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+Project Gutenberg's Two Little Knights of Kentucky, by Annie Fellows Johnston
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Two Little Knights of Kentucky
+
+Author: Annie Fellows Johnston
+
+Release Date: May 10, 2004 [EBook #12317]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWO LITTLE KNIGHTS OF KENTUCKY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charlie Kirschner and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+TWO LITTLE KNIGHTS OF
+KENTUCKY
+
+
+
+
+TO
+MARGARET AND ALBION,
+MARY, HELEN, LURA AND ROSE,
+WILLIAM AND GEORGE
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER
+
+   I. TWO TRAMPS AND A BEAR.
+  II. GINGER AND THE BOYS.
+ III. THE VALENTINE PARTY.
+  IV. A FIRE AND A PLAN.
+   V. JONESY'S BENEFIT.
+  VI. THE LITTLE COLONEL'S TWO RESCUES.
+ VII. A GAME OF INDIAN.
+VIII. "FAIRCHANCE".
+
+[Illustration: PLANS.]
+
+TWO LITTLE KNIGHTS OF
+KENTUCKY.
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+CHAPTER I.
+
+TWO TRAMPS AND A BEAR.
+
+It was the coldest Saint Valentine's eve that Kentucky had known in
+twenty years. In Lloydsborough Valley a thin sprinkling of snow whitened
+the meadows, enough to show the footprints of every hungry rabbit that
+loped across them; but there were not many such tracks. It was so cold
+that the rabbits, for all their thick fur, were glad to run home and
+hide. Nobody cared to be out long in such weather, and except now and
+then, when an ice-cutter's wagon creaked up from some pond to the
+frozen pike, the wintry stillness was unbroken.
+
+On the north side of the little country depot a long row of icicles hung
+from the eaves. Even the wind seemed to catch its breath there, and
+hurry on with a shiver that reached to the telegraph wires overhead. It
+shivered down the long stovepipe, too, inside the waiting-room. The
+stove had been kept red-hot all that dull gray afternoon, but the
+window-panes were still white with heavy frost-work.
+
+Half an hour before the five o'clock train was due from the city, two
+boys came running up the railroad track with their skates in their
+hands. They were handsome, sturdy little fellows, so well buttoned up in
+their leather leggins and warm reefer overcoats that they scarcely felt
+the cold. Their cheeks were red as winter apples, from skating against
+the wind, and they were almost breathless after their long run up-hill
+to the depot. Racing across the platform, they bumped against the door
+at the same instant, burst it noisily open, and slammed it behind them
+with a bang that shook the entire building.
+
+"What kind of a cyclone has struck us now?" growled the ticket agent,
+who was in the next room. Then he frowned, as the first noise was
+followed by the rasping sound of a bench being dragged out of a corner,
+to a place nearer the stove. It scraped the bare floor every inch of the
+way, with a jarring motion that made the windows rattle.
+
+Stretching himself half-way out of his chair, the ticket agent pushed up
+the wooden slide of the little window far enough for him to peep into
+the waiting-room. Then he hastily shoved it down again.
+
+"It's the two little chaps who came out from the city last week," he
+said to the station-master. "The Maclntyre boys. You'd think they own
+the earth from the way they dash in and take possession of things."
+
+The station-master liked boys. He stroked his gray beard and chuckled.
+"Well, Meyers," he said, slowly, "when you come to think of it, their
+family always has owned a pretty fair slice of the earth and its good
+things, and those same little lads have travelled nearly all over it,
+although the oldest can't be more than ten. It would be a wonder if they
+didn't have that lordly way of making themselves at home wherever
+they go."
+
+"Will they be out here all winter?" asked Meyers, who was a newcomer in
+Lloydsborough.
+
+"Yes, their father and mother have gone to Florida, and left them here
+with their grandmother Maclntyre."
+
+"I imagine the old lady has her hands full," said Meyers, as a sound of
+scuffling in the next room reached him.
+
+"Oh, I don't know about that, now," said the station-master. "They're
+noisy children, to be sure, and just boiling over with mischief, but if
+you can find any better-mannered little gentlemen anywhere in the State
+when there's ladies around, I'd like you to trot 'em out. They came down
+to the train with their aunt this morning, Miss Allison Maclntyre, and
+their politeness to her was something pretty to see, I can tell
+you, sir."
+
+There was a moment's pause, in which the boys could be heard laughing in
+the next room.
+
+"No," said the station-master again, "I'm thinking it's not the boys who
+will be keeping Mrs. Maclntyre's hands full this winter, so much as
+that little granddaughter of hers that came here last fall,--little
+Virginia Dudley. You can guess what's she like from her nickname. They
+call her Ginger. She had always lived at some army post out West, until
+her father, Captain Dudley, was ordered to Cuba. He was wounded down
+there, and has never been entirely well since. When he found they were
+going to keep him there all winter, he sent for his wife last September,
+and there was nothing to do with Virginia but to bring her back to
+Kentucky to her grandmother."
+
+"Oh, she's the little girl who went in on the train this morning with
+Miss Allison," said the ticket agent. "I suppose the boys have come down
+to meet them. They'll have a long time to wait."
+
+While this conversation was going on behind the ticket window, the two
+boys stretched themselves out on a long bench beside the stove. The warm
+room made them feel drowsy after their violent out-door exercise. Keith,
+the younger one, yawned several times, and finally lay down on the bench
+with his cap for a pillow. He was eight years old, but curled up in that
+fashion, with his long eyelashes resting on his red cheeks, and one
+plump little hand tucked under his chin, he looked much younger.
+
+"Wake me up, Malcolm, when it's time for Aunt Allison's train," he said
+to his brother. "Ginger would never stop teasing me if she should find
+me asleep."
+
+Malcolm unbuttoned his reefer, and, after much tugging, pulled out a
+handsome little gold watch. "Oh, there's a long time to wait!" he
+exclaimed. "We need not have left the pond so early, for the train will
+not be here for twenty-five minutes. I believe I'll curl up here myself,
+till then. I hope they won't forget the valentines we sent for."
+
+The room was very still for a few minutes. There was no sound at all
+except the crackling of the fire and the shivering of the wind in the
+long stovepipe. Then some one turned the door-knob so cautiously and
+slowly that it unlatched without a sound.
+
+It was the cold air rushing into the room as the door was pushed ajar
+that aroused the boys. After one surprised glance they sat up, for the
+man, who was slipping into the room as stealthily as a burglar, was the
+worst-looking tramp they had ever seen. There was a long, ugly red scar
+across his face, running from his cheek to the middle of his forehead,
+and partly closing one eye. Perhaps it was the scar that gave him such a
+queer, evil sort of an expression; even without it he would have been a
+repulsive sight. His clothes were dirty and ragged, and his breath had
+frozen in icicles on his stubby red beard.
+
+Behind him came a boy no larger than Keith, but with a hard, shrewd look
+in his hungry little face that made one feel he had lived a long time
+and learned more than was good for him to know. It was plain to be seen
+that he was nearly starved, and suffering from the intense cold. His
+bare toes peeped through their ragged shoes, and he had no coat. A thin
+cotton shirt and a piece of an old gray horse-blanket was all that
+protected his shoulders from the icy wind of that February afternoon.
+He, too, crept in noiselessly, as if expecting to be ordered out at the
+first sound, and then turned to coax in some animal that was tied to one
+end of the rope which he held.
+
+Malcolm and Keith looked on with interest, and sprang up excitedly as
+the animal finally shuffled in far enough for the boy to close the door
+behind it. It was a great, shaggy bear, taller than the man when it sat
+up on its haunches beside him.
+
+The tramp looked uneasily around the room for an instant, but seeing no
+one save the two children, ventured nearer the stove. The boy followed
+him, and the bear shuffled along behind them both, limping painfully.
+Not a word was said for a moment. The boys were casting curious glances
+at the three tramps who had come in as noiselessly as if they had snowed
+down, and the man was watching the boys with shrewd eyes. He did not
+seem to be looking at them, but at the end of his survey he could have
+described them accurately. He had noticed every detail of their
+clothing, from their expensive leather leggins to their fur-lined
+gloves. He glanced at Malcolm's watch-chain and the fine skates which
+Keith swung back and forth by a strap, and made up his mind, correctly,
+too, that the pockets of these boys rarely lacked the jingle of money
+which they could spend as they pleased.
+
+When he turned away to hold his hands out toward the stove, he rubbed
+them together with satisfaction, for he had discovered more than that.
+He knew from their faces that they were trusting little souls, who would
+believe any story he might tell them, if he appealed to their sympathies
+in the right way. He was considering how to begin, when Malcolm broke
+the silence.
+
+"Is that a trained bear?"
+
+The man nodded.
+
+"What can it do?" was the next question.
+
+"Oh, lots of things," answered the man, in a low, whining voice. "Drill
+like a soldier, and dance, and ride a stick." He kept his shifty eyes
+turning constantly toward the door, as if afraid some one might
+overhear him.
+
+"I'd put him through his paces for you young gen'lemen," he said, "but
+he got his foot hurt for one thing, and another is, if we went to
+showing off, we might be ordered to move on. This is the first time
+we've smelled a fire in twenty-four hours, and we ain't in no hurry to
+leave it, I can tell you."
+
+"Will he bite?" asked Keith, going up to the huge bear, which had
+stretched itself out comfortably on the floor.
+
+"Not generally. He's a good-tempered brute, most times like a lamb. But
+he ain't had nothing to eat all day, so it wouldn't be surprising if he
+was a bit snappish."
+
+"Nothing to eat!" echoed Keith. "You poor old thing!" Going a step
+closer, he put out his hand and stroked the bear, as if it had been a
+great dog.
+
+"Oh, Malcolm, just feel how soft his fur is, like mamma's beaver jacket.
+And he has the kindest old face. Poor old fellow, is you hungry? Never
+mind, Keith'll get you something to eat pretty soon."
+
+Putting his short, plump arms around the animal's neck, he hugged it
+lovingly up to him. A cunning gleam came into the man's eyes. He saw
+that he had gained the younger boy's sympathy, and he wanted
+Malcolm's also.
+
+"Is your home near here, my little gen'leman?" he asked, in a friendly
+tone.
+
+"No, we live in the city," answered Malcolm, "but my grandmother's
+place, where we are staying, is not far from here." He was stroking the
+bear with one hand as he spoke, and hunting in his pocket with the
+other, hoping to find some stray peanuts to give it.
+
+"Then maybe you know of some place where we could stay to-night. Even a
+shed to crawl into would keep us from freezing. It's an awful cold night
+not to have a roof over your head, or a crust to gnaw on, or a spark of
+fire to keep life in your body."
+
+"Maybe they'd let you stay in the waiting-room," suggested Malcolm. "It
+is always good and warm in here. I'll ask the station-master. He's a
+friend of mine."
+
+"Oh, no! No, don't!" exclaimed the tramp, hastily, pulling his old hat
+farther over his forehead, as if to hide the scar, and looking uneasily
+around. "I wouldn't have you do that for anything. I've had dealings
+with such folks before, and I know how they'd treat _me_. I thought
+maybe there was a barn or a hay-shed or something on your grandmother's
+place, where we could lay up for repairs a couple of days. The beast
+needs a rest. Its foot's sore; and Jonesy there is pretty near to lung
+fever, judging from the way he coughs." He nodded toward the boy, who
+had placed his chair as close to the stove as possible. The child's face
+was drawn into a pucker by the tingling pains in his half-frozen feet,
+and his efforts to keep from coughing.
+
+Malcolm looked at him steadily. He had read about boys who were homeless
+and hungry and cold, but he had never really understood how much it
+meant to be all that. This was the first time in his ten short years
+that he had ever come close to real poverty. He had seen the swarms of
+beggars that infest such cities as Naples and Rome, and had tossed them
+coppers because that seemed a part of the programme in travelling. He
+had not really felt sorry for them, for they did not seem to mind it.
+They sat on the steps in the warm Italian sunshine, and waited for
+tourists to throw them money, as comfortably as toads sit blinking at
+flies. But this was different. A wave of pity swept through Malcolm's
+generous little heart as he looked at Jonesy, and the man watching him
+shrewdly saw it.
+
+"Of course," he whined, "a little gen'leman like you don't know what it
+is to go from town to town and have every door shut in your face. You
+don't think that this is a hard-hearted, stingy old world, because it
+has given you the cream of everything. But if you'd never had anything
+all your life but other people's scraps and leavings, and you hadn't any
+home or friends or money, and was sick besides, you'd think things
+wasn't very evenly divided. Wouldn't you now? You'd think it wasn't
+right that some should have all that heart can wish, and others not
+enough to keep soul and body together. If you'd a-happened to be Jonesy,
+and Jonesy had a-happened to 'a' been you, I reckon you'd feel it was
+pretty tough to see such a big difference between you. It doesn't seem
+fair now, does it?"
+
+"No," admitted Malcolm, faintly. He had taken a dislike to the man. He
+could not have told why, but his child instinct armed him with a sudden
+distrust. Still, he felt the force of the whining appeal, and the burden
+of an obligation to help them seemed laid upon his shoulders.
+
+"Grandmother is afraid for anybody to sleep in the barn, on account of
+fire," he said, after a moment's thought, "and I'm sure she wouldn't let
+you come into the house without you'd had a bath and some clean clothes.
+Grandmother is dreadfully particular," he added, hastily, not wanting to
+be impolite even to a tramp. "Seems to me Keith and I have to spend half
+our time washing our hands and putting on clean collars."
+
+"Oh, I know a place," cried Keith. "There's that empty cabin down by the
+spring-house. Nobody has lived in it since the new servants' cottage was
+built. There isn't any furniture in it, but there's a fireplace in one
+room, and it would be warmer than the barn."
+
+"That's just the trick!" exclaimed Malcolm. "We can carry a pile of hay
+over from the barn for you to sleep on. Aunt Allison will be out on this
+next train and I'll ask her. I am sure she will let you, because last
+night, when it was so cold, she said she felt sorry for anything that
+had to be out in it, even the poor old cedar trees, with the sleet on
+their branches. She said that it was King Lear's own weather, and she
+could understand how Cordelia felt when she said, _'Mine enemy's dog,
+though he had bit me, should have stood that night against my fire!'_ It
+is just like auntie to feel that way about it, only she's so good to
+everybody she couldn't have any enemies."
+
+Something like a smile moved the tramp's stubby beard. "So she's that
+kind, is she? Well, if she could have a soft spot for a dog that had bit
+her, and an enemy's dog at that, it stands to reason that she wouldn't
+object to some harmless travellers a-sleeping in an empty cabin a couple
+of nights. S'pose'n you show us the place, sonny, and we'll be
+moving on."
+
+"Oh, it wouldn't be right not to ask her first," exclaimed Malcolm.
+"She'll be here in such a little while."
+
+The man looked uneasy. Presently he walked over to the window and
+scraped a peep-hole on the frosted pane with his dirty thumbnail. "Sun's
+down," he said. "I'd like to get that bear's foot fixed comfortable
+before it grows any darker. I'd like to mighty well. It'll take some
+time to heat water to dress it. Is that cabin far from here?"
+
+"Not if we go in at the back of the place," said Malcolm. "It's just
+across the meadow, and over a little hill. If we went around by the big
+front gate it would be a good deal longer."
+
+The man shifted uneasily from one foot to another, and complained of
+being hungry. He was growing desperate. For more reasons than one he did
+not want to be at the station when the train came in. That long red scar
+across his face had been described a number of times in the newspapers,
+and he did not care to be recognised just then.
+
+The boys could not have told how it came about, but in a few minutes
+they were leading the way toward the cabin. The man had persuaded them
+that it was not at all necessary to wait for their Aunt Allison's
+permission, and that it was needless to trouble their grandmother. Why
+should the ladies be bothered about a matter that the boys were old
+enough to decide? So well had he argued, and so tactfully had he
+flattered them, that when they took their way across the field, it was
+with the feeling that they were doing their highest duty in getting
+these homeless wayfarers to the cabin as quickly as possible, on
+their own responsibility.
+
+[Illustration: "ACROSS THE SNOWY FIELDS."]
+
+"We can get back in time to meet the train, if we hurry," said Malcolm,
+looking at his watch again. "There's still fifteen minutes."
+
+No one saw the little procession file out of the waiting-room and across
+the snowy field, for it was growing dark, and the lamps were lighted and
+the curtains drawn in the few houses they passed. Malcolm went first,
+proudly leading the friendly old bear. Jonesy came next beside Keith,
+and the man shuffled along in the rear, looking around with suspicious
+glances whenever a twig snapped, or a distant dog barked.
+
+As the wind struck against Jonesy's body, he drew the bit of blanket
+more closely around him, and coughed hoarsely. His teeth were chattering
+and his lips blue. "You look nearly frozen," said Keith, who, well-clad
+and well-fed, scarcely felt the cold. "Here! put this on, or you'll be
+sick," Unbuttoning his thick little reefer, he pulled it off and tied
+its sleeves around Jonesy's neck.
+
+A strange look passed over the face of the man behind them. "Blessed if
+the little kid didn't take it off his own back," he muttered. "If any
+man had ever done that for me--just once--well, maybe, I wouldn't ha'
+been what I am now!"
+
+For a moment, as they reached the top of the hill, bear, boys, and man
+were outlined blackly against the sky like strange silhouettes. Then
+they passed over and disappeared in the thick clump of pine-trees, which
+hid the little cabin from the eyes of the surrounding world.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+GINGER AND THE BOYS.
+
+In less time than one would think possible, a big fire was roaring in
+the cabin fireplace, water was steaming in the rusty kettle on the
+crane, and a pile of hay and old carpet lay in one corner, ready to be
+made into a bed. Keith had made several trips to the kitchen, and came
+back each time with his hands full.
+
+Old Daphne, the cook, never could find it in her heart to refuse "Marse
+Sydney's" boys anything. They were too much like what their father had
+been at their age to resist their playful coaxing. She had nursed him
+when he was a baby, and had been his loyal champion all through his
+boyhood. Now her black face wrinkled into smiles whenever she heard his
+name spoken. In her eyes, nobody was quite so near perfection as he,
+except, perhaps, the fair woman whom he had married.
+
+"Kain't nobody in ten States hole a can'le to my Marse Sidney an' his
+Miss Elise," old Daphne used to say, proudly. "They sut'n'ly is the
+handsomest couple evah jined togethah, an' the free-handedest. In all
+they travels by sea or by land they nevah fo'gits ole Daphne. I've got
+things from every country undah the shinin' sun what they done
+brung me."
+
+Now, all the services she had once been proud to render them were
+willingly given to their little sons. When Keith came in with a pitiful
+tale of a tramp who was starving at their very gates, she gave him even
+more than he asked for, and almost more than he could carry.
+
+The bear and its masters were so hungry, and their two little hosts so
+interested in watching them eat, that they forgot all about going back
+to meet the train. They did not even hear it whistle when it came
+puffing into the Valley.
