish in its piercing, unrestrained yell.
"Merciful heavens!" Uncle Seth cried,—actually his hand was shaking like the palsy; a note of fear in his strained voice struck to my heart like a finger of ice,—"I'd know that sound if I heard it in the shrieking of hell; and I have not heard Neil Gleazen laugh like that in thirty years. Come, boys, maybe we can stop him before it's too late."
Thrusting his fingers through his hair so that it stood out on all sides in disorder, he wildly dashed from the room.
Springing up, Abe and I followed him outdoors and down the road. We ran with a will, but old though he was, a frenzy of fear and anxiety and shame led him on at a pace we could scarcely equal. Down the long road into town we ran, all three, breathing harder and harder as we went, past the store, the parsonage, and the church, and past the smithy, where someone called to us and hurried out to stop us.
It was the smith, who loomed up big and black and ominous in the darkness.
"They've gone," he said, "they've gone to Higgleby's barn."
"Who?" my uncle demanded. "Who? Say who! For heaven's sake don't keep me here on tenterhooks!"
"Neil Gleazen," said the smith, "and Jed Matthews and all the rest. Ah, you wouldn't listen to me."
"And all the rest!" Uncle Seth echoed weakly.
For a moment he reeled as if bewildered, even dazed. Whatever it was that had come over him, it seemed to have pierced to some unsuspected weakness in the fibre of the man, some spot so terribly sensitive that he was fairly crazed by the thrust. To Abe and me, both of us shocked and appalled, he turned with the madness of despair in his eyes.
"Boys," he said hoarsely, "we've got to be ready to leave. Call Sim and Arnold! Hitch up the horses! Pack my bag and—and, Joe,"—he laid his hand on my shoulder and whispered in my ear, a mere trembling breath of a whisper,—"here's the key to the house safe. Pack all that's in it in the bed of the wagon while the others are busy elsewhere. O Joe! what a wretched man I am! Why in heaven's name could he not walk straight for just one day more?"
Why, indeed? I thought. But I remembered Higgleby's barn, and in my own heart I knew the reason. Secretly, all this time, Neil Gleazen had been hand in glove with his old disreputable cronies; now that he had got Uncle Seth so far committed to this new venture that he could not desert it, Gleazen was entirely willing to throw away his hard-won reputation for integrity, for the sake of one farewell fling with the "old guard."
"Go, lads,"