The Green Door Part 3

"Candace can handle a musket and so can little Phyllis at a pinch,"

said the elder Let.i.tia thoughtfully, "but I for one am thinking that your Injuns are catamounts, Josephus Peabody."

"They are Injuns," said the boy stoutly, peering out into the gloom.

They were in perfect darkness, for it was a cloudy night, and not a ray came from the house-door.

"For what reason were you abroad to-night?" inquired the elder in what Let.i.tia considered a disagreeably patronizing tone as addressed to such a pretty brave little boy.

"I went to visit my rabbit traps," replied the boy, but his voice was slightly hesitant.

"In this darkness?"

"I had a pine knot, but I flung it away when I heard the noises."

"A pine knot, and Injuns around, and you with naught but a scalping knife? 'Tis not bravery but tomfoolery," said the elder Let.i.tia.

"I'll warrant you stole out without the knowledge of Goodman Cephas Holbrook and Mistress Holbrook, and they having taken you in as they did and given you food and shelter, with nine of their own to care for, and not knowing of a certainty who you might be."

Let.i.tia felt sure that the boy hung his head in the darkness. He mumbled something incoherent.

"It was out of the window in the lean-to you got, and ran away,"

declared the elder Let.i.tia severely. "You are not a boy to be trusted. You can remain here with Let.i.tia, and I will stand guard a little way down the path; and do not speak above a whisper, although I be sure there be none but catamounts to hear."

With that, Great-great-grandmother Let.i.tia, musket over shoulder, moved down the path and stood quite concealed as if by a vast cloak of night, an alert vigilant young figure with the hot blood of her time leaping in her veins, and the shrewd brain of her time alive to everything which might stir that darkness with sound or light.

"Who are you?" whispered Let.i.tia to the boy.

"I am Josephus Peabody, but I was always called Joe till I came here," the boy whispered back.

Let.i.tia pondered. The name sounded very familiar to her, just as the boy's face had looked. Then suddenly she remembered. "When I was a little girl," she whispered, "not more than seven--I am going on ten now--I knew a little boy named Joe Peabody, and he was visiting his grandmother, Mrs. Joe Peabody. She lives about half a mile from my Aunt Peggy's around the corner of the road. It is a big white house next to the graveyard."

"That was me," said the boy. "At least," he added in rather a dazed and hopeless tone, "I suppose it was, and I guess I remember you too.

You had curls, and we went coasting down that long hill near Grandmother's together."

"Seems to me we did," said Let.i.tia, and her own tone was dazed and hopeless.

"Since I have been here," whispered the boy, "I haven't been exactly sure who I was and that is the truth. The folks where I am staying are real good. They go to meeting all day Sunday and they don't work Sat.u.r.day nights, but I can't understand it. We have to make all the things I have seen already made, for one thing."

Let.i.tia nodded in the dark.

"That is the way here," said she.

"And Mr. Cephas Holbrook has just the name that my great-great-great-uncle on my mother's side had," said the boy, in a whisper so puzzled that it was fairly agonized. "Grandmother has told me about him. He had a battle with six Injuns and killed them all himself, and this Mr. Cephas Holbrook has done just that same thing.

And he killed ten wolves and nailed their heads to the meeting-house.

Say," the boy continued confidentially, "those were the heads I meant, you know."

"Of course I know," whispered Let.i.tia. "I wouldn't speak to you if you had done such awful things."

"I didn't, honestly," said Josephus Peabody. "Where did you come from to-night?" asked Let.i.tia.

"Why, I came from Mr. Cephas Holbrook's. It's about ten miles away on that side." The boy pointed in the dark.

"You came all that way?"

"I had to if I came at all. I don't get any time to see my traps day-times. I have to work. I have to chop wood, and make wooden pegs.

I never saw wooden pegs, till--till I came here. I have to work all day. Eliphalet Holbrook, he's a boy about my size, got out of the window one night, when it was moonlight, and we set traps, and we haven't either of us had a chance to look at them and see if we've caught anything; but to-night, I had a cold and they sent me to bed early and I whispered to Eliphalet, that I'd see those traps; and I had a pine knot, and I run and run, but I couldn't find the traps."

"You didn't run ten miles?"

"No, the traps were set only about three miles from where we live and I rather think I lost my way. Then I heard the Injuns--say, I used to call them Indians."

"So did I," said Let.i.tia.

"They say Injuns here. Then I heard them, and I run the rest of the way, and then I saw your light. Are you one of Captain John Hopkins'

children?"

"I don't know. I don't think I am," replied Let.i.tia miserably.

"What is your name?"

"Let.i.tia Hopkins."

"Then you must be."

"I don't believe I am."

Suddenly Let.i.tia felt a hard little boy-hand clutch hers in the dark.

The boy's voice whispered forcibly in her ear. "Say," said the voice, "did you--did you get here, I wonder, in some queer way just as I did?"

Let.i.tia whispered forcibly, "Through a little green door in my Great-aunt Peggy's cheese-room."

"Had she told you never to open it?"

"Yes, but she and Hannah left me alone when they went to meeting and I found the key in a little box, and the key had a green ribbon and it unlocked the door, and I was in the woods around here, and Aunt Peggy's house was gone and everything."

"How long have you been here?"

"I don't know. It must have been a long time, for I have done so much work, and learned to do so much that I had started with all done."

"It is just the same with me," whispered the boy.

Let.i.tia s.h.i.+vered, half with joy, half with horror. "Did you come through a little green door?"

"No, I came through a book."

Let.i.tia jumped. "A book!" she repeated feebly.

"Yes, it was a book. I didn't know it at first. I thought it was just a wooden box up in Grandmother Peabody's garret, and it was always locked, and Grandmother Peabody said I was never to ask any questions about it, and never to try to open it. I expect she was afraid I might try to pick the lock. Then I began to suspect that it was a book, and then I found the key. I stayed at home from meeting just like you, and I had a cold. My father had died, and I had come to live with Grandmother Peabody."