+
+As Miss Allison stepped from the car to the station platform, she looked
+around in vain for the boys who had promised to meet her. Her arms were
+so full of bundles, as suburban passengers' usually are, that she could
+not hold up her long broadcloth skirt, or even turn her handsome fur
+collar higher over her ears. With a shade of annoyance on her pretty
+face, she swept across the platform and into the waiting-room, out
+of the cold.
+
+Behind her came a little girl about ten years old, as unlike her as
+possible, although it was Virginia Dudley's ambition to be exactly like
+her Aunt Allison. She wanted to be tall, and slender, and grown up; Miss
+Allison was that, and yet she had kept all her lively girlish ways, and
+a love of fun that made her charming to everybody, young and old.
+Virginia longed for wavy brown hair and white hands, and especially for
+a graceful, easy manner. Her hair was short and black, and her
+complexion like a gypsy's. She had hard, brown little fists, sharp gray
+eyes that seemed to see everything at once, and a tongue that was always
+getting her into trouble. As for the ease of manner, that might come in
+time, but her stately old grandmother often sighed in secret over
+Virginia's awkwardness.
+
+She stumbled now as she followed the young lady into the waiting-room.
+Her big, plume-covered hat tipped over one ear, but she, too, had so
+many bundles, that she could not spare a hand to straighten it.
+
+"Well, Virginia, what do you suppose has become of the boys?" asked her
+aunt. "They promised to meet us and carry our packages."
+
+"I heard them in here about half an hour ago, Miss Allison," said the
+station-master, who had come in with a lantern. "I s'pose they got tired
+of waiting. Better leave your things here, hadn't you? I'll watch them.
+It is mighty slippery walking this evening."
+
+"Oh, thank you, Mr. Mason," she answered, beginning to pile boxes and
+packages upon a bench, I'll send Pete down for them immediately. Now,
+Virginia, turn up your coat collar and hold your muff over your nose, or
+Jack Frost will make an icicle out of you before you are half-way home.
+
+They had been in the house some time before the boys remembered their
+promise to meet them at the station. When they saw how late it was, they
+started home on the run.
+
+"I am fairly aching to tell Ginger about that bear," panted Keith, as
+they reached the side door. "I am so sorry that we promised the man not
+to say anything about them being on the place, before he sees us again
+to-morrow. I wonder why he asked us that."
+
+"I don't know," answered Malcolm. "He seemed to have some very good
+reason, and he talked about it so that it didn't seem right not to
+promise a little thing like that."
+
+"I wish we hadn't, though," said Keith, again.
+
+"But it's done now," persisted Malcolm. "We're bound not to tell, and
+you can't get out of it, for he made us give him our word 'on the
+honour of a gentleman;' and that settles it, you know."
+
+They were two very dirty boys who clattered up the back stairs, and
+raced to their room to dress for dinner. Their clothes were covered with
+hayseed and straw, and their hands and faces were black with soot from
+the old cabin chimney. They had both helped to build the fire.
+
+The lamps had just been lighted in the upper hall, and Virginia came
+running out from her room when she heard the boys' voices.
+
+"Why didn't you meet us at the train?" she began, but stopped as she saw
+their dirty faces. "Where on earth have you chimney-sweeps been?"
+she cried.
+
+"Oh, about and about," answered Malcolm, teasingly. "Don't you wish you
+knew?"
+
+Virginia shrugged her shoulders, as if she had not the slightest
+interest in the matter, and held out two packages.
+
+"Here are the valentines you sent for. You just ought to see the pile
+that Aunt Allison bought. We've the best secret about to-morrow that
+ever was."
+
+"So have we," began Keith, but Malcolm clapped a sooty hand over his
+mouth and pulled him toward the door of their room. "Come on," he said.
+"We've barely time to dress for dinner. Don't you know enough to keep
+still, you little magpie?" he exclaimed, as the door banged behind them.
+"The only way to keep a secret is not to act like you have one!"
+
+Virginia walked slowly back to her room and paused in the doorway,
+wondering what she could do to amuse herself until dinner-time. It was a
+queer room for a girl, decorated with flags and Indian trophies and
+everything that could remind her of the military life she loved, at the
+far-away army post. There were photographs framed in brass buttons on
+her dressing-table, and pictures of uniformed officers all over the
+walls. A canteen and an army cap with a bullet-hole through the crown,
+hung over her desk, and a battered bugle, that had sounded many a
+triumphant charge, swung from the corner of her mirror.
+
+Each souvenir had a history, and had been given her at parting by some
+special friend. Every one at the fort had made a pet of Captain Dudley's
+daughter,--the harum-scarum little Ginger,--who would rather dash across
+the prairies on her pony, like a wild Comanche Indian, than play with
+the finest doll ever imported from Paris.
+
+There was a suit in her wardrobe, short skirt, jacket, leggins, and
+moccasins, all made and beaded by the squaws. It was the gift of the
+colonel's wife. Mrs. Dudley had hesitated some time before putting it in
+one of the trunks that was to go back to Kentucky.
+
+"You look so much like an Indian now," she said to Virginia. "Your face
+is so sunburned that I am afraid your grandmother will be scandalised. I
+don't know what she would say if she knew that I ever allowed you to run
+so wild. If I had known that you were going back to civilisation I
+certainly should not have kept your hair cut short, and you should have
+worn sunbonnets all summer."
+
+To Mrs. Dudley's great surprise, her little daughter threw herself into
+her arms, sobbing, "Oh, mamma! I don't want to go back to Kentucky! Take
+me to Cuba with you! Please do, or else let me stay here at the post.
+Everybody will take care of me here! I'll just _die_ if you leave me in
+Kentucky!"
+
+"Why, darling," she said, soothingly, as she wiped her tears away and
+rocked her back and forth in her arms, "I thought you have always
+wanted to see mamma's old home, and the places you have heard so much
+about. There are all the old toys in the nursery that we had when we
+were children, and the grape-vine swing in the orchard, and the
+mill-stream where we fished, and the beech-woods where we had such
+delightful picnics. I thought it would be so nice for you to do all the
+same things that made me so happy when I was a child, and go to school
+in the same old Girls' College and know all the dear old neighbours that
+I knew. Wouldn't my little girl like that?"
+
+"Oh, yes, some, I s'pose," sobbed Virginia, "but I didn't know I'd have
+to be so--so--everlastingly--civilised!" she wailed. "I don't want to
+always have to dress just so, and have to walk in a path and be called
+Virginia all the time. That sounds so stiff and proper. I'd rather stay
+where people don't mind if I am sunburned and tanned, and won't be
+scandalised at everything I do. It's so much nicer to be just
+plain Ginger!"
+
+It had been five months, now, since Virginia left Fort Dennis. At first
+she had locked hen self in her room nearly every day, and, with her
+face buried in her Indian suit, cried to go back. She missed the gay
+military life of the army post, as a sailor would miss the sea, or an
+Alpine shepherd the free air of his snow-capped mountain heights.
+
+It was not that she did not enjoy being at her grandmother's. She liked
+the great gray house whose square corner tower and over-hanging vines
+made it look like an old castle. She liked the comfort and elegance of
+the big, stately rooms, and she had her grandmother's own pride in the
+old family portraits and the beautiful carved furniture. The negro
+servants seemed so queer and funny to her that she found them a great
+source of amusement, and her Aunt Allison planned so many pleasant
+occupations outside of school-hours that she scarcely had time to get
+lonesome. But she had a shut-in feeling, like a wild bird in a cage, and
+sometimes the longing for liberty which her mother had allowed her made
+her fret against the thousand little proprieties she had to observe.
+Sometimes when she went tipping over the polished floors of the long
+drawing room, and caught sight of herself in one of the big mirrors, she
+felt that she was not herself at all, but somebody in a story. The
+Virginia in the looking-glass seemed so very, very civilised. More than
+once, after one of these meetings with herself in the mirror, she dashed
+up-stairs, locked her door, and dressed herself in her Indian suit. Then
+in her noiseless moccasins she danced the wildest of war-dances,
+whispering shrilly between her teeth, "Now I'm Ginger! Now I'm Ginger!
+And I _won't_ be dressed up, and I _won't_ learn my lessons, and I
+_won't_ be a little lady, and I'll run away and go back to Fort Dennis
+the very first chance I get!"
+
+Usually she was ashamed of these outbursts afterwards, for it always
+happened that after each one she found her Aunt Allison had planned
+something especially pleasant for her entertainment. Miss Allison felt
+sorry for the lonely child, who had never been separated from her father
+and mother before, so she devoted her time to her as much as possible,
+telling her stories and entering into her plays and pleasures as if they
+had both been the same age.
+
+Since the boys had come, Virginia had not had a single homesick moment.
+While she was at school in the primary department of the Girls'
+College, Malcolm and Keith were reciting their lessons to the old
+minister who lived across the road from Mrs. MacIntyre's. They were all
+free about the same hour, and even on the coldest days played
+out-of-doors from lunch-time until dark.
+
+To-night Virginia had so many experiences to tell them of her day in
+town that the boys seemed unusually long in dressing. She was so
+impatient for them to hear her news that she could not settle down to
+anything, but walked restlessly around the room, wishing they
+would hurry.
+
+"Oh, I haven't sorted my valentines!" she exclaimed, presently, picking
+up a fancy box which she had tossed on the bed when she first came in.
+"I'll take them down to the library."
+
+There was no one in the room when she peeped in. It looked so bright and
+cosy with the great wood fire blazing on the hearth and the
+rose-coloured light falling from its softly shaded lamps, that she
+forgot the coldness of the night outside. Sitting down on a pile of
+cushions at one end of the hearth-rug, she began sorting her purchases,
+trying to decide to whom each one should be sent.
+
+"The prettiest valentine of all must go to poor papa," she said to
+herself, "'cause he's been so sick away down there in Cuba; and this one
+that's got the little girl on it in a blue dress shall be for my dear,
+sweet mamma, 'cause it will make her think of me."
+
+For a moment, a mist seemed to blur the gay blue dress of the little
+valentine girl as Virginia looked at her, thinking of her far-away
+mother. She drew her hand hastily across her eyes and went on:
+
+"This one is for Sergeant Jackson out at Fort Dennis, and the biggest
+one, with the doves, for Colonel Philips and his wife. Dear me! I wish I
+could send one to every officer and soldier out there. They were all
+_so_ good to me!"
+
+The pile of lace-paper cupids and hearts and arrows and roses slipped
+from her lap, down to the rug, as she clasped her hands around her knees
+and looked into the fire. She wished that she could be back again at the
+fort, long enough to live one of those beautiful old days from reveille
+to taps. How she loved the bugle-calls and the wild thrill the band gave
+her, when it struck up a burst of martial music, and the troops went
+dashing by! How she missed the drills and the dress parades; her rides
+across the open prairie on her pony, beside her father; how she missed
+the games she used to play with the other children at the fort on the
+long summer evenings!
+
+Something more than a mist was gathering in her eyes now. Two big tears
+were almost ready to fall when the door opened and Mrs. MacIntyre came
+in. In Virginia's eyes she was the most beautiful grandmother any one
+ever had. She was not so tall as her daughter Allison, and in that
+respect fell short of the little girl's ideal, but her hair, white as
+snow, curled around her face in the same soft, pretty fashion, and by
+every refined feature she showed her kinship to the aristocratic old
+faces which looked down from the family portraits in the hall.
+
+"I couldn't be as stately and dignified as she is if I practised a
+thousand years," thought Virginia, scrambling up from the pile of
+cushions to roll a chair nearer the fire. As she did so, her heel caught
+in the rug, and she fell back in an awkward little heap.
+
+"The more haste, the less grace, my dear," said her grandmother, kindly,
+thanking her for the proffered chair. Virginia blushed, wondering why
+she always appeared so awkward in her grandmother's presence. She envied
+the boys because they never seemed embarrassed or ill at ease
+before her.
+
+While she was picking up her valentines the boys came in. If two of the
+cavalier ancestors had stepped down from their portrait frames just
+then, they could not have come into the room in a more charming manner
+than Malcolm and Keith. Their faces were shining, their linen spotless,
+and they came up to kiss their grandmother's cheek with an old-time
+courtliness that delighted her.
+
+"I am sure that there are no more perfect gentlemen in all Kentucky than
+my two little lads," she said, fondly, with an approving pat of Keith's
+hand as she held him a moment.
+
+Virginia, who had seen them half an hour before, tousled and dirty, and
+had been arrayed against them in more than one hot quarrel where they
+had been anything but chivalrous, let slip a faintly whistled
+"_cuckoo!_"
+
+The boys darted a quick glance in her direction, but she was bending
+over the valentines with a very serious face, which never changed its
+expression till her Aunt Allison came in and the boys began their
+apologies for not meeting her at the train. Their only excuse was that
+they had forgotten all about it.
+
+Virginia spelled on her fingers: "I dare you to tell what made your
+faces so black!" Keith's only answer was to thrust his tongue out at her
+behind his grandmother's back. Then he ran to hold the door open for the
+ladies to pass out to dinner, with all the grace of a young
+Chesterfield.
+
+When dinner was over and they were back in the library, Miss Allison
+opened a box of tiny heart-shaped envelopes, and began addressing them.
+As she took up her pen she said, merrily: "_Now_ you may tell our
+secret, Virginia."
+
+"I was going to make you guess for about an hour," said Virginia, "but
+it is so nice I can't wait that long to tell you. We are going to have a
+valentine party to-morrow night. Aunt Allison planned it all a week ago,
+and bought the things for it while we were in town to-day. Everything on
+the table is to be cut in heart shape,--the bread and butter and
+sandwiches and cheese; and the ice-cream will be moulded in hearts, and
+the two big frosted cakes are hearts, one pink and one white, with candy
+arrows sticking in them. Then there will be peppermint candy hearts with
+mottoes printed on them, and lace-paper napkins with verses on them, so
+that the table itself will look like a lovely big valentine. The games
+are lovely, too. One is parlour archery, with a red heart in the middle
+of the target, and two prizes, one for the boys and one for the girls."
+
+"Who are invited?" asked Malcolm, as Virginia stopped for breath.
+
+"Oh, the Carrington boys, and the Edmunds, and Sally Fairfax, and Julia
+Ferris,--I can't remember them all. There will be twenty-four, counting
+us. There is the list on the table."
+
+Keith reached for it, and began slowly spelling out the names. "Who is
+this?" he asked, reading the name that headed the list. "'The Little
+Colonel!' I never heard of him,"
+
+"Oh, he's a girl!" laughed Virginia. Little Lloyd Sherman,--don't you
+know? She lives up at 'The Locusts,' that lovely place with the long
+avenue of trees leading up to the house. You've surely seen her with her
+grandfather, old Colonel Lloyd, riding by on the horse that he calls
+Maggie Boy."
+
+"Has he only one arm?" asked Malcolm.
+
+"Yes, the other was shot off in the war years ago. Well, when Lloyd was
+younger, she had a temper so much like his, and wore such a dear little
+Napoleon hat, that everybody took to calling her the Little Colonel."
+
+"How old is she now?" asked Malcolm.
+
+"About Keith's age, isn't she, Aunt Allison?" asked Virginia.
+
+"Yes," was the answer. "She is nearly eight, I believe. She has
+outgrown most of her naughtiness now."
+
+"I love to hear her talk," said Virginia. "She leaves out all of her r's
+in such a soft, sweet way."
+
+"All Southerners do that," said Malcolm, pompously, "and I think it
+sounds lots better than the way Yankees talk."
+
+"You boys don't talk like the Little Colonel," retorted Virginia, who
+had often been teased by them for not being a Southerner. "You're all
+mixed up every which way. Some things you say like darkeys, and some
+things like English people, and it doesn't sound a bit like the
+Little Colonel."
+
+"Oh, well, that's because we've travelled abroad so much, don't you
+know," drawled Malcolm, "and we've been in so many different countries,
+and had an English tutor, and all that sort of a thing. We couldn't help
+picking up a bit of an accent, don't you know." His superior tone made
+Virginia long to slap him.
+
+"Yes, I know, Mr. Brag," she said, in such a low voice that her
+grandmother could not hear. "I know perfectly well. If I didn't it
+wouldn't be because you haven't told me every chance you got. Who did
+you say is your tailor in London, and how many times was it the Queen
+invited you out to Windsor? I think it's a ninety-nine dollar cravat you
+always buy, isn't it? And you wouldn't be so common as to wear a pair of
+gloves that hadn't been made to order specially for you. Yes, I've heard
+all about it!"
+
+Miss Allison heard, but said nothing. She knew the boys were a little
+inclined to boast, and she thought Virginia's sharp tongue might have a
+good effect. But the retort had grown somewhat sharper than was
+pleasant, and, fearing a quarrel might follow if she did not interrupt
+the whispers beside her, she said:
+
+"Boys, did you ever hear about the time that the Little Colonel threw
+mud on her grandfather's coat? There's no end to her pranks. Get
+grandmother to tell you."
+
+"Oh, yes, please, grandmother," begged Keith, with an arm around her
+neck. "Tell about Fritz and the parrot, too," said Virginia. "Here,
+Malcolm, there's room on this side for you."
+
+Aunt Allison smiled. The storm had blown over, and they were all friends
+again.
+
+[Illustration: "'DAPHNE, WHAT'S DEM CHILLUN ALLUZ RACIN' DOWN TO DE
+SPRING-HOUSE FO'?'"]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE VALENTINE PARTY.
+
+"Now we can tell Ginger about the bear," was Keith's first remark, when
+he awoke early next morning.
+
+"But not until after we have seen the man again," answered Malcolm. "You
+know we promised him that."
+
+"Then let's go down before breakfast," exclaimed Keith, springing out of
+bed and beginning to dress himself. A little while later, the old
+coloured coachman saw them run past the window, where he was warming
+himself by the kitchen stove.
+
+"Daphne," he called out to the cook, who was beating biscuit in the
+adjoining pantry, "Daphne, what's dem chillun alluz racin' down to de
+spring-house fo' in de snow? Peah's lak dee has a heap o' business
+down yandah."
+
+Daphne, who had just been coaxed into filling a basket with a generous
+supply of cold victuals, pretended not to hear until he repeated his
+question. Then she stopped pounding long enough to say, sharply,
+"Whuffo' you alluz 'spicion dem boys so evahlastin'ly, Unc' Henry? Lak
+enough dee's settin' a rabbit trap. Boys has done such things befo'.
+You's done it yo'se'f, hasn't you?"
+
+Daphne had seen them setting rabbit traps there, but she knew well
+enough that was not what they had gone for now, and that the food they
+carried was not for the game of Robinson Crusoe, which they had played
+in the deserted cabin the summer before. Still, she did not care to take
+Unc' Henry into her confidence.
+
+The food, the warmth, and the night's rest had so restored the bear that
+it was able to go through all its performances for the boys'
+entertainment, although it limped badly.
+
+"Isn't he a dandy?" cried Keith; "I wish we had one. It's nicer than any
+pets we ever had, except the ponies. Something always happened to the
+dogs, and the monkey was such a nuisance, and the white rabbits were
+stolen, and the guinea pigs died."
+
+"Haven't we had a lot of things, when you come to think of it?"
+exclaimed Malcolm. "Squirrels, and white mice, and the coon that Uncle
+Harry brought us, and the parrot from Mexico."
+
+"Yes, and the gold-fish, and the little baby alligator that froze to
+death in its tank," added Keith. "But a bear like this would be nicer
+than any of them. As soon as papa comes home I am going to ask him to
+buy us one."
+
+"Jonesy's nearly done for," said the tramp, pointing to the boy who lay
+curled up in the hay, coughing at nearly every breath. "We ought to stay
+here another day, if you young gen'lemen don't object."
+
+"Oh, goody!" cried Keith. "Then we can bring Ginger down to see the bear
+perform."
+
+"Yes," answered the man, "we'll give a free show to all your friends, if
+you will only kindly wait till to-morrow. Give us one more day to rest
+up and get in a little better trim. The poor beast's foot is still too
+lame for him to do his best, and you're too kind-hearted, I am sure, to
+want anything to suffer in order to give you pleasure."
+
+"Of course," answered both the boys, agreeing so quickly to all the
+man's smooth speeches that, before they left the cabin, they had
+renewed their promise to keep silent one more day. The man was a shrewd
+one, and knew well how to make these unsuspecting little souls serve his
+purpose, like puppets tied to a string.
+
+Miss Allison was so busy with preparations for the party that she had no
+time all that day to notice what the boys were doing. When they came
+back from reciting their lessons to the minister, she sent them on
+several errands, but the rest of the time they divided between the cabin
+and the post-office.
+
+Every mail brought a few valentines to each of them, but it was not
+until the five o'clock train came that they found the long-looked-for
+letters from their father and mother.
+
+"I knew they'd each send us a valentine," cried Keith, tearing both of
+his open. "I'll bet that papa's is a comic one. Yes, here it is. Papa is
+such a tease. Isn't it a stunner? a base-ball player. And, whoopee!
+Here's a dollar bill in each of 'em."
+
+"So there is in mine," said Malcolm. "Mamma says we are to buy anything
+we want, and call it a valentine. They couldn't find anything down on
+the coast that they thought we would like."
+
+"I don't know what to get with mine," said Keith, folding his two bills
+together. "Seems to me I have everything I want except a camera, and I
+couldn't buy the kind I want for two dollars."
+
+They were half-way home when a happy thought came to Malcolm. "Keith,"
+he cried, excitedly, "if you would put your money with mine, that would
+make four dollars, and maybe it would be enough to buy that bear!"
+
+"Let's do it!" exclaimed Keith, turning a handspring in the snow to show
+his delight. "Come on, we'll ask the man now."
+
+But the man shook his head, when they dashed into the cabin and told
+their errand. "No, sonny, that ain't a tenth of what it's worth to me,"
+he said. "I've raised that bear from the time it was a teeny cub. I've
+taught it, and fed it, and looked to it for company when I hadn't nobody
+in the world to care for me. Couldn't sell that bear for no such sum as
+that. Couldn't you raise any more money than that?"
+
+It was Malcolm's turn to shake his head. He turned away, too
+disappointed to trust himself to answer any other way. The tears sprang
+to Keith's eyes. He had set his heart on having that bear.
+
+"Never mind, brother," said Malcolm, moving toward the door. "Papa will
+get us one when he comes home and finds how much we want one."
+
+"Oh, don't be in such a hurry, young gen'lemen," whined the man, when he
+saw that they were really going. "I didn't say that I wouldn't sell it
+to you for that much. You've been so kind to me that I ought to be
+willing to make any sacrifice for you. I happen to need four dollars
+very particular just now, and I've a mind to sell him to you on your own
+terms." He paused a moment, looking thoughtfully at a crack in the
+floor, as he stood by the fire with his hands in his pockets. "Yes," he
+said, at last, "you can have him for four dollars, if you'll keep mum
+about us being here for one more day. You can leave the bear here
+till we go."
+
+"No! No!" cried Keith, throwing his arms around the animal's neck. "He
+is ours now, and we must take him with us. We can hide him away in the
+barn. It is so dark out-doors now that nobody will see us. It wouldn't
+seem like he is really ours if we couldn't take him with us."
+
+After some grumbling the man consented, and pocketed the four dollars,
+first asking very particularly the exact spot in the barn where they
+expected to hide their huge pet.
+
+Unc' Henry, coming up from the carriage-house through the twilight,
+thought he saw some one stealing along by the clump of cedars by the
+spring-house. "Who's prowlin' roun' dis yere premises?" he called. There
+was no answer, and, after peering intently through the dusk for a
+moment, the old darkey concluded that he must have been mistaken, and
+passed on. As soon as he was gone, the boys came out from behind the
+cedars, and crept up the snowy hillside. They were leading the bear
+between them.
+
+"We'll put him away back in the hay-mow where he'll be warm and
+comfortable to-night," whispered Malcolm. "Then in the morning we can
+tell everybody."
+
+While they were busily scooping out a big hollow in the hay, they were
+startled by a rustling behind them. They looked into each other's
+frightened faces, and then glanced around the dark barn in alarm. An old
+cap pushed up through the hay. Then a weak little cough betrayed Jonesy.
+He had followed them.
+
+"Sh!" he said, in a warning whisper. "I'm afraid the boss will find out
+that I'm here. He started to the store for some tobacco as soon as you
+left. He's been wild fer some, but didn't have no money. _Don't you
+leave that bear out here to-night, if you ever expect to see it again!_
+That wasn't true what he told you. He never saw the bear till two months
+ago, and he sold it to you cheap because he's a-goin' to steal it back
+again to-night, and make off up the road with it. He went off a-grinnin'
+over the slick way he'd fooled you, and I jes' had to come and tell,
+'cause you've been so good to me. I'll never forget the little kid's
+givin' me the coat off his own back, if I live to be a hundred. Now
+don't blab on me, or the boss would nearly kill me."
+
+"Is that man your father?" began Keith, but Jonesy, alarmed by some
+sudden noise, sprang to the door, and disappeared in the twilight.
+
+The boys looked at each other a moment, with surprise and indignation
+in their faces. There was a hurried consultation in the hay-mow. A few
+moments later the boys were smuggling their new pet into the house, and
+up the back stairs. They scarcely dared breathe until it was safe in
+their own room.
+
+All the time that they were dressing for the party, they were trying to
+decide where to put it for the night, so that neither the tramp nor the
+family could discover it. What Jonesy had told them about the man's
+dishonest intention did not relieve them from their promise. They were
+amazed that any one could be so mean, and longed to tell their Aunt
+Allison all about it; still, one of the conditions on which they had
+bought the bear was that they were to "keep mum," and they stuck
+strictly to that promise.
+
+By the time they were dressed, they had decided to put it in the blue
+room, a guest-chamber in the north wing, seldom used in winter, because
+it was so hard to heat. "Nobody will ever think of coming in here," said
+Malcolm, "and it will be plenty warm for a bear if we turn on the
+furnace a little." As he spoke, he was tying the bear's rope around a
+leg of the big, high-posted bed.
+
+"Won't Ginger be surprised?" answered Keith. "We'll tell her that we
+have a valentine six feet long, and keep her guessing."
+
+There was no time for teasing, however, as the first guest arrived while
+they were still in the blue room.
+
+"I hate to go off and leave him in the dark," said Keith, with a final
+loving pat. "I guess he'll not mind, though. Maybe he'll think he is in
+the woods if I put this good-smelling pine pillow on the rug
+beside him."
+
+"Oh, boys," called Virginia from the hall down-stairs. "See what an
+enormous valentine pie Aunt Allison has made!"
+
+Looking over the banisters, the boys saw that a table had been drawn
+into the middle of the wide reception-hall, and on it sat the largest
+pie that they had ever seen. It was in a bright new tin pan, and its
+daintily browned crust would have made them hungry even if their
+appetites had not been sharpened by the cold and exercise of the
+afternoon.
+
+"What a queer place to serve pie," said Malcolm, in a disapproving
+undertone to his brother. "Why don't they have it in the dining-room? It
+looks mighty good, but somehow it doesn't seem proper to have it stuck
+out here in the hall. Mamma would never do such a thing."
+
+"Aw, it's made of paper! She fooled us, sure, Malcolm," called back
+Keith, who had run on ahead to look. "It is only painted to look like a
+pie. But isn't it a splendid imitation?"
+
+Virginia, pleased to have caught them so cleverly, showed them the ends
+of twenty-four pieces of narrow ribbon, peeping from under the
+delicately brown top crust. "The white ones are for the girls, and the
+red ones for the boys," she explained. "There is a valentine on the end
+of each one, and those on the red ribbons match the ones on the white.
+We'll all pull at once, and the ones who have valentines alike will go
+out to dinner together."
+
+The guests came promptly. They had been invited for half-past six, and
+dinner was to be served soon after that time. The last to arrive was the
+Little Colonel. She came in charge of an old coloured woman, Mom Beck,
+who had been her mother's nurse as well as her own. The child was so
+hidden in her wraps when Mom Beck led her up-stairs, that no one could
+tell how she looked. The boys had been curious to see her, ever since
+they had heard so many tales of her mischievous pranks. A few minutes
+later, when she appeared in the parlours, there was a buzz of
+admiration. Maybe it was not so much for the soft light hair, the
+star-like beauty of her big dark eyes, or the delicate colour in her
+cheeks that made them as pink as a wild rose, as it was for the
+valentine costume she wore. It was of dainty white tulle, sprinkled with
+hundreds of tiny red velvet hearts, and there was a coronet of
+glittering rhinestones on her long fair hair.
+
+"The Queen of Hearts," announced Aunt Allison, leading her forward. "You
+know 'she made some tarts, upon a summer day,' and now she shall open
+the valentine pie and see if it is as good as her Majesty's."
+
+The big music-box in the hall began playing one of its liveliest
+waltzes, the children gathered around the great pie, and twenty-four
+little hands reached out to grasp the floating ends of ribbon.
+
+"Pull!" cried the little Queen of Hearts. The paper crust flew off, and
+twenty-four yards of ribbon, each with a valentine attached, fluttered
+brightly through the air for an instant.
+
+"Now match your verses," cried her Majesty again, opening her own to
+read what was in it. There was much laughing and peeping over shoulders,
+and tangling of white and scarlet ribbons, while the gay music-box
+played on.
+
+In the midst of it Virginia beckoned to the Little Colonel. "Come
+up-stairs with me for a minute, Lloyd," she whispered, "and help me
+look for something. Aunt Allison has forgotten where she put the box of
+arrows that we are to use in the archery contest after dinner. There is
+the prettiest prize for the one who hits the red heart in the centre of
+the target."
+
+"Oh, do you suppose you can hit it?" asked Lloyd, as she and Virginia
+slipped their arms around each other, and went skipping up the stairs.
+
+"Yes, indeed!" answered Virginia. "I used to practise so much with my
+Indian bow and arrow out at the fort, that I could hit centre nearly
+every time. I am not going to shoot to-night. Aunt Allison thinks it
+wouldn't be fair."
+
+When they reached the top of the stairs, Virginia went into her room to
+light a wax taper in one of the tall silver candlesticks on her
+dressing-table. "I think that Aunt Allison must have left those arrows
+in the blue room," she said, leading the way down the cross hall which
+went to the north wing. "She made the pie in there this morning, and all
+the other things were there. Nobody comes over in this part of the
+house much in winter, unless there happens to be a great deal
+of company."
+
+The taper that Virginia carried was the only light in that part of the
+house. When she reached the door of the blue room she turned to Lloyd.
+"Hold the candle for me, please," she said, "while I look in
+the closet."
+
+It was a pretty picture that the little "Queen of Hearts" made, as she
+stood in the doorway, with the tall silver candlestick held high in both
+hands. Her hair shone like gold in the candlelight, and her glittering
+crown flashed as if a circle of fairy fireflies had been caught in its
+soft meshes. Her dark eyes peered anxiously around the big shadowy room,
+lighted only by her flickering taper.
+
+Down-stairs, Malcolm and Keith were almost quarrelling about her. It
+began by Malcolm taking his brother aside and offering to trade
+valentines with him.
+
+"Why?" asked Keith, suspiciously.
+
+"'Cause yours matches the Little Colonel's, and I want to take her out
+to dinner," admitted Malcolm. "She is the prettiest girl here."
+
+"But I don't want to trade," answered Keith. "I want to take her
+myself."
+
+"I'll give you the pick of any six stamps in my album if you will."
+
+"Don't want your old stamps," declared Keith, stoutly. "I'd rather have
+the Little Colonel for my partner."
+
+"I think you might trade," coaxed Malcolm. "It's mean not to when I'm
+the oldest. I'll give you that Chinese puzzle you've been wanting so
+long if you will." Keith shook his head.
+
+Just then a terrific scream sounded in the upper hall, followed by
+another that made every one down-stairs turn pale with fright. Two
+voices were uttering piercing shrieks, one after another, so loud and
+frantic that even the servants in the back part of the house came
+running. Miss Allison, thinking of the candle she had told Virginia to
+light, and remembering the thin, white dress the child wore, instantly
+thought she must have set herself afire. She ran into the hall, so
+frightened that she was trembling from head to foot. Before she could
+reach the staircase, Virginia came flying down the steps, white as a
+little ghost, and her eyes wide with terror. Throwing herself into her
+aunt's outstretched arms, she began to sob out her story between great,
+trembling gasps.
+
+"Oh, there's an awful, awful wild beast in the blue room, nearly as tall
+as the ceiling! It rose up and came after us out of the corner, and if I
+hadn't slammed the door just in time, it would have eaten us up. I'm
+sure it would! Oo-oo-oo! It was so awful!" she wailed.
+
+"Why, Virginia," exclaimed her aunt, distressed to see her so terrified,
+"it must have been only a big shadow you saw. It isn't possible for a
+wild beast to be in the blue room you know. Where is Lloyd?"
+
+"She's up heah, Miss Allison," called Mom Beck's voice. "She's so
+skeered, I'se pow'ful 'fraid she gwine to faint. They sut'nly is
+something in that room, honey, deed they is. I kin heah it movin' around
+now, switchin' he's tail an' growlin'!"
+
+Malcolm and Keith, with guilty faces, went dashing up the stairs, and
+the whole party followed them at a respectful distance. When they opened
+the door the room looked very big and shadowy, and the bear, roused from
+its nap, was standing on its hind legs beside the high-posted bed. The
+huge figure was certainly enough to frighten any one coming upon it
+unexpectedly in the dark, and when Miss Allison saw it she drew
+Virginia's trembling hand into hers with a sympathetic clasp. Before she
+could ask any questions, the boys began an excited explanation. It was
+some time before they could make their story understood.
+
+Their grandmother was horrified, and insisted on sending the animal away
+at once. "The idea of bringing such a dangerous creature into any one's
+house," she exclaimed, "and, above all, of shutting him up in a bedroom!
+We might have all been bitten, or hugged to death!"
+
+"But, grandmother," begged Malcolm, "he isn't dangerous. Let me bring
+him into the light, and show you what a kind old pet he is."
+
+There was a scattering to the other end of the hall as Malcolm came out,
+leading the bear, but the children gradually drew nearer as the great
+animal began its performances. Keith whistled and kept time with his
+feet in a funny little shuffling jig he had learned from Jonesy, and the
+bear obligingly went through all his tricks. He was used to being pulled
+out to perform whenever a crowd could be collected.
+
+Virginia forgot her fear of him when he stood up and presented arms like
+a real soldier, and even went up and patted him when the show was over,
+joining with the boys in begging that he might be allowed to stay in the
+house until morning. Mrs. Maclntyre was determined to send a man down to
+the cabin at once to investigate. She had a horror of tramps. But the
+boys begged her to wait until daylight for Jonesy's sake.
+
+"The man will beat him if he finds out that Jonesy warned us," pleaded
+Keith. He was so earnest that the tears stood in his big, trustful eyes.
+
+"This is spoiling the party, mother," whispered Miss Allison, "and
+dinner is waiting. I'll be responsible for any harm that may be done if
+you will let the boys have their way this once."
+
+There seemed no other way to settle it just then, so Bruin was allowed
+to go back to his rug in the blue room, and the door was
+securely locked.
+
+Keith took Lloyd down to dinner, and his grandmother heard him
+apologising all the way down for having frightened her. The little Queen
+of Hearts listened smilingly, but her colour did not come back all
+evening, until after the archery contest. It was when Malcolm came up
+with the prize he had won, a tiny silver arrow, and pinned it in the
+knot of red ribbon on her shoulder.
+
+"Will you keep it to remember me by?" he asked, bashfully.
+
+"Of co'se!" she answered, with a smile that showed all her roguish
+dimples. "I'll keep it fo'evah and evah to remembah how neah I came to
+bein' eaten up by yo' bea'h."
+
+[Illustration: "'WILL YOU KEEP IT TO REMEMBER ME BY?'"]
+
+"It seems too bad for such a beautiful party to come to an end," Sally
+Fairfax said when the last merry game was played, the last story
+told, and it was time to go home. "But there's one comfort," she added,
+gathering all her gay valentines together, "there needn't be any end to
+the remembering of it. I've had _such_ a good time, Mrs. MacIntyre."
+
+It was so late when the last carriage rolled down the avenue, bearing
+away the last smiling little guest, that the children were almost too
+sleepy to undress. It was not long until the last light was put out in
+every room, and a deep stillness settled over the entire house. One by
+one the lights went out in every home in the valley, and only the stars
+were left shining, in the cold wintry sky. No, there was one lamp that
+still burned. It was in the little cottage where old Professor Heinrich
+sat bowed over his books.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+A FIRE AND A PLAN.
+
+Some people said that old Johann Heinrich never slept, for no matter
+what hour of the night one passed his lonely little house, a lamp was
+always burning. He was a queer old German naturalist, living by himself
+in a cottage adjoining the MacIntyre place. He had been a professor in a
+large university until he grew too old to keep his position. Why he
+should have chosen Lloydsborough Valley as the place to settle for the
+remainder of his life, no one could tell.
+
+He kept kimself away from his neighbours, and spent so much time roaming
+around the woods by himself that people called him queer. They did not
+know that he had written two big books about the birds and insects he
+loved so well, or that he could tell them facts more wonderful than
+fairy tales about these little wild creatures of the woodland.
+
+To-night he had read later than usual, and his fire was nearly out. He
+was too poor to keep a servant, so when he found that the coal-hod was
+empty he had to go out to the kitchen to fill it himself. That is why he
+saw something that happened soon after midnight, while everybody else in
+the valley was sound asleep.
+
+Over in the cabin by the spring-house where the boys had left the tramp
+and Jonesy, a puff of smoke went curling around the roof. Then a tongue
+of flame shot up through the cedars, and another and another until the
+sky was red with an angry glare. It lighted up the eastern window-panes
+of the servants' cottage, but the inmates, tired from the unusual
+serving of the evening before, slept on. It shone full across the window
+of Virginia's room, but she was dreaming of being chased by bears, and
+only turned uneasily in her sleep.
+
+The old professor, on his way to the kitchen, noticed that it seemed
+strangely light outside. He shuffled to the door and looked out.
+
+"Ach Himmel!" he exclaimed, excitedly. "Somebody vill shust in his bed
+be burnt, if old Johann does not haste make!"
+
+Not waiting to close the door behind him, or even to catch up something
+to protect his old bald head from the intense cold of the winter night,
+he ran out across the garden. His shuffling feet, in their flapping old
+carpet slippers, forgot their rheumatism, and his shoulders dropped the
+weight of their seventy years. He ran like a boy across the meadow,
+through the gap in the fence, and down the hill to the cabin by
+the spring.
+
+All one side of it was in flames. The fire was curling around the front
+door and bursting through the windows with fierce cracklings. Dashing
+frantically around to the back door, he threw himself against it,
+shouting to know if any one was within. A blinding rush of smoke was his
+only answer as he backed away from the overpowering heat, but something
+fell across the door-sill in a limp little heap. It was Jonesy.
+
+Dragging the child to a safe distance from the burning building, he ran
+back, fearing that some one else might be in danger, but this time the
+flames met him at the door, and it was impossible to go in. His hoarse
+shouting roused the servants, but by the time they reached the cabin the
+roof had fallen in, and all danger of the fire spreading to other
+buildings was over.
+
+While the professor was bending over Jonesy, trying to bring him back to
+consciousness, Miss Allison came running down the path. She had an
+eiderdown quilt wrapped around her over her dressing-gown. The shouts
+had awakened her, also, and she had slipped out as quietly as possible,
+not wishing to alarm her mother.
+
+"How did it happen?" she demanded, breathlessly. "Is the child badly
+burned? Is any one else hurt? Is the tramp in the cabin?"
+
+No one gave any answer to her rapid questions. The old professor shook
+his head, but did not look up. He was bending over Jonesy, trying to
+restore him to consciousness. He seemed to know the right things to do
+for him, and in a little while the child opened his eyes and looked
+around wonderingly. In a few minutes he was able to tell what he knew
+about the fire.
+
+It was not much, only a horrible recollection of being awakened by a
+feeling that he was choking in the thick smoke that filled the room; of
+hearing the boss swear at him to be quick and follow him or he would be
+burned to death. Then there had been an awful moment of groping through
+the blinding, choking smoke, trying to find a way out. The man sprang to
+a window and made his escape, but as the outside air rushed in through
+the opening he left, it seemed to fan the smoke instantly into flame.
+
+Jonesy had struck out at the wall of fire with his helpless little
+hands, and then, half-crazed by the scorching pain, dropped to the floor
+and crawled in the opposite direction, just as the professor burst
+open the door.
+
+The sight of the poor little blistered face brought the tears to Miss
+Allison's eyes, and she called two of the coloured men, directing them
+to carry Jonesy to the house, and then go at once for a doctor. But the
+professor interfered, insisting that Jonesy should be taken to his
+house. He said that he knew how to prepare the cooling bandages that
+were needed, and that he would sit up all night to apply them. He could
+not sleep anyhow, he said, after such great excitement.
+
+"But I feel responsible for him," urged Miss Allison. "Since it happened
+on our place, and my little nephews brought him here, it seems to me
+that we ought to have the care of him."
+
+The professor waved her aside, lifting Jonesy's head as tenderly as a
+nurse could have done, and motioned the coloured men to lift him up.
+
+"No, no, fraulein," he said. "I have had eggsperience. It is besser the
+poor leedle knabe go mit me!"
+
+There was no opposing the old man's masterful way. Miss Allison stepped
+aside for them to pass, calling after him her willingness to do the
+nursing he had taken upon himself, and insisting that she would come
+early in the morning to help.
+
+Unc' Henry was left to guard the ruins, lest some stray spark should be
+blown toward the other buildings. "Dis yere ole niggah wa'n't mistaken
+aftah all," he muttered. "Dee was somebody prowlin' 'roun' de premises
+yistiddy evenin'." Then he searched the ground, all around the cabin,
+for footprints in the snow. He found some tracks presently, and followed
+them over the meadow in the starlight, across the road, and down the
+railroad track several rods. There they suddenly disappeared. The tramp
+had evidently walked on the rail some distance. If Unc' Henry had gone
+quarter of a mile farther up the track, he would have found those same
+sliding imprints on every other crosstie, as if the man had taken long
+running leaps in his haste to get away.
+
+Jonesy stoutly denied that the man had set fire to the cabin. "We nearly
+froze to death that night," he said, when questioned about it afterward,
+"and the boss piled on an awful big lot of wood just before he went
+to bed."
+
+"Then what made him take to his heels so fast if he didn't?" some one
+asked.
+
+"I don't know," answered Jonesy. "He said that luck was always against
+him, and maybe he thought nobody would believe him if he did say that he
+didn't do it."
+
+Several days after that Malcolm found the tramp's picture in the
+_Courier-Journal_. He was a noted criminal who had escaped from a
+Northern penitentiary some two months before, and had been arrested by
+the Louisville police. There was no mistaking him. That big, ugly scar
+branded him on cheek and forehead like another Cain.
+
+"And to think that that terrible man was harboured on my place!"
+exclaimed Mrs. MacIntyre when she heard of it. "And you boys were down
+there in the cabin with him for hours! Sat beside him and talked with
+him! What will your mother say? I feel as if you had been exposed to the
+smallpox, and I cannot be too thankful now that the boy who was with him
+was not brought here. He isn't a fit companion for you. Not that the
+poor little unfortunate is to blame. He cannot help being a child of the
+slums, and he must be put in an orphan asylum or a reform school at
+once. It is probably the only thing that can save him from growing up to
+be a criminal like the man who brought him here. I shall see what can be
+done about it, as soon as possible."
+
+"A child of the slums!" Malcolm and Keith repeated the expression
+afterward, with only a vague idea of its meaning. It seemed to set poor
+Jonesy apart from themselves as something unclean,--something that their
+happy, well-filled lives must not be allowed to touch.
+
+Maybe if Jonesy had been an attractive child, with a sensitive mouth,
+and big, appealing eyes, he might have found his way more easily into
+people's hearts. But he was a lean, snub-nosed little fellow, with a
+freckled face and neglected hair. No one would ever find his cheek a
+tempting one to kiss, and no one would be moved, by any feeling save
+pity, to stoop and put affectionate arms around Jonesy. He was only a
+common little street gamin, as unlovely as he was unloved.
+
+"What a blessing that there are such places as orphan asylums for
+children of that class," said Mrs. Maclntyre, after one of her visits to
+him. "I must make arrangements for him to be put into one as soon as he
+is able to be moved."
+
+"I think he will be very loath to leave the old professor," answered
+Miss Allison. "He has been so good to the child, amusing him by the hour
+with his microscopes and collections of insects, telling him those
+delightful old German folk-lore tales, and putting him to sleep every
+night to the music of his violin. What a child-lover he is, and what a
+delightful old man in every way! I am glad we have discovered him."
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Maclntyre; "and when this little tramp is sent away, I
+want the children to go there often. I asked him if he could not teach
+them this spring, at least make a beginning with them in natural
+history, and he appeared much pleased. He is as poor as a church mouse,
+and would be very glad of the money."
+
+"That reminds me," said Miss Allison, "he asked me if the boys could
+not come down to see Jonesy this afternoon, and bring the bear. He
+thought it would give the little fellow so much pleasure, and might help
+him to forget his suffering."
+
+Mrs. MacIntyre hesitated. "I do not believe their mother would like it,"
+she answered. "Sydney is careful enough about their associates, but
+Elise is doubly particular. You can imagine how much badness this child
+must know when you remember how he has been reared. He told me that his
+name is Jones Carter, and that he cannot remember ever having a father
+or a mother. I questioned him very closely this morning. He comes from
+the worst of the Chicago slums. He slept in the cellar of one of its
+poorest tenement houses, and lived in the gutters. He has a brother only
+a little older, who is a bootblack. On days when shines were plentiful
+they had something to eat, otherwise they starved or begged."
+
+"Poor little lamb," murmured Miss Allison.
+
+"It was by the brother's advice he came away with that tramp," continued
+Mrs. MacIntyre. "He had gotten possession of that trained bear in some
+way, and probably took a fancy to Jones because he could whistle and
+dance all sorts of jigs. He probably thought it would be a good thing to
+have a child with him to work on peoples' sympathies. They walked all
+the way from Chicago to Lloydsborough, Jones told me, excepting three
+days' journey they made in a wagon. They have been two months on the
+road, and showed the bear in the country places they passed through.
+They avoided the large towns."
+
+"Think what a Christmas he must have had!" exclaimed Miss Allison.
+
+"Christmas! I doubt if he ever heard the word. His speech is something
+shocking; nothing but the slang of the streets, and so ungrammatical
+that I could scarcely understand him at times. No, I am very sure that
+neither Sydney nor Elise would want the boys to be with him."
+
+"But he is so little, mother, and so sick and pitiful looking," pleaded
+Miss Allison. "Surely he cannot know so very much badness or hurt the
+boys if they go down to cheer him up for a little while."
+
+Notwithstanding Mrs. Maclntyre's fears, she consented to the boys
+visiting Jonesy that afternoon. She could not resist the professor's
+second appeal or the boys' own urging.
+
+They took the bear with them, which Jonesy welcomed like a lost friend.
+They spent an interesting hour among the professor's collections,
+listening to his explanations in his funny broken English. Then they
+explored his cottage, much amused by his queer housekeeping, cracked
+nuts on the hearth, and roasted apples on a string in front of the fire.
+
+Jonesy did not seem to be cheered up by the visit as much as the
+professor had expected. Presently the old man left the room and Keith
+sat down on the side of the bed.
+
+"What makes you so still, Jonesy?" he asked. "You haven't said a word
+for the last half hour."
+
+"I was thinking about Barney," he answered, keeping his face turned
+away. "Barney is my brother, you know."
+
+"Yes, so grandmother said," answered Keith. "How big is he?"
+
+"'Bout as big as yourn." There was a choke in Jonesy's voice now.
+"Seein' yourn put his arm across your shoulder and pullin' your head
+back by one ear and pinchin' you sort in fun like, made me think the way
+Barney uster do to me."
+
+Keith did not know what to say, so there was a long, awkward pause.
+
+"I'd never a-left him," said Jonesy, "but the boss said it 'ud only be a
+little while and we'd make so much money showin' the bear that I'd have
+a whole pile to take home. I could ride back on the cars and take a
+whole trunk full of nice things to Barney,--clothes, and candy, and a
+swell watch and chain, and a bustin' beauty of a bike. Now the bear's
+sold and the boss has run away, and I don't know how I can get back to
+Barney. Him an me's all each other's got, and I want to see him
+_so_ bad."
+
+The little fellow's lip quivered, and he put up one bandaged hand to
+wipe away the hot tears that would keep coming, in spite of his efforts
+not to make a baby of himself. There was something so pitiful in the
+gesture that Keith looked across at Malcolm and then patted the
+bedclothes with an affectionate little hand.
+
+"Never mind, Jonesy," he said, "papa will be home in the spring and
+he'll send you back to Barney." But Jonesy never having known anything
+of fathers whose chief pleasure is in spending money to make little
+sons happy, was not comforted by that promise as much as Keith thought
+he ought to be.
+
+"But I won't be here then," he sobbed. "They're goin' to put me in a
+'sylum, and I can't get out for so long that maybe Barney will be dead
+before we ever find each other again."
+
+He was crying violently now.
+
+"Who is going to put you in an asylum?" asked Malcolm, lifting an end of
+the pillow under which Jonesy's head had burrowed, to hide the grief
+that his eight-year-old manhood made him too proud to show.
+
+"An old lady with white hair what comes here every day. The professor
+said he would keep me if he wasn't so old and hard up, and she said as
+how a 'sylum was the proper place for a child of the slums, and he said
+yes if they wasn't nobody to care for 'em. But I've got somebody!" he
+cried. "I've got Barney! Oh, _don't_ let them shut me up somewhere so I
+can't never get back to Barney!"
+
+"They don't shut you up when they send you to an asylum," said Malcolm.
+"The one near here is a lovely big house, with acres of green grass
+around it, and orchards and vine-yards, and they are ever so good to the
+children, and give them plenty to eat and wear, and send them
+to school."
+
+"Barney wouldn't be there," sobbed Jonesy, diving under the pillow
+again. "I don't want nothing but him."
+
+"Well, we'll see what we can do," said Malcolm, as he heard the
+professor coming back. "If we could only keep you here until spring, I
+am sure that papa would send you back all right. He's always helping
+people that get into trouble."
+
+Jonesy took his little snub nose out of the pillow as the professor came
+in, and looked around defiantly as if ready to fight the first one who
+dared to hint that he had been crying. The boys took their leave soon
+after, leading the bear back to his new quarters in the carriage house,
+where they had made him a comfortable den. Then they walked slowly up to
+the house, their arms thrown across each other's shoulders.
+
+"S'pose it was us," said Keith, after walking on a little way in
+silence. "S'pose that you and I were left of all the family, and didn't
+have any friends in the world, and I was to get separated from you and
+couldn't get back?"
+
+"That would be tough luck, for sure," answered Malcolm.
+
+"Don't you s'pose Jonesy feels as badly about it as we would?" asked
+Keith.
+
+"Shouldn't be surprised," said Malcolm, beginning to whistle. Keith
+joined in, and keeping step to the tune, like two soldiers, they marched
+on into the house.
+
+Virginia found them in the library, a little while later, sitting on the
+hearth-rug, tailor-fashion. They were still talking about Jonesy. They
+could think of nothing else but the loneliness of the little waif, and
+his pitiful appeal: "Oh, don't let them shut me up where I can't never
+get back to Barney."
+
+"Why don't you write to your father?" asked Virginia, when they had told
+her the story of their visit.
+
+"Oh, it is so hard to explain things in a letter," answered Malcolm,
+"and being off there, he'd say that grandmother and all the grown people
+certainly know best. But if he could see Jonesy,--how pitiful looking he
+is, and hear him crying to go back to his brother, I know he'd feel the
+way we do about it."
+
+"I called the professor out in the hall, and told him so," said Keith,
+"and asked him if he couldn't adopt Jonesy, or something, until papa
+comes home. But he said that he is too poor. He has only a few dollars a
+month to live on. I didn't mind asking him. He smiled in that big, kind
+way he always does. He said Jonesy was lots of company, and he would
+like to keep him this summer, if he could afford it, and let him get
+well and strong out here in the country."
+
+"Then he would keep him till Uncle Sydney comes, if somebody would pay
+his board?" asked Virginia.
+
+"Yes," said Malcolm, "but that doesn't help matters much, for we
+children are the only ones who want him to stay, and our monthly
+allowances, all put together, wouldn't be enough."
+
+"We might earn the money ourselves," suggested Virginia, after awhile,
+breaking a long silence.
+
+"How?" demanded Malcolm. "Now, Ginger, you know, as well as I do, there
+is no way for us to earn anything this time of year. You can't pick
+fruit in the dead of winter, can you? or pull weeds, or rake leaves?
+What other way is there?"
+
+"We might go to every house in the valley, and exhibit the bear," said
+Keith, "taking up a collection each time."
+
+"Now you've made me think of it," cried Virginia, excitedly. "I've
+thought of a good way. We'll give Jonesy a benefit, like great singers
+have. The bear will be the star performer, and we'll all act, too, and
+sell the tickets, and have tableaux. I love to arrange tableaux. We were
+always having them out at the fort."
+
+"I bid to show off the bear," cried Malcolm, entering into Virginia's
+plan at once. "May be I'll learn something to recite, too."
+
+"I'll help print the tickets," said Keith, "and go around selling them,
+and be in anything you want me to be. How many tableaux are you going to
+have, Ginger?"
+
+"I can't tell yet," she answered, but a moment after she cried out, her
+eyes shining with pleasure, "Oh, I've thought of a lovely one. We can
+have the Little Colonel and the bear for 'Beauty and the Beast.'"
+
+Malcolm promptly turned a somersault on the rug, to express his
+approval, but came up with a grave face, saying, "I'll bet that
+grandmother will say we can't have it."
+
+"Let's get Aunt Allison on our side," suggested Virginia. "She's up in
+her room now, painting a picture."
+
+A little sigh of disappointment escaped Miss Allison's lips, as she
+heard the rush of feet on the stairs. This was the first time that she
+had touched her brushes since the children's coming, and she had hoped
+that this one afternoon would be free from interruption, when she heard
+them planning their afternoon's occupations at the lunch-table. They had
+come back before the little water-colour sketch she was making was
+quite finished.
+
+There was no disappointment, however, in the bright face she turned
+toward them, and Virginia lost no time in beginning her story. She had
+been elected to tell it, but before it was done all three had had a part
+in the telling, and all three were waiting with wistful eyes for
+her answer.
+
+"Well, what is it you want me to do?" she asked, finally.
+
+"Oh, just be on our side!" they exclaimed, "and get grandmother to say
+yes. You see she doesn't feel about Jonesy the way we do. She is willing
+to pay a great deal of money to have him taken off and cared for, but
+she says she doesn't see how grandchildren of hers can be so interested
+in a little tramp that comes from nobody knows where, and who will
+probably end his days in a penitentiary."
+
+Aunt Allison answered Malcolm's last remark a little sternly. "You must
+understand that it is only for your own good that she is opposed to
+Jonesy's staying," she said. "There is nobody in the valley so generous
+and kind to the poor as your grandmother." "Yes'm," said Virginia,
+meekly, "but you'll ask her, won't you please, auntie?"
+
+Miss Allison smiled at her persistence. "Wait until I finish this," she
+said. "Then I'll go down-stairs and put the matter before her, and
+report to you at dinner-time. Now are you satisfied?"
+
+"Yes," they cried in chorus, "you're on our side. It's all right now!"
+With a series of hearty hugs that left her almost breathless, they
+hurried away.
+
+When Miss Allison kept her promise she did not go to her mother with the
+children's story of Jonesy, to move her to pity. She told her simply
+what they wanted, and then said, "Mother, you know I have begun to teach
+the children the 'Vision of Sir Launfal.' Virginia has learned every
+word of it, and the boys will soon know all but the preludes. There will
+never be a better chance than this for them to learn the lesson:
+
+     "'Not what we give, but what we share,
+     For the gift without the giver is bare.'
+
+"This would be a real sharing of themselves, all their time and best
+energies, for they will have to work hard to get up such an
+entertainment as this. It isn't for Jonesy's sake I ask it, but for the
+children's own good."
+
+The old lady looked thoughtfully into the fire a moment, and then said,
+"Maybe you are right, Allison. I do want to keep them unspotted from a
+knowledge of the world's evils, but I do not want to make them selfish.
+If this little beggar at the gate can teach them where to find the Holy
+Grail, through unselfish service to him, I do not want to stand in the
+way. Bless their little hearts, they may play Sir Launfal if they want
+to, and may they have as beautiful a vision as his!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+JONESY'S BENEFIT.
+
+The Jonesy Benefit grew like Jack's bean-stalk after Miss Allison took
+charge of it. There was less than a week in which to get ready, as the
+boys insisted on having it on the twenty-second of February, in honour
+of Washington's birthday; but in that short time the childish show which
+Ginger had proposed grew into an entertainment so beautiful and
+elaborate that the neighbourhood talked of it for weeks after.
+
+Miss Allison spent one sleepless night, planning her campaign like a
+general, and next morning had an army of helpers at work. Before the day
+was over she sent a letter to an old school friend of hers in the city,
+Miss Eleanor Bond, who had been her most intimate companion all through
+her school-days, and who still spent a part of every summer with her.
+
+"Dearest Nell," the letter said, "come out to-morrow on the first
+afternoon train, if you love me. The children are getting up an
+entertainment for charity, which shall be duly explained on your
+arrival. No time now. I am superintending a force of carpenters in the
+college hall, where the entertainment is to take place, have two
+seamstresses in the house hurrying up costumes, and am helping mother
+scour the country for pretty children to put in the tableaux.
+
+"The house is like an ant-hill in commotion, there is so much scurrying
+around; but I know that is what you thoroughly enjoy. You shall have a
+finger in every pie if you will come out and help me to make this a
+never-to-be-forgotten occasion.
+
+"I want to make the old days of chivalry live again for Virginia and
+Malcolm and Keith. I am going back to King Arthur's Court for the flower
+of knighthood at his round table. Come and read for us between tableaux
+as only you can do. Be the interpreter of 'Sir Launfal's Vision' and the
+'Idylls of the King,' Give us the benefit of your talent for sweet
+charity's sake, if not for the sake of 'auld lang syne' and your
+devoted ALLISON."
+
+"She'll be here," said Miss Allison, as she sealed the letter,
+nodding confidently to Mrs. Sherman, who had come over to help with
+Lloyd's costume. "You remember Nell Bond, do you not? She took the
+prize every year in elocution, and was always in demand at every
+entertainment. She is the most charming reader I ever heard, and as for
+story-telling--well, she's better than the 'Arabian Nights.' You must
+let the Little Colonel come over every evening while she is here."
+
+Miss Bond arrived the next day, and her visit was a time of continual
+delight to the children. They followed her wherever she went, until Mrs.
+Maclntyre laughingly called her the 'Pied Piper of Hamelin,' and asked
+what she had done to bewitch them.
+
+The first night they gathered around the library-table, all as busy as
+bees. Keith and the Little Colonel were cutting tinsel into various
+lengths for Virginia to tie into fringe for a gay banner. Malcolm was
+gilding some old spurs, Mrs. Maclntyre sat stringing yards of wax beads,
+that gleamed softly in the lamplight like great rope of pearls, and Mrs.
+Sherman was painting the posters, which were to be put up in the
+post-office and depot as advertisements of the Jonesy Benefit.
+
+Miss Allison, who had been busy for hours with pasteboard and glue,
+tin-foil and scissors, held up the suit of mail which she had
+just finished.
+
+"Isn't that fine!" cried Malcolm. "It looks exactly like some of the
+armour we saw in the Tower of London, doesn't it, Keith?"
+
+"I've thought of a riddle!" exclaimed Virginia. "Why is Aunt Allison's
+head like Aladdin's lamp?"
+
+"'Cause it's so bright?" ventured Malcolm.
+
+"No; because she has only to rub it, and everything she thinks of
+appears. I don't see how it is possible to make so many beautiful things
+out of almost nothing."
+
+Virginia looked admiringly around at all the pretty articles scattered
+over the room. A helmet with nodding white plumes lay on the piano. A
+queen's robe trailed its royal ermine beside it. A sword with a jewelled
+hilt shone on the mantel, and a dozen dazzling shields were ranged in
+various places on the low bookshelves.
+
+It was easy, in the midst of such surroundings, for the children to
+imagine themselves back in the days of King Arthur and his court, while
+Miss Bond sat there telling them such beautiful tales of its fair ladies
+and noble knights. Indeed, before the day of the entertainment came
+around they even found themselves talking to each other in the quaint
+speech of that olden time.
+
+When Malcolm accidentally ran against his grandmother in the hall,
+instead of his usual, "Oh, excuse me, grandmother," it was "Prithee
+grant me gracious pardon, fair dame. Not for a king's ransom would I
+have thus jostled thee in such unseemly haste!" And Ginger, instead of
+giving Keith a slap when he teasingly penned her up in a corner, to make
+her divide some nuts with him, said, in a most tragic way, "Unhand me,
+villain, or by my troth thou'lt rue this ruffian conduct sore!"
+
+The library-table was strewn with books of old court life, and pictures
+of kings and queens whose costumes were to be copied in the tableaux.
+There was one book which Keith carried around with him until he had
+spelled out the whole beautiful tale. It was called "In Kings' Houses,"
+and was the story of the little Duke of Gloster who was made a knight
+in his boyhood. And when Keith had read it himself, he took it down to
+the professor's, and read it all over again to Jonesy.
+
+[Illustration: "THERE WAS ONE BOOK WHICH KEITH CARRIED AROUND WITH
+HIM."]
+
+"Think how grand he must have looked, Jonesy," cried Keith, "and I am to
+be dressed exactly like him when I am knighted in the tableau." Then he
+read the description again:
+
+"'A suit of white velvet embroidered with seed pearls, and literally
+blazing with jewels,--even the buttons being great brilliants. From his
+shoulder hung a cloak of azure blue velvet, the colour of the order,
+richly wrought with gold; and around his neck he wore the magnificent
+collar and jewel of St. George and the Dragon, that was the personal
+gift of his Majesty, the king.'
+
+"Think how splendid it must have been, Jonesy, when the procession came
+in to the music of trumpets and bugles and silver flutes and hautboys!
+Wouldn't you like to have seen the heralds marching by, two by two, in
+cloth of gold, with an escort of the queen's guard following? All of
+England's best and bravest were there, and they sat in the carven stalls
+in St. George's Chapel, with their gorgeous banners drooping over them.
+I saw that chapel, Jonesy, when we were in England, and I saw where the
+knights kept the 'vigil of arms' in the holy places, the night before
+they took their vows." He picked up the book and read again: "'Fasting
+and praying and lonely watching by night in the great abbey where there
+are so many dead folk.'
+
+"Oh, don't you wish you could have lived in those days, Jonesy, and have
+been a knight?"
+
+It was all Greek to Jonesy. The terms puzzled him, but he enjoyed
+Keith's description of the tournaments.
+
+Several evenings after that, Keith went down to the cottage dressed in
+the beautiful velvet costume of white and blue, ablaze with rhinestones
+and glittering jewels. He had been wrapped in his Aunt Allison's golf
+cape, and, as he threw it off, Jonesy's eyes opened wider and wider
+with wonder.
+
+"Hi! You look like a whole jeweller's window!" he cried, dazzled by the
+gorgeous sight. The professor lighted another lamp, and Keith turned
+slowly around, to be admired on every side like a pleased peacock.
+
+"Of course it's all only imitation," he explained, "but it will look
+just as good as the real thing behind the footlights. But you ought to
+see the stage when it's fixed up to look like the Hall of the Shields,
+if you want to see glitter. It's be-_yu_-tiful! Like the one at Camelot,
+you know."
+
+But Jonesy did not know, and Keith had to tell about that old castle at
+Camelot, as Miss Bond had told him. How that down the side of the long
+hall ran a treble range of shields,--
+
+     "And under every shield a knight was named,
+     For such was Arthur's custom in his hall.
+     When some good knight had done one noble deed
+     His arms were carven only, but if twain
+     His arms were blazoned also, but if none
+     The shield was blank and bare, without a sign,
+     Saving the name beneath."
+
+Keith had been greatly interested in watching the carpenters fix the
+stage so that it could be made to look like the Hall of the Shields in a
+very few moments, when the time for that tableau should come. He knew
+where every glittering shield was to hang, and every banner and
+battle-axe.
+
+"How do you suppose those knights felt," he said to Jonesy, "who saw
+their shields hanging there year after year, blank and bare, because
+they had never done even one noble deed? They must have been dreadfully
+ashamed when the king walked by and read their names underneath, and
+then looked up at the shields and saw nothing emblazoned on them or even
+carved. Seems to me that I would have done something to have made me
+worthy of that honour if I had _died_ for it!"
+
+Something,--it may have been the soft, rich colour of the
+jewel-broidered velvet the boy wore, or maybe the flush that rose to his
+cheeks at the thrill of such noble thoughts,--something had brought an
+unusual beauty into his face. As he stood there, with head held high,
+his dark eyes flashing, his face glowing, and in that princely dress of
+a bygone day, he looked every inch a nobleman. There was something so
+pure and sweet, too, in the expression of his upturned face that the
+light upon it seemed to touch it into an almost unearthly fairness.
+
+The professor, who had been watching him with a tender smile on his
+rugged old face, drew the child toward him, and brushed the hair back
+on his forehead.
+
+"Ach, liebchen," he said, in his queer broken speech, "thy shield will
+never be blank and bare. Already thou hast blazoned it with the beauty
+of a noble purpose, and like Galahad, thou too shalt find the Grail."
+
+It was Keith's turn to be puzzled, but he did not like to ask for an
+explanation; there was something so solemn in the way the old man put
+his hand on his head as he spoke, almost as if he were bestowing a
+blessing. Besides, it was time to go to the rehearsal at the college.
+One of the servants had come to stay with Jonesy while the professor
+went over to practise on his violin. He was to play behind the scenes, a
+soft, low accompaniment to Miss Bond's reading.
+
+By eight o'clock, the night of the Benefit, every seat in the house was
+full. "That's jolly for Jonesy," exclaimed Malcolm, peeping out from
+behind the curtain. "We counted up that ten cents a ticket would make
+enough, if they were all sold, to pay his board till papa comes home,
+and buy him all the new clothes he needs, too. Now every ticket
+is sold."
+
+"Hurry up, Malcolm," called Keith. "We are first on the programme, and
+it is time to begin."
+
+There was a great bustle behind the scenes for a few minutes, and then
+"Beauty and the Beast" was announced. When the Little Colonel came on
+the stage leading the great bear, such a cheering and clapping began
+that they both looked around, half frightened; but the boys followed
+immediately and the Little Colonel, dressed as a flower girl, danced out
+to meet Keith, who came in clicking his castanets in time to Malcolm's
+whistling. The bear was made to go through all his tricks and his
+soldier drill.
+
+The children in the audience stood on tiptoe in their eagerness to see
+the great animal perform, and were so wild in their applause that the
+boys begged to be allowed to take it in front of the curtain every time
+during the evening when there was a long pause while some tableau was
+being prepared.
+
+Over the rustle of fluttering programmes and the hum of conversation
+that followed the first number, there fell presently the soft, sweet
+notes of the professor's violin, and Miss Bond's musical voice began the
+story of the Vision of Sir Launfal.
+
+     "My golden spurs now bring to me,
+     And bring to me my richest mail,
+     For to-morrow I go over land and sea
+     In search of the Holy Grail."
+
+Here the curtains were drawn apart to show Malcolm seated on his pony as
+Sir Launfal, "in his gilded mail that flamed so bright." It was really
+a beautiful picture he made, and his grandmother, leaning forward, her
+face beaming with pride at the boy's noble bearing, compared him with
+Arthur himself, "with lance in rest, from spur to plume a star of
+tournament,"
+
+The next tableau showed him spurning the leper at his gate, and turning
+away in disgust from the beggar who "seemed the one blot on the summer
+morn." How Miss Bond's voice rang out when "the leper raised not the
+gold from the dust."
+
+     "Better to me the poor man's crust.
+     That is no true alms which the hand can hold.
+     He gives nothing but worthless gold
+     Who gives from a sense of duty."
+
+In the next tableau it was "as an old bent man, worn-out and frail,"
+that Sir Launfal came back from his weary pilgrimage. He had not found
+the Holy Grail, but through his own sufferings he had learned pity for
+all pain and poverty. Once more he stood beside the leper at his castle
+gate, but this time he stooped to share with him his crust and wooden
+bowl of water.
+
+Then it happened on the stage just as was told in the poem.
+
+A light shone round about the place, and the crouching leper stood up.
+The old ragged mantle dropped off, and there in a long garment almost
+dazzling in its whiteness, stood a figure--
+
+     "Shining and tall, and fair, and straight
+     As the pillar that stood by the Beautiful gate."
+
+They could not see the face, it was turned aside; but the golden hair
+was like a glory, and the uplifted arms held something high in air that
+gleamed like a burnished star, as all the lights in the room were turned
+full upon it, for a little space. It was a golden cup. Then the
+voice again:
+
+     "In many climes without avail
+     Thou hast spent thy life for the Holy Grail.
+     Behold it is here--this cup, which thou
+     Didst fill at the streamlet for me but now.
+     The holy supper is kept indeed
+     In whatso we share with another's need."
+
+It was an old story to most of the audience, worn threadbare by many
+readings, but with these living illustrations, and Miss Bond's
+wonderful way of telling it, a new meaning crept into the well-known
+lines, that thrilled every listener.
+
+"Could you understand that, Teddy?" asked old Judge Fairfax, patting his
+little grandson on the head.
+
+"Course!" exclaimed seven-year-old Ted, who had followed his sister
+Sally to every rehearsal.
+
+"When you give money to people just to get rid of 'em, and because you
+feel you'd ought to, it doesn't count for anything. But if you divide
+something you've got, and would like to keep it all yourself, because
+you love to, and are sorry for 'em, then it counts a pile. Sir Launfal
+would have popped Jonesy into a 'sylum when he first started out to find
+that gold cup, but when he came back he'd 'a' worked like a horse
+getting up a benefit for him, and would have divided his own home with
+him, if he hadn't been living at his grandmother's, and couldn't."
+
+An amused smile went around that part of the audience which overheard
+Ted's shrilly given explanation.
+
+Pictures from the "Idylls of the King" followed in rapid succession,
+and then came the prettiest of all, being the one in which Keith was
+made a knight. Virginia as queen, her short black hair covered by a
+powdered wig, and a long court-train sweeping behind her, stood touching
+his shoulder with the jewel-hilted sword, as he knelt at her feet. Lloyd
+and Sally Fairfax, Julia Ferris, and a dozen other pretty girls of the
+neighbourhood, helped to fill out the gay court scene, while all the
+boys that could be persuaded to take part were dressed up for heralds,
+guardsmen, pages, and knights. That tableau had to be shown four times,
+and then the audience kept on applauding as if they never intended
+to stop.
+
+The last one in this series of tableaux was the Hall of the Shields, as
+Keith had described it to Jonesy. A whole row of dazzling shields hung
+across the back of the stage, emblazoned with the arms of all the old
+knights whose names have come down to us in song or story. Then for the
+first time that evening Miss Bond came out on the stage where she could
+be seen, and told the story of the death of King Arthur, and the passing
+away of the order of the Round Table. She told it so well that little
+Ted Fairfax listened with his mouth open, seeming to see the great arm
+that rose out of the water to take back the king's sword into the sea,
+from which it had been given him. An arm like a giant's, "clothed in
+white samite, mystic, wonderful, that caught the sword by the hilt,
+flourished it three times, and drew it under the mere."
+
+"True, 'the old order changeth,'" said Miss Bond, "but knighthood has
+_not_ passed away. The flower of chivalry has blossomed anew in this new
+world, and America, too, has her Hall of the Shields."
+
+Just a moment the curtains were drawn together, and then were widely
+parted again, as a chorus of voices rang out with the words:
+
+     "Hail, Columbia, happy land;
+     Hail, ye heroes, heaven-born band!"
+
+In that moment, on every shield had been hung the pictured face of some
+well-known man who had helped to make his country a power among the
+nations; presidents, patriots, philanthropists, statesmen, inventors,
+and poets,--there they were, from army and navy, city and farm, college
+halls and humble cabins,--a long, long line, and the first was
+Washington, and the last was the "Hero of Manila."
+
+Cheer after cheer went up, and it might have been well to have ended the
+programme there, but to satisfy the military-loving little Ginger, one
+more was added.
+
+"There ought to be a Goddess of Liberty in it," she insisted, "because
+it is Washington's birthday; and if we had been doing it by ourselves we
+were going to have something in it about Cuba, on papa's account."
+
+So when the curtain rose the last time, it was on Sally Fairfax as a
+gorgeous Goddess of Liberty, conferring knighthood on two boys who stood
+for the Army and Navy, while a little dark-eyed girl knelt at their feet
+as Cuba, the distressed maiden whom their chivalry had rescued.
+
+It was late when the performance closed; later still when the children
+reached home that night, for Mrs. MacIntyre had determined to have a
+flash-light picture taken of them, and they had to wait until the
+photographer could send home for his camera.
+
+After they reached the house they could hardly be persuaded to undress.
+Virginia trailed up and down the halls in her royal robes, Malcolm
+clanked around in his suit of mail and plumed helmet, and Keith stood
+before a mirror, admiring the handsome little figure it showed him.
+
+"I hate to take it off," he said, fingering the dazzling collar, ablaze
+with jewels. "I'd like to be a knight always, and wear a sword and spurs
+every day."
+
+"So would I," said Malcolm, beginning to yawn sleepily. "I wish that
+Jonesy had been well enough to go to-night. Isn't it splendid that the
+Benefit turned out so well? Aunt Allison says there is plenty of money
+now to get Jonesy's clothes and pay his board till papa comes, and send
+him back to Barney, too, if papa thinks best and hasn't any
+better plan."
+
+"I wish there'd been enough money to buy a nice little home out here in
+the country for him and Barney. Wouldn't it have been lovely if there
+had a-been?" cried Keith.
+
+"Well, I should say!" answered Malcolm. "Maybe we can have another
+benefit some day and make enough for that."
+
+With this pleasant prospect before them, they laid aside their knightly
+garments, hoping to put them on again soon in Jonesy's behalf, and
+talked about the home that might be his some day, until they
+fell asleep.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The flash-light pictures of the three children were all that the fondest
+grandmother could wish. As soon as they came, Keith carried his away to
+his room to admire in private. "It is so pretty that it doesn't seem it
+can be me," he said, propping it up on the desk before him. "I wish that
+I could look that way always."
+
+The next time that Miss Allison went into the room she found that Keith
+had written under it in his round, boyish hand, a quotation that had
+taken his fancy the first time he heard it. It was in one of Miss Bond's
+stories, and he repeated it until he learned it: "_Live pure,_ _speak
+truth, right the wrong, follow the king; else wherefore born?_"
+
+She asked him about it at bedtime. "Why, that's our motto," he
+explained. "Malcolm has it written under his, too. We've made up our
+minds to be a sort of knight, just as near the real thing as we can, you
+know, and that is what knights have to do: live pure, and speak truth,
+and right the wrong. We've always tried to do the first two, so that
+won't be so hard. It's righting the wrong that will be the tough job,
+but we have done it a little teenty, weenty bit for Jonesy, don't you
+think, auntie? It was all wrong that he should have such a hard time and
+be sent to an asylum away from Barney, when we have you all and
+everything nice. Malcolm and I have been talking it over. If we could do
+something to keep him from growing up into a tramp like that awful man
+that brought him here, wouldn't that be as good a deed as some that the
+real knights did? Wouldn't that be serving our country, too, Aunt
+Allison, just a little speck?" He asked the question anxiously. Malcolm
+said nothing, but also waited with a wistful look for her answer.
+
+"My dear little Sir Galahads," she said, bending over to give each of
+the boys a good-night kiss, "you will be 'really truly' knights if you
+can live up to the motto you have chosen. Heaven help you to be always
+as worthy of that title as you are to-night!"
+
+Keith held her a moment, with both arms around her neck. "What does that
+mean, auntie?" he asked. "That is what the professor said,
+too,--Galahad."
+
+"It is too late to explain to you to-night," she said, "but I will tell
+you sometime soon, dear."
+
+It was several days before she reminded them of that promise. Then she
+called them into her room and told them the story of Sir Galahad, the
+maiden knight, whose "strength was as the strength of ten because his
+heart was pure." Then from a little morocco case, lined with purple
+velvet, she took two pins that she had bought in the city that morning.
+Each was a little white enamel flower with a tiny diamond in the centre,
+like a drop of dew.
+
+"You can't wear armour in these days," she said, as she fastened one on
+the lapel of each boy's coat, "but this shall be the badge of your
+knighthood,--'wearing the white flower of a blameless life.' The little
+pins will help you to remember, maybe, and will remind you that you are
+pledged to right the wrong wherever you find it, in little things as
+well as great."
+
+It was a very earnest talk that followed. The boys came out from her
+room afterward, wearing the tiny white pins, and with a sweet
+seriousness in their faces. A noble purpose had been born in their
+hearts; but alas for chivalry! the first thing they did was to taunt
+Virginia with the fact that she could never be a knight because she was
+only a girl.
+
+"I don't care," retorted Ginger, quickly. "I can be a--a--_patriot_,
+anyhow, and that's lots better."
+
+The boys laughed, and she flushed angrily.
+
+"They ought to mean the same thing exactly in this day of the world,"
+said Miss Allison, coming up in time to hear the dispute that followed.
+"Virginia, you shall have a badge, too. Run into my room and bring me
+that little jewelled flag on my cushion."
+
+"I think that this is the very prettiest piece of jewelry you have,"
+exclaimed Virginia, coming back with the pin. It was a little flag
+whose red, white, and blue was made of tiny settings of garnets,
+sapphires, and diamonds.
+
+"You think that, because it is in the shape of a flag," said Miss
+Allison, with an amused smile. "Well, it shall be yours. See how well it
+can remind you of the boys' knightly motto. There is the white for the
+first part, the 'live pure,' and the 'true blue' for the 'speak truth,'
+and then the red,--surely no soldier's little daughter needs to be told
+what that stands for, when her own brave father has spilled part of his
+good red life-blood to 'right the wrong' on the field of battle."
+
+"Oh, Aunt Allison!" was all that Virginia could gasp in her delight as
+she clasped the precious pin tightly in her hand. "Is it mine? For my
+very own?"
+
+"For your very own, dear," was the answer.
+
+"Oh, I'm so glad!" cried Virginia, thanking her with a kiss. "I'd a
+thousand times rather have it than one like the boys'. It means so
+much more!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE LITTLE COLONEL'S TWO RESCUES.
+
+Early in March, when the crocuses were beginning to bud under the
+dining-room windows, there came one of those rare spring days that seem
+to carry the warmth of summer in its sunshine.
+
+"Exactly the kind of a day for a picnic," Virginia had said that
+morning, and when her grandmother objected, saying that the ground was
+still too damp, she suggested having it in the hay-barn. The boys piled
+the hay that was left from the winter's supply up on one side of the
+great airy room, set wide the big double doors, and swept it clean.
+
+"It is clean enough now for even grandmother to eat in," said Virginia,
+as she spread a cloth on the table Unc' Henry had carried out for them.
+"It's good enough for a queen. Oh, I'll tell you what let's do. Let's
+play that Malcolm and I are a wicked king and queen and Lloyd is a
+'fair ladye' that we have shut up in a dungeon. This will be a banquet,
+and while we are eating Keith can be the knight who comes to her rescue
+and carries her off on his pony."
+
+"That's all right," consented Keith, "except the eating part. How can we
+get our share of the picnic?"
+
+"We'll save it for you," answered Virginia, "and you can eat it
+afterward."
+
+"Save enough for Jonesy, too," said Keith. "He shall be my page and help
+me rescue her. I'll go and ask him now."
+
+The month had made a great change in Jonesy. With plenty to eat, his
+thin little snub-nosed face grew plump and bright. There was a
+good-humoured twinkle in his sharp eyes, and being quick as a monkey at
+imitating the movements of those around him, Mrs. MacIntyre found
+nothing to criticise in his manners when Malcolm and Keith brought him
+into the house. Their pride in him was something amusing, and seeing
+that, after all, he was an inoffensive little fellow, she made no more
+objections to their playing with him.
+
+By the time Keith was back again with Jonesy, the other guests had
+arrived, and the Little Colonel had been lowered into a deep feed-bin,
+in lieu of a dungeon. The banquet began in great state, but in a few
+moments was interrupted by a fearful shrieking from the depths of the
+bin. The fair ladye protested that she would not stay in her dungeon.
+
+"There's nasty big spidahs down heah!" she called. "Ow! One is crawlin'
+on my neck now, and my face is all tangled up in cobwebs! Get me out!
+Get me out! Quick, Gingah!"
+
+The king sprang up to go to her rescue, but was promptly motioned to his
+seat again by a warning shake of the other crowned head.
+
+"Why, of course! There's always spiders in dungeons," called the wicked
+queen, coolly helping herself to another piece of chicken. "Besides, you
+should say 'your Majesty' when you are talking to me."
+
+"But there's a mouse in heah, too," she called back, in distress. "Oo!
+Oo! It ran ovah my feet. If you don't make them take me out of heah,
+Gingah Dudley, I'll do something _awful_ to you! Murdah! Murdah!" she
+yelled, pounding on the sides of the bin with both her fists, and
+stamping her little foot in a furious rage.
+
+[Illustration: "THE LITTLE COLONEL HAD BEEN LOWERED INTO A DEEP
+FEED-BIN."]
+
+Seeing that Lloyd was really terrified, and fearing that her screams
+would bring some one from the house, the royal couple and their guests
+sprang to the rescue, nearly upsetting the banquet as they did so. The
+game would have been broken up then, when she was lifted out from the
+feed-bin, red and angry, if it had not been for the king's great tact.
+He brushed the cobwebs from her face and hair, and even got down on his
+royal knees to ask her pardon.
+
+His polite coaxing finally had its effect on the little lady, and he
+persuaded her to climb a ladder into a loft just above them. Here on a
+pile of clean hay, beside an open window that looked across a peaceful
+meadow, her anger cooled. Towers were far more comfortable than
+dungeons, in her opinion, and when Malcolm came up the ladder with a
+plateful of the choicest morsels of the feast, she began to enjoy her
+part of the play. Jonesy was sent to inform his knight of the change
+from dungeon to tower, and the banquet went merrily on.
+
+He found Keith waiting below the barn, with his pony tied to a fence. On
+the other side of the fence lay the railroad track, which skirted the
+back of Mrs. MacIntyre's place for over half a mile.
+
+"Do you see that hand-car?" asked Keith, pointing with his riding-whip
+to one on the track. "The section boss let Malcolm and me ride up and
+down on it all afternoon one day this winter. Some workman left it on
+the switch while ago, and while you were up at the barn I got two
+darkeys to move it for me. They didn't want to at first, but I knew that
+there'd be no train along for an hour, and told 'em so, and they finally
+did it for a dime apiece. As soon as I rescue Lloyd I'll dash down here
+on my pony with her behind me. Then we'll slip through the fence and get
+on the hand-car, and be out of sight around the curve before the rest
+get here. They won't know where on earth we've gone, and it will be the
+best joke on them. It's down grade all the way to the section-house, so
+I can push it easily enough by myself, but I'll need your help coming
+back, maybe. S'pose you cut across lots to the section-house as soon as
+I start to the barn, and meet me there. It isn't half as far that way,
+so you'll get there as soon as we do."
+
+"All right," said Jonesy. "I'm your kid."
+
+"You should say, ''Tis well, Sir Knight, I fly to do thy bidding,'"
+prompted Keith.
+
+Jonesy grinned. He could not enter into the spirit of the play as the
+others did. "Aw, I'll be on time," he said; then, as Keith untied his
+pony, started on a run across the fields.
+
+The Lady Lloyd had not finished her repast when her rescuer appeared,
+but she put the plate down on the hay to await her return, and
+obediently climbed down the ladder he placed for her. They reached the
+fence before the banqueters knew that she had escaped. Flinging the
+pony's bridle over a fence-post, when they reached the edge of the
+field, the brave knight crawled through the fence and pulled Lloyd after
+him, tearing her dress, much to that dainty little lady's
+extreme disgust.
+
+By the time the king and his guard were mounted in pursuit, on the other
+pony which stood in waiting, the runaways were in the hand-car. It moved
+slowly at first, although Keith was strong for his age, and his hardy
+little muscles were untiring.
+
+"Isn't it lovely?" cried Lloyd, as they moved faster and faster and
+swept around the curve. "I wish we could go all the way to Louisville on
+this." The warm March wind fanned her pink cheeks, and blew her soft
+light hair into her eyes.
+
+Jonesy was waiting at the section-house, and waved his cap as they
+passed. "We're going on, around the next bend," shouted Keith, as they
+passed him. "Whoop-la! this is fine, and not a bit hard to work!"
+
+"What will the wicked queen think when she can't find us?" asked Lloyd,
+laughing happily, as they sped on down the track.
+
+"She'll think that I am a magician and have spirited you away," said
+Keith.
+
+"Then if you are a magician you ought to change her into a nasty black
+spidah, to pay her back fo' shuttin' me up with them!" Lloyd was
+delighted with this new play. For the time it seemed as if she really
+were escaping from a castle prison. Faster and faster they went. Jonesy,
+who had followed them to the second curve, stood watching them with
+wistful eyes, wishing he could be with them. They passed the depot, and
+then the hand-car seemed to grow smaller and smaller as it rolled away,
+until it was only a moving speck in the distance. Then he turned and
+walked back to the section-house.
+
+"I s'pect we've gone about far enough," said Keith, after awhile. "We'd
+better turn around now and go back, or the picnic will all be over
+before we get our share. Let's wait here a minute till I rest my arms,
+and then we'll start."
+
+The place where they had stopped was the loneliest part of the track
+that could be found in miles, on either side. It was in the midst of a
+thick beech woods, and the twitter of a bird, now and then, was the only
+sound in all the deep stillness.
+
+"What lovely green moss on that bank!" cried the Little Colonel.
+"Wouldn't it make a beautiful carpet for our playhouse down by the
+old mill?"
+
+"I'll get you some," said Keith, gallantly springing from the car and
+clambering up the bank. Taking out his knife, he began to cut great
+squares of the velvety green moss, and pile it up to carry back to
+the hand-car.
+
+Meanwhile Jonesy waited at the section-house, digging his heels into the
+cinders that lined the track, and looking impatiently down the road.
+Presently the section boss came limping along painfully, and sat down on
+the bank in the warm spring sunshine. He had dropped a piece of heavy
+machinery on his foot, the week before, and was only able to hobble
+short distances.
+
+Everybody in the Valley was interested in Jonesy since the fire and the
+Benefit had made him so well known, and the man was glad of this
+opportunity to satisfy his curiosity about the boy. Jonesy, with all the
+fearlessness of a little street gamin brought up in a big city, answered
+him fearlessly, even saucily at times, much to the man's amusement.
+
+"So you want to get a job around here, do you?" said the man, presently,
+with a grin. "Maybe I can give you one. Know anything about
+railroadin'?"
+
+"Heaps," answered Jonesy. "Well, I'd ought to, seem' as I've lived next
+door to the engine yards all my life, and spent my time dodgin' the cop
+on watch there, when I was tryin' to steal rides on freight-cars
+and such."
+
+"Is that what you're hangin' around here now for?" asked the man, with a
+good-natured twinkle in his eyes.
+
+"Nope! I'm waiting for that MacIntyre kid to come back this way. He went
+down the track a bit ago on a hand-car, playing rescue a princess with
+one of the girls at the picnic,"
+
+The section boss sprang up with an exclamation of alarm. "How far's he
+gone?" he asked. "There's a special due to pass here in a few minutes."
+
+Even while he spoke there sounded far away in the distance, so far that
+it was like only a faint echo, the whistle of an approaching locomotive.
+The man hobbled down the track a yard or so and stopped. "What do you
+suppose they'll do?" he asked. "There are so many bends in this road,
+the train may come right on to 'em before the engineer sees 'em. S'pose
+they'll jump off, or turn and try to come back?"
+
+Jonesy glanced around wildly a second, and then sprang forward toward
+the man.
+
+"Give me the switch-key!" he cried, in a high voice, shrill with
+excitement. "You can't run, but I can. Give me the switch-key!"
+Perplexed by the sudden turn of affairs and the little fellow's
+commanding tone, the man took the key from his pocket. He realised his
+own helplessness to do anything, and there was something in Jonesy's
+manner that inspired confidence. He felt that the child's quick wit had
+grasped the situation and formed some sensible plan of action.
+
+Again the whistle sounded in the distance, and, snatching the key,
+Jonesy was off down the track like an arrow. The section boss, leaning
+heavily on his cane, limped after him as fast as he could.
+
+Keith and the Little Colonel, having gathered the moss and started back
+home, were rolling leisurely along, still talking of magicians and
+their ilk.
+
+"What if we should meet a dragon?" cried the Little Colonel. "A dragon
+with a scaly green tail, and red eyes and a fiery tongue. What would
+you do then?"
+
+"I'd say, 'What! Ho! Thou monster!' and cleave him in twain with my good
+broadsword, and when he saw its shining blade smite through the air he'd
+just curl up and die."
+
+Keith looked back to smile at the bright laughing face beside him. Then
+he caught sight of something over his shoulder that made him pause. "Oh,
+look!" he cried, pointing over the tree-tops behind them. A little puff
+of smoke, rising up in the distance, trailed along the sky like a long
+banner. At the same instant, out of the smoke, sounded the whistle of an
+approaching engine. The track behind them had so many turns, he could
+not judge of their distance from it, and for an instant he stopped
+working the handle bar up and down, too thoroughly frightened to know
+what to do. An older child might have acted differently; might have
+jumped from the hand-car and left it to be run into by the approaching
+train, or have hurried back around the bend to flag the engine. But
+Keith had only one idea left: that was to keep ahead of the train as
+long as possible. It seemed so far away he thought they could surely
+reach the depot before it caught up with them, and his sturdy little
+arms bent to the task.
+
+For a moment there was a real pleasure in the exertion. He felt with an
+excited thrill that he was really running away with the Little Colonel,
+and rescuing her from a pursuing danger. Suddenly the whistle sounded
+again, and this time it seemed so close behind them that the Little
+Colonel gave a terrified glance over her shoulder and then screamed at
+the sight of the great snorting monster, breathing out fire and smoke,
+worse than any scaly-tailed dragon that she had ever imagined. It was
+far down the track but they could hear its terrible rumble as it rushed
+over a trestle, and the singing of the wires overhead.
+
+Keith was straining every muscle now, but it was like running in a
+nightmare. His arms moved up and down at a furious speed, but it seemed
+to him that the hand-car was glued to one spot. It seemed, too, that it
+had been hours since they first discovered that the engine was after
+them, and he felt that he would soon be too exhausted to move another
+stroke. Would the depot never never come in sight?
+
+Just then they shot around the curve and caught sight of Jonesy at the
+depot switch, wildly beckoning with his cap and shouting for them to
+come on. At that sight, with one supreme effort Keith put his
+fast-failing strength to the test, and sent the hand-car rolling forward
+faster than ever. It shot past the switch that Jonesy had unlocked and
+off to the side-track, just as the train bore down upon them around the
+last bend.
+
+There was barely time for Jonesy to set the switch again before it
+thundered on along the main track past the little depot. Being a
+special, it did not stop. As it went shrieking by, the engineer cast a
+curious glance at a hand-car on the side-track. A little girl sat on it,
+a pretty golden-haired child with dark eyes big with fright, and her
+face as white as her dress. He wondered what was the matter.
+
+For a moment after the shrieking train whizzed by everything seemed
+deathly still. Keith sat leaning against the embankment, white and limp
+from exhaustion and the excitement of his close escape. Jonesy was
+panting and wiping the perspiration from his red face, for he had run
+like a deer to reach the switch in time.
+
+"I couldn't have held out a minute longer," said Keith, presently. "My
+arms felt like they had gone to sleep, and I was just ready to give up
+when I caught sight of you. That seemed to give me strength to go on,
+when I saw what you were at and that it would only be a little farther
+to go before we would be safe. Plow did you happen to be at the switch,
+and know how to set it?"
+
+"Hain't lived all my life around engine yards fer nothin'," answered
+Jonesy. "Why didn't you jump off and flag the train?"
+
+"I was so taken by surprise I didn't think of that," answered Keith.
+"The only thing I knew was that we had to keep ahead of it as long as
+possible. You've saved my life, Jones Carter, and I'll never forget it,
+no matter what comes,"
+
+"I've been rescued twice to-day," said the Little Colonel, taking a deep
+breath as she began to recover from her fright. "Jonesy ought to be a
+knight, too."
+
+"That's so!" exclaimed Keith, springing to his feet. "Come on and let's
+go back to the barn. We'll tell our adventures, and then we'll go
+through the ceremony of making Jonesy a Sir Something or other. He's
+certainly won his spurs."
+
+"Goin' back on the hand-car?" asked Jonesy.
+
+"Not much," answered Keith, with a sickly sort of smile. "Somehow such
+fast travelling doesn't seem to agree with a fellow. Walking is good
+enough for me."
+
+"Me too!" cried the Little Colonel, tying on her white sunbonnet. "But
+the first part of it was lovely,--just like flyin'."
+
+Jonesy ran back to give the man his key, and was kept answering
+questions so long that he did not catch up with the other children until
+they were in sight of the barn.
+
+"After all," said Keith, as the three trudged along together, "maybe
+we'd better not tell how near we came to being run over. Grandmother
+and Aunt Allison would be dreadfully worried if they should hear of it.
+They are always worrying for fear something will happen to us."
+
+"Mothah would be _wild_" exclaimed the Little Colonel, "if she knew I
+had been in any dangah. Maybe she wouldn't let me out of her sight again
+to play all summah."
+
+"Then let's don't tell for a long, long time," proposed Keith. "It'll be
+our secret, just for us three."
+
+"All right," the others agreed. They dropped the subject then, for the
+barn was just ahead of them, and the gay picnickers came running out,
+demanding to know where they had been so long.
+
+The Little Colonel often spoke of her experience afterward to the two
+boys, however, and in Keith's day-dreams a home for Jonesy began to
+crowd out all other hopes and plans.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+A GAME OF INDIAN.
+
+Keith was stiff for a week after his race on the hand-car, but did his
+groaning in private. He knew what a commotion would be raised if the
+matter came to his grandmother's ears. She had lived all winter in
+constant dread of accidents. Malcolm had been carried home twice in an
+unconscious state, once from having been thrown from his bicycle, and
+once from falling through a trap-door in the barn. Keith had broken
+through the ice on the pond, sprained his wrist while coasting, and
+walked in half a dozen times with the blood streaming from some wound on
+his head or face.
+
+Virginia had never been hurt, but her hair-breadth escapes would have
+filled a volume. An amusing one was the time she lassoed a young calf,
+Indian fashion, to show the boys how it should be done. Its angry
+mother was in the next lot, but Virginia felt perfectly safe as she
+swung her lariat and dragged the bleating calf around the barn-yard. She
+did not stop to consider that if a cow with lofty ambitions had once
+jumped over the moon, one which saw its calf in danger might easily leap
+a low hedge. Malcolm's warning shout came just in time to save her from
+being gored by the angry animal, who charged at her with lowered horns.
+She sprang up the ladder leading to the corn-crib window, where she was
+safe, but she had to hang there until Unc' Henry could be called to
+the rescue.
+
+It was with many misgivings that Mrs. MacIntyre and Miss Allison started
+to the city one morning in April. It was the first time since the
+children's coming that they had both gone away at once, and nothing but
+urgent business would have made them consent to go.
+
+The children promised at least a dozen things. They would keep away from
+the barn, the live stock, the railroad, the ponds, and the cisterns.
+They would not ride their wheels, climb trees, nor go off the Maclntyre
+premises, and they would keep a sharp lookout for snakes and poison
+ivy, in case they went into the woods for wild flowers.
+
+[Illustration: VIRGINIA AND THE CALF.]
+
+"Seems to me there's mighty little left that a fellow can do," said
+Keith, when the long list was completed.
+
+"Oh, the time will soon pass," said his grandmother, who was preparing
+to take the eleven o'clock train. "It will soon be lunch-time. Then this
+is the day for you each to write your weekly letters to your mother, and
+it is so pretty in the woods now that I am sure you will enjoy looking
+for violets."
+
+Time did pass quickly, as their grandmother had said it would, until the
+middle of the afternoon. Then Virginia began to wish for something more
+amusing than the quiet guessing games they had been playing in the
+library. The boys each picked up a book, and she strolled off up-stairs,
+in search of a livelier occupation.
+
+In a few minutes she came down, looking like a second Pocahontas in her
+Indian suit, with her bow and arrows slung over her shoulder.
+
+"I am going down to the woods to practise shooting," she announced, as
+she stopped to look in at the door.
+
+"Oh, wait just a minute!" begged Malcolm, throwing down his book.
+"Let's all play Indian this afternoon. We'll rig up, too, and build a
+wigwam down by the spring rock, and make a fire,--grandmother didn't say
+we couldn't make a fire; that's about the only thing she forgot to tell
+us not to do."
+
+"You can come on when you get ready," answered Virginia. "I'm going now,
+because it is getting late, but you'll find me near the spring when you
+come. Just yell."
+
+The boys could not hope to rival Virginia's Indian costume, but no
+wilder-looking little savages ever uttered a war-whoop than the two
+which presently dashed into the still April woods.
+
+Malcolm had ripped some variegated fringe from a table-cover to pin down
+the sides of his leather leggins. He had borrowed a Roman blanket from
+Aunt Allison's couch to pin around his shoulders, and emptied several
+tubes of her most expensive paints to streak his face with hideous
+stripes and daubs. A row of feathers from the dust-brush was fastened
+around his forehead by a broad band, and a hatchet from the woodshed
+provided him with a tomahawk.
+
+Keith had no time to arrange feathers. He had taken off his flannels in
+order to put on an old striped bathing-suit, which he had found in the
+attic and stored away, intending to use it for swimming in the pond when
+the weather should grow warm enough. It had no sleeves, and the short
+trousers had shrunk until they did not half-way reach his knees. Its red
+and white stripes had faded and the colour run until the whole was a
+dingy "crushed strawberry" shade. As Malcolm had emptied all the tubes
+of red paint in his Aunt Allison's box, Keith had to content himself
+with some other colour. He chose the different shades of green,
+squeezing the paint out on his plump little legs and arms, and rubbing
+it around with his fore finger until he was encircled with as many
+stripes as a zebra. Although the day was warm for the early part of
+April, the sudden change from his customary clothes and spring flannels
+to nothing but the airy bathing suit and war-paint made him a trifle
+chilly; so he completed his costume by putting on a pair of scarlet
+bedroom slippers, edged with dark fur.
+
+With the dropping of their civilised clothing, the boys seemed to have
+dropped all recollections of their professed knighthood, and acted like
+the little savages they looked.
+
+"We're going to shoot with your things awhile, Ginger," shouted Keith,
+coming suddenly upon her with a whoop, and snatching her bow out of her
+hands. "You are the squaw, so you have to do all the work. Get down
+there now behind that rock and make a fire, while we go out and kill a
+deer. You must build a wigwam, too, by the time we get back. Hear me?
+I'm a big chief! 'I am Famine--Buckadawin!' and I'll make a living
+skeleton of you if you don't hustle."
+
+Virginia was furious. "I'll not be a squaw!" she cried. "And I'll not
+build a fire or do anything else if you talk so rudely. If you don't
+give me back my bow and let me be a chief, too, I'll--I'll get even with
+you, sir, in a way you won't like. I have short hair, and my clothes are
+more Indian than yours, and I can shoot better than either of you,
+anyhow! So there! Give me my bow."
+
+"What will you do if I won't?" said Keith, teasingly, holding it behind
+him.
+
+"I'll go up to the barn and get a rope, and lasso you like I did that
+calf, and drag you all over the place!" cried Virginia, her eyes
+shining with fierce determination.
+
+"She means it, Keith," said Malcolm. "She'll do it sure, if you don't
+stop teasing. Oh, give it to her and come along, or it will be dark
+before we begin to play."
+
+Matters went on more smoothly after Malcolm's efforts at peacemaking,
+and when it was decided that Ginger could be a brave, too, instead of a
+squaw, they were soon playing together as pleasantly as if they had
+found the happy hunting grounds. The short afternoon waned fast, and the
+shadows were growing deep when they reached the last part of the game.
+Ginger had been taken prisoner, and they were tying her to a tree, with
+her hands bound securely behind her back. She rather enjoyed this part
+of it, for she intended to show them how brave she could be.
+
+"Now we'll sit around the council fire and decide how to torture her,"
+said Malcolm, when the captive was securely tied. But the fire was out
+and they had no matches. The lot fell on Malcolm to run up to the house
+and get some.
+
+"A fire would feel good," said Keith, looking around with a shiver as he
+seated himself on a log near Ginger. The sun was low in the west, and
+very little of its light and warmth found its way into the woods where
+the children were playing.
+
+"It makes me think of Hiawatha," said Ginger, looking down at several
+long streaks of golden light which lay across the ground at her feet.
+"Don't you remember how it goes? 'And the long and level sunbeams shot
+their spears into the forest, breaking through its shield of shadow,'
+Isn't that pretty? I love Hiawatha. I am going to learn pages and pages
+of it some day. I know all that part about Minnehaha now,"
+
+"Say it while we are waiting," said Keith, pulling his short trousers
+down as far as possible, and wishing that he had sleeves, or else that
+the paint were thicker on his chilly arms.
+
+"All right," began Virginia.
+
+     "'Oh the long and dreary winter!
+     Oh the cold and cruel winter!
+     Ever thicker, thicker, thicker
+     Froze the ice on lake and river.'"
+
+"Ugh! Don't!" interrupted Keith, with a shiver. "It makes my teeth
+chatter, talking about such cold things!"
+
+Just then a shout came ringing down the hill, "Oh, Keith! Come here a
+minute! Quick!"
+
+"What do you wa-ant?" yelled Keith, in return.
+
+"Come up here! Quick! Hurry up!"
+
+"What do you s'pose can be the matter?" exclaimed Keith, scrambling to
+his feet. "Maybe the bear has got loose and run away."
+
+"Come and untie me first," said Virginia, "and I'll go, too." Keith
+gave several quick tugs at the many knotted string which bound her, but
+could not loosen it. Again the call came, impatient and sharp, "Keith!
+_Oh_, Keith!"
+
+"Oh, I can't loosen it a bit," said Keith. "You'll have to wait till
+Malcolm comes with his knife. We'll be back in just a minute. I'll go
+and see what's the matter."
+
+"Be sure that you don't stay!" screamed Ginger, as the scarlet bedroom
+slippers and green striped legs flashed out of sight through the bushes.
+
+"Back--in--a--minute!" sounded shrilly through the woods.
+
+Keith found Malcolm on the back porch, pounding excitedly on a box which
+the express-man had left there a few minutes before.
+
+"It's the camera we have been looking for all week," he cried. "Come on
+and have a look at it."
+
+"Ginger said to hurry back," said Keith.
+
+"Pshaw! It won't take but a minute. I'll pry the box open in a jiffy."
+
+It was harder work than the boys had supposed, to take the tightly
+nailed lid from its place, and they were so intent on their work they
+did not realise how quickly the minutes were passing.
+
+"Isn't it a beauty?" exclaimed Malcolm, when it was at last unpacked.
+"It's lots bigger and finer than the one papa promised. But that's the
+way he always does. Oh, isn't it a peach!"
+
+"I'll tell you what," said Keith, dancing up and down in his excitement,
+until he looked like a ridiculous little clown in the faded pink
+bathing-suit and his stripes of green paint, "let's take each other's
+pictures while we are dressed this way. We may never look so funny
+again, and we can go down and take Ginger, too, while she is tied to
+the tree."
+
+"Can't now," said Malcolm, "it's too dark down there in the woods by
+this time. See! there is nothing left now of the sun but those red
+clouds above the place where it went down. I'm afraid it is too dark
+even for us up here on the hill; but we can try. You do look funny, just
+like a jumping-jack or a monkey on a stick."
+
+"Surely Ginger won't mind waiting long enough for us to do it," said
+Keith. "Anyhow we can never dress up this way again, and grandmother
+will be coming home very soon, so you take mine quick, and I will
+take yours."
+
+The boys had had some practice before with a cheap little camera, but
+this required some studying of the printed directions before they could
+use it. The first time they tried it the plates were put in wrong, and
+the second time they forgot to remove the cap. There were other things
+in the box besides the camera: some beautiful pink curlew's wings, a
+handsomely marked snake skin, and some rare shells that had been picked
+up on the Gulf coast. Of course the boys had to examine each new
+treasure as it was discovered. One thing after another delayed them
+until it was dusk even on the porch where they stood, and in the woods
+below a deep twilight had fallen.
+
+Every minute that had sped by so rapidly for the boys, seemed an age to
+the captive Virginia. Her arms ached from the strain of their unusual
+position. Swarms of gnats flew about, stinging her face, and mosquitoes
+buzzed teasingly around her ears. She was unable to move a finger to
+drive them away.
+
+When the boys had been gone fifteen minutes she thought they must have
+been away hours. At the end of half an hour she was wild with impatience
+to get loose, but, thinking they might return any minute, she made no
+sign of her discomfort. She would be as heroic as the bravest brave ever
+tortured by cruel savages. As long as it was light she kept up her
+courage, but presently it began to grow dark under the great
+beech-trees. A frog down by the spring set up a dismal croaking. What if
+they should not come back, and her grandmother and Aunt Allison should
+miss the train, and have to stay in the city all night! Then nobody
+would come to set her free, and she would have to stay in the lonely
+woods all by herself, tied to a tree, with her hands behind her back.
+
+At that thought she began calling, "Keith! Keith! Malcolm! Oh, Malcolm!"
+but only an echo came back to her, as it had to the dying Minnehaha,--a
+far-away echo that mocked her with its teasing cry of "Mal-colm!" Call
+after call went ringing through the woods, but nobody answered.
+Nobody came.
+
+There was a rustling through the leaves behind her, as of a snake
+gliding around the tree. She was not afraid of snakes in the daytime,
+and when she was unbound, but she shrieked and turned cold at the
+thought of one wriggling across her feet while she was powerless to get
+away. Every time a twig snapped, or there was a fluttering in the
+bushes, she strained her eyes to see what horrible thing might be
+creeping up toward her. She had no thought that live Indians might be
+lurking about, but all the terrible stories she had ever heard, of the
+days of Daniel Boone and the early settlers, came back to haunt the
+woods with a nameless dread.
+
+She felt that she was standing on the real Kentucky that the Indians
+meant, when they gave the State its name. "_Dark and bloody ground! Dark
+and bloody ground_!" something seemed to say just behind her. Then the
+trees took it up, and all the leaves whispered, "_Sh--sh, sh! Dark and
+bloody ground! Sh--sh_!"
+
+At that she was so frightened that she began calling again, but the
+sound of her own voice startled her. "Oh, they are not coming," she
+thought, with a miserable ache in her throat, that seemed swelling
+bigger and bigger. "I'll have to stay here in the woods all night. Oh,
+mamma! mamma!" she moaned, "I am so scared! If you could only come back
+and get your poor little girl!"
+
+Up to this time she had bravely fought back the tears, but just then a
+screech-owl flapped down from a branch above her with such a dismal
+hooting that she gave a nervous start and a cry of terror. "Oh, that
+frightened me so!" she sobbed. "I don't believe I can stand it to be out
+here all night alone with so many horrible creepy things everywhere. And
+nobody cares! Nobody but papa and mamma, and they are away, way off in
+Cuba. Maybe I'll never see them any more," At that the tears rolled down
+her face, and she could not move a hand to wipe them away. To be so
+little and miserable and forsaken, so worn out with waiting and so
+helpless among all these unknown horrors that the dark woods might hold,
+was worse torture to the imaginative child than any bodily pain could
+have been.
+
+It was just as her last bit of courage oozed away, and she began to cry,
+that the boys suddenly realised how long they had left her.
+
+"It must be as dark as a pocket in the woods by this time," exclaimed
+Malcolm. "What do you suppose Ginger will say to us for leaving her
+so long?"
+
+"You will have to take a knife to cut her loose," said Keith. "I tried
+to untie the knots before I came away, but I couldn't move them."
+
+"My pocket-knife is up-stairs," answered Malcolm. "I'll get something in
+the dining-room that will do."
+
+He was rushing out again with a carving-knife in his hand, when he came
+face to face with his grandmother and Aunt Allison. The boys had been so
+interested in their camera that they had not heard the train whistle, or
+the sound of footsteps coming up on the front veranda. Pete was lighting
+the hall lamps as the ladies came in, and he turned his back to hide the
+broad grin on his face, as he thought of the sight which would soon
+greet them. Mrs. Maclntyre gave a gasp of astonishment and sank down in
+the nearest chair as Malcolm came dashing into the bright lamplight.
+
+His turkey feathers were all awry, standing out in a dozen different
+directions from his head, his blanket trailed behind him, and the fringe
+was hanging in festoons from his leggins, where it had come unpinned.
+The red paint on his face made him look as if he had been in a fight
+with the carving-knife he carried, and had had the skin peeled off his
+face in patches.
+
+Wild as he looked, his appearance was tame beside that of the
+impish-looking little savage who skipped in after him, in the scarlet
+bedroom slippers, pink striped bathing-suit and green striped skin.
+
+"Keith Maclntyre, what have you been doing to yourself?" gasped his
+grandmother. Both boys began an excited exclamation, but were stopped by
+Miss Allison's question, "Where is Virginia? Have you two little savages
+scalped her?"
+
+"She's tied to a tree down by the spring," answered Malcolm. "We are
+just starting down there now to cut her loose. You see we were playing
+Indian, and she was tied up to be tortured, and we forgot all about her
+being there--"
+
+But Miss Allison waited to hear no more. "The poor little thing!" she
+exclaimed. "Tied out there alone in the dark woods! How could you be so
+cruel? It is enough to frighten her into spasms."
+
+"I'm awfully sorry, Aunt Allison!" began Malcolm, but his aunt was
+already out of hearing. Out of the door she ran, through the dewy grass
+and the stubble of the field beyond, regardless of her dainty spring
+gown, or her new patent leather shoes. Malcolm and Keith dashed out
+after her, ran on ahead and were at the spring before she had climbed
+the fence into the woodland.
+
+Virginia was not crying when the boys reached her. She remembered that
+she had once called Malcolm "Rain-in-the-face" because she caught him
+crying over something that seemed to her a very little reason, and she
+did not intend to give him a chance to taunt her in the same way. She
+was glad that it was too dark for him to notice her tear-swollen eyes.
+
+"Whew! It's dark down here!" said Keith. "Were you frightened, Ginger?"
+he asked, as he helped Malcolm unfasten the cords that bound her. But
+Ginger made no reply to either questions or apologies. She walked on in
+dignified silence, too deeply hurt by their neglect, too full of a sense
+of the wrong they had done her, to trust herself to speak without
+crying, and she intended to be game to the last. But when she came upon
+Miss Allison, and suddenly found herself folded safe in her arms, with
+pitying kisses and comforting caresses, she clung to her, sobbing as if
+her heart would break.
+
+"Oh, auntie! It was so awful!" was all she could say, but she repeated
+it again and again, until Miss Allison, who had never seen her so
+excited before, was alarmed. The boys, who had run on ahead to the house
+again, before she gave way to her feelings, were inclined to look upon
+it all as a good joke, for they had no idea how much she had suffered,
+and did not like it because she would not speak to them. They changed
+their minds when Miss Allison came out of Virginia's room a little
+later, and told them that the fright had given the child a nervous
+chill, and that she had cried herself to sleep.
+
+"We didn't mean to do it," said Keith, penitently. "We just forgot, and
+I'm mighty sorry, truly I am, auntie!"
+
+"I am not scolding you," said Miss Allison, "but if I were either of you
+boys, I wouldn't wear my little white flower when I dressed for dinner
+to-night. Instead of being the protector of a distressed maiden, as the
+old knights would have said, you have done her a wrong,--a serious one I
+am afraid,--and that wrong ought to be made right as far as possible
+before you are worthy to wear the badge of knighthood again."
+
+"We'll go and beg her pardon right now," said Malcolm.
+
+"No, she is asleep now, and I do not want her to be disturbed. Besides,
+a mere apology is not enough. You must make some kind of atonement. The
+first thing for you to do, however, is to get some turpentine and remove
+that paint. Where did you get it, boys?"
+
+"Out of your paint-box, Aunt Allison," said Malcolm. "We didn't think
+you would care. I was only going to take a little, but it soaked in so
+fast that I had to use two tubes of it."
+
+"I used more than that," confessed Keith, looking at her with his big
+honest eyes; "but I got so interested pretending that I was turning into
+a real Indian, that I never thought about its being anybody else's
+paint, Aunt Allison, truly I didn't!"
+
+She turned away to hide a smile. The earnest little face above the
+striped body was so very comical. Picking up several of the empty tubes
+that had been squeezed quite flat, she read the labels. "Rose madder and
+carmine," she said, solemnly, "two of my very most expensive paints."
+
+"Dear me!" sighed Malcolm, "then there's another wrong that's got to be
+righted. I guess Keith and I weren't cut out for knights. I'm beginning
+to think that it's a mighty tough business anyhow."
+
+That night, when the boys came down to dinner, no little white flower
+with its diamond dewdrop centre shone on the lapel of either coat. It
+had been a work of time to scrub off the paint, and then it took almost
+as long to get rid of the turpentine, so that dinner was ready long
+before Keith was finally clad in his flannels. "My throat is sore," he
+complained to Malcolm at bedtime, but did not mention it to any one else
+that night. He sat on the side of his bed a moment before undressing,
+with one foot across his knee, staring thoughtfully at the lamp.
+Presently, with one shoe in his hand and the other half unlaced, he
+hopped over to the dressing-table and stood before it, looking at first
+one picture and then another.
+
+Eight different photographs of his mother were ranged along the table
+below the wide mirror, some taken in evening dress, some in simple
+street costume, and each one so beautiful that it would have been hard
+to decide which one had the greatest charm.
+
+"I wish mamma was here to-night," said Keith, softly, with a little
+quiver of his lip. "Seems like she's been gone almost always."
+
+He picked up a large Roman locket of beaten silver that lay open on the
+table. It held two exquisitely painted miniatures on ivory. One was the
+same sweet face that looked out at him from each of the photographs, the
+other was his father's. It showed a handsome young fellow with strong,
+clean-shaven face, with eyes like Keith's, and the same lordly poise of
+the fine head that Malcolm had.
+
+"Good night, papa, good night, mamma!" whispered Keith, touching his
+lips hastily to each picture while Malcolm's back was turned. There were
+tears in his eyes. Somehow he was so miserably homesick.
+
+Next morning, although Keith's throat was not so sore, he was burning
+with fever by the time his lessons were over. Before his grandmother saw
+him he was off on his wheel for a long ride, and then, because he was so
+hot when he came back, he slipped away to the pond with the pink
+bathing-suit under his coat, and took the swim that he had been looking
+forward to so long. Nobody knew where he was, and he stayed in the water
+until his lips and finger-nails were blue. The morning after that he was
+too ill to get up, and Mrs. Maclntyre sent for a doctor.
+
+"He has always been so perfectly well, and seemed to have such a strong
+constitution, that I cannot allow myself to believe this will be
+anything serious," said Mrs. Maclntyre, but at the end of the third day
+he was so much worse that she sent to the city for a trained nurse, and
+telegraphed for his father and mother.
+
+They had already left Florida, and were yachting up the Atlantic coast
+on their way home when the message reached them.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+"FAIRCHANCE."
+
+Malcolm did his best to atone to Virginia for what she had suffered from
+the forgetfulness of the two little Indians, but poor Keith was too ill
+to remember anything about it. He did not know his father and mother
+when they came, and tossed restlessly about, talking wildly of things
+they could not understand. It was the first time he had ever been so
+ill, and as they watched him lying there day after day, burning with
+fever, and growing white and thin, a great fear came upon them that he
+would never be any better.
+
+No one put that fear into words, but little by little it crept from
+heart to heart like a wintry fog, until the whole house felt its chill.
+The sweet spring sounds and odours came rushing in at every window from
+the sunny world outside, but it might as well have been mid-winter. No
+one paid any heed while that little life hung in the balance. The
+servants went through the house on tiptoe. Malcolm and Virginia haunted
+the halls to discover from the grave faces of the older people what they
+were afraid to ask, and Mrs. Maclntyre was kept busy answering the
+inquiries of the neighbours. Scarcely an hour passed that some one did
+not come to ask about Keith, to leave flowers, or to proffer kindly
+services. Everybody who knew the little fellow loved him. His bright
+smile and winning manner had made him a host of friends.
+
+There was no lack of attention. His father and mother, Miss Allison, and
+the nurse watched every breath, every pulse-beat; and a dozen times in
+the night his grandmother stole to the door to look anxiously at the wan
+little face on the pillow.
+
+"It is so strange," said his mother to the nurse one day. "He keeps
+talking about a white flower. He says that he can't right the wrong
+unless he wears it, and that Jonesy will have to be shut up and never
+find his brother again. What do you suppose he means?"
+
+The nurse shook her head. She did not know. Just then Mrs. Maclntyre
+heard her name called softly, "Elise," and her husband beckoned her to
+come out into the hall. "I want to show you something in Allison's
+room," he said, leading her down the hall to his sister's apartment. On
+each side of the low writing-desk stood a large photograph, one of
+Malcolm in his suit of mail, the other of Keith in the costume of
+jewel-embroidered velvet, like the little Duke of Gloster's.
+
+"Oh, Sydney! How beautiful!" she exclaimed, as she swept across the room
+and knelt down before the desk for a better view. Leaning her arms on
+the desk, she looked into Keith's pictured face with hungry eyes. "Isn't
+he lovely?" she repeated. "Oh, he'll never look like that again! I know
+it! I know it!" she sobbed, remembering how white was the little face on
+the pillow that she had just left.
+
+Mr. Maclntyre bent over her, his own handsome face white and haggard. He
+looked ill himself, from the constant watching and anxiety. "I'd give
+anything in the world that I own! Everything!" he groaned. "I'd do
+anything, sacrifice anything, to see him as well and sturdy as he
+looks there!"
+
+Then he caught up the picture. "What's this written underneath?" he
+asked, "It is in Keith's own handwriting: '_Live pure speak truth, right
+the wrong, follow the king. Else wherefore born_?'
+
+"What does it mean, Allison?" he asked, turning to his sister, who was
+resting on a couch by the window. "It is written under Malcolm's
+picture, too."
+
+"The dear little Sir Galahads," she said, "I sent for you to tell you
+about them. The boys intended the pictures as a surprise for you and
+Elise, so we never sent them. They wanted to tell you themselves about
+the Benefit and the little waif they gave it for."
+
+She took a little pin from a jewel-case under the sofa pillows, and
+reaching over, dropped it in her brother's hand. It was a tiny flower of
+white enamel, with a diamond dewdrop in the centre.
+
+"You may have noticed Malcolm wearing one like it," she said, and then
+she told them the story of Jonesy and the bear and all that their coming
+had led to: the Benefit, the new order of knighthood, and the awakening
+of the boys to a noble purpose.
+
+"The boys fully expect you to stand by them in all this, Sydney," she
+said, in conclusion, "and play fairy godfather for Jonesy henceforth and
+for ever. One night, when Keith came up to confess some mischief he had
+been into during the day, he said:
+
+"'Aunt Allison, this wearing the white flower of a blameless life isn't
+as easy as it is cracked up to be; but having this little pin helps a
+lot. I just put my hand on that like the real knights used to do on
+their sword-hilts, and repeat my motto. It will be easier when papa
+comes home. Since I've known Jonesy, and heard him tell about the hard
+times some people have that he knows, it seems to me there's an awful
+lot of wrong in the world for somebody to set right. Some nights I can
+hardly go to sleep for thinking about it, and wishing that I were grown
+up so that I could begin to do my part. I wish papa could be here now.
+He'd make a splendid knight; he is so big and good and handsome. I don't
+s'pose King Arthur himself was any better or braver than my father is.'"
+
+A tear splashed down from the mother's eyes as she listened, and,
+falling on the tiny white flower as it lay in her husband's hand,
+glistened beside the dewdrop centre like another diamond.
+
+"Oh, Sydney!" she exclaimed, in a heart-broken way. Something very like
+a sob shook the man's broad shoulders, and, turning abruptly, he strode
+out of the room.
+
+Down in the dim, green library, where the blinds had been drawn to keep
+it cool, he threw himself into a chair beside the table. Propping
+Keith's picture up in front of him against a pile of books, he leaned
+forward, gazing at it earnestly. He had never realised before how much
+he loved the little son, who hour by hour seemed slowly slipping farther
+away from him. The pictured face looked full into his as if it would
+speak. It wore the same sweet, trustful expression that had shone there
+the night he talked to Jonesy of the Hall of the Shields; the same
+childish purity that had moved the old professor to lay his hands upon
+his head and call him Galahad.
+
+All that gentle birth, college breeding, wealth, and travel could give a
+man, were Sydney Maclntyre's, and yet, measuring himself by Keith's
+standard of knighthood, he felt himself sadly lacking. He had given
+liberally to charities hundreds of dollars, because it was often easier
+for him to write out a check than to listen to somebody's tale of
+suffering. But aside from that he had left the old world to wag on as
+best it could, with its grievous load of wrong and sorrow.
+
+A man is not apt to trouble himself as to how it wags for those outside
+his circle of friends, when the generations before him have spent their
+time laying up a fortune for him to enjoy. But this man was beginning to
+trouble himself about it now, as he paced restlessly up and down the
+room. He was not thinking now about the things that usually occupied
+him, his social duties, his home or club, or yacht or horses or kennels.
+He was not planning some new pleasure for his friends or family, he was
+wondering what he could do to be worthy of the exalted regard in which
+he was held by his little sons. What wrong could he set right, to prove
+himself really as noble as they thought him? He was their ideal of all
+that was generous and manly, and yet--
+
+"What have I ever done," he asked himself, "to make them think so? If I
+were to be taken out of the world to-morrow, I would be leaving it
+exactly as I found it. Who could point to my coffin and say, 'Laws are
+better, politics are purer, or times are not so hard for the masses now,
+because this one man willed to lift up his fellows as far as the might
+of one strong life can reach?' But they will say that of Malcolm, and
+Keith, if he lives--ah, if he lives!"
+
+An hour later the door opened, and Malcolm came in, softly. "Keith is
+asking for you, papa," he said, with a timid glance into his father's
+haggard face. Then he came nearer, and slipped his hand into the man's
+strong fingers, and together they went up the stairs to answer
+the summons.
+
+"Did you want me, Keith?"
+
+The head did not turn on the pillow. The languid eyes opened only
+half-way, but there was recognition in them now, and one little hand was
+raised to lay itself lovingly against his father's cheek.
+
+"What is it, son?"
+
+The weak little voice tried to answer, but the words came only in gasps.
+"Brother knows--about Jonesy--keep him from being a tramp! Please let
+me, papa--do that much good--in my life 'else wherefore--born?'"
+
+"What is it, Keith?" asked his father, bending over him. "Papa doesn't
+exactly understand. But you can have anything you want, my boy.
+Anything! I'll do whatever you ask."
+
+"Malcolm knows," was the answer. Then the voice seemed somewhat
+stronger for an instant, and a faint smile touched Keith's lips. "Give
+my half of the bear to Ginger. Now--may I have--my--white--flower?"
+
+Throwing back his coat, his father unpinned the little badge from his
+vest, where he had fastened it for safe-keeping a short time before in
+the library. A pleased expression flitted over the child's face, as he
+saw where it had been resting, and when it was fastened in the front of
+his little embroidered nightshirt, his hand closed over the pin as if it
+were something very precious, and he were afraid of losing it again.
+
+"Wearing the white flower," they heard him whisper, and then the little
+knight slept.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was hours afterward when he roused again,--hours when the faintest
+noise had not been allowed in the house; when the servants had been sent
+to the cottage, and Unc' Henry stationed at the front gate; that no one
+might drive up the avenue.
+
+Virginia, in a hammock on the veranda, scarcely dared draw a deep breath
+till she heard the doctor coming down the stairs, just before dark.
+Then she knew by his face that prayers and skill and tender nursing had
+not been in vain, and that Keith would live.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So much can happen in a week. In the seven days that followed Keith
+gradually grew strong enough to be propped up in bed a little while at a
+time; Captain Dudley and his wife came home from Cuba, and Mr. Maclntyre
+began to carry out the promise he had made to Keith that day when they
+feared most he could not live.
+
+The whole Valley rejoiced in the first and second happenings, and were
+too much occupied in them to notice the third. Carriages rolled in and
+out of the great entrance gate all day long, for Mrs. Dudley had always
+been a favourite with the old neighbours, and they gave a warm welcome
+to her and her gallant husband. Virginia followed her father and mother
+about like a loving shadow, and Keith was so interested in the wonderful
+stories they told of their Cuban experiences that he never noticed how
+much his father and Malcolm were away from home. Sometimes they would
+be gone all day together, consulting with the old professor, overseeing
+carpenters, or making hasty trips to the city. Jonesy's home, that had
+been so long only a beautiful air-castle, was rapidly taking shape in
+wood and stone, and the painters would soon be at work on it.
+
+Mr. Maclntyre had never been more surprised than he was when Malcolm
+unfolded their plan to him. It did not seem possible that two children
+could have thought of it all, and arranged every detail without the help
+of some older head.
+
+"It just grew," said Malcolm, in explanation. "First Keith said how
+lovely it would have been if we had made enough money at the Benefit to
+have bought a home for Jonesy in the country, where he could have a fair
+chance to grow up a good man. Just a comfortable little cottage with a
+garden, where he could be out-of-doors all the time, instead of in the
+dirty city streets; then nobody could call him a 'child of the slums'
+any more. Then we said it would be better if there were some fields back
+of the garden, so that he could learn to be a farmer when he was older,
+and have some way to make a living. We talked about it every night when
+we went to bed, and kept putting a little more and a little more to it,
+until it was as real to us as if we had truly seen such a place. There
+were vines on the porches, and a big Newfoundland dog on the front
+steps, and a cow and calf in the pasture, and a gentle old horse that
+could plough and that Jonesy could ride to water.
+
+"We told Ginger, and she thought of a lot more things; some little
+speckled pigs in a pen and kittens in the hay-mow, and ducks on the
+pond, and an orchard, and roses in the yard. She said we ought to call
+the place 'Fairchance,' because that's what it would mean for Jonesy and
+Barney (you know we would send for Barney first thing we did, of
+course), and it was Ginger who first thought of getting some nice man
+and his wife to take care of the boys. She said there are plenty of
+people who would be glad to do it, just for the sake of having such a
+good home. Ginger said if we could do all that, and keep Jonesy and his
+brother from growing up to be tramps like the man we bought the bear
+from, it would be serving our country just as much as if we went to war
+and fought for it. Ginger is a crank about being a patriot. You ought
+to hear her talk about it. And Aunt Allison said that 'an ounce of
+prevention is worth a pound of cure,' and that to build such a place as
+our 'Fairchance' would be a deed worthy of any true knight."
+
+"How are you expecting to bring this wonderful thing to pass?" asked his
+father, as Malcolm stopped to take breath. "Do you expect to wave a wand
+and see it spring up out of the earth?"
+
+"Of course not, papa!" said Malcolm, a little provoked by his father's
+teasing smile. "We were going to ask you to let us take the money that
+grandfather left us in his will. We won't need it when we are grown, for
+we can earn plenty ourselves then, and it seems too bad to have it laid
+away doing nobody any good, when we need it so much now to right this
+wrong of Jonesy's."
+
+"But it is not laid away," answered Mr. MacIntyre. "It is invested in
+such a way that it is earning you more money every year; and more than
+that, it was left in trust for you, so that it cannot be touched until
+you are twenty-one."
+
+"Oh, papa!" cried Malcolm, bitterly disappointed. He had hard work to
+keep back the tears for a moment; then a happy thought made his face
+brighten. "You could lend us the money, and we would pay you back when
+we are of age. You know you promised Keith you would do anything he
+wanted, and that is what he was trying to ask for?"
+
+Mr. Maclntyre put his arm around the earnest little fellow, and drew him
+to his knee, smiling down into the upturned face that waited eagerly for
+his answer.
+
+"I only asked that to hear what you would say, my son," was the answer.
+"You need have no worry about the money. I'll keep my promise to Keith,
+and Jonesy shall have his home. I'm not a knight, but I'm proud to be
+the father of two such valiant champions. Please God, you'll not be
+alone in your battles after this, to right the world's wrongs. I'll be
+your faithful squire, or, as we'd say in these days, a sort of silent
+partner in the enterprise."
+
+Several days after this a deed was recorded in the county court-house,
+conveying a large piece of property from old Colonel Lloyd to Malcolm
+and Keith Maclntyre. It was the place adjoining "The Locusts," on which
+stood a fine old homestead that had been vacant for several years. The
+day after its purchase a force of carpenters and painters were set to
+work, and two coloured men began clearing out the tangle of bushes in
+the long-neglected garden.
+
+Jonesy know nothing of what was going on, and wondered at the long
+conversations which took place between the old professor and Mr.
+Maclntyre, always in German. It was the professor who found some one to
+take care of the home, as Virginia had suggested. He recommended a
+countryman of his, Carl Sudsberger, who had long been a teacher like
+himself. He was a gentle old soul who loved children and understood
+them, and a more motherly creature than his wife could not well be
+imagined. Everything throve under her thrifty management, and she had no
+patience with laziness or waste. Any boy in whose bringing up she had a
+hand would be able to make his way in the world when the time came
+for it.
+
+Mrs. Dudley and Miss Allison helped choose the furnishings, but Virginia
+felt that the pleasure of it was all hers, for she was taken to the city
+every time they went, and allowed a voice in everything. Several trips
+were necessary before the house was complete, but by the last week in
+May it was ready from attic to cellar.
+
+It was the "Fairchance" that the boys had planned so long, with its
+rose-bordered paths, the orchard and garden and outlying fields. Nothing
+had been forgotten, from the big Newfoundland dog on the doorstep, to
+the ducks on the pond, and the little speckled pigs in the pen. The day
+that Keith was able to walk down-stairs for the first time, Mr.
+Maclntyre went to Chicago, taking Jonesy with him, to find Barney and
+bring him back. He was gone several days, and when he returned there
+were three boys with him instead of two: Jonesy, Barney, and a little
+fellow about five years old, still in dresses.
+
+Malcolm met them at the train, and eyed the small newcomer with
+curiosity. "It is a little chap that Barney had taken under his wing,"
+explained Mr. Maclntyre. "Its mother was dead, and I found it was
+entirely dependent on Barney for support. They slept together in the
+same cellar, and shared whatever he happened to earn, just as Jonesy
+did. I hadn't the heart to leave him behind, although I didn't relish
+the idea of travelling with such a kindergarten. Would you believe it,
+Dodds (that's the little fellow's name) _never saw a tree in his life_
+until yesterday? He had never been out of the slums where he was born,
+not even to the avenues of the city where he could have seen them. It
+was too far for him to walk alone, and street-cars were out of the
+question for him,--as much out of reach of his empty pockets as
+the moon."
+
+"Never saw a tree!" echoed Malcolm, with a thrill of horror in his voice
+that a life could be so bare in its knowledge of beauty. "Oh, papa, how
+much 'Fairchance' will mean to him, then! Oh, I'm so glad, and
+Keith--why, Keith will want to stand on his head!"
+
+They drove directly to the new place. It was late in the afternoon, and
+the sunshine threw long, waving shadows across the yard. Mrs. Sudsberger
+sat on the front porch knitting. A warm breeze blowing in from the
+garden stirred the white window curtains behind her with soft
+flutterings. The coloured woman in the kitchen was singing as she moved
+around preparing supper, and her voice floated cheerily around the
+corner of the house:
+
+     "Swing low, sweet chariot, comin' fer to carry me home,
+     Swing low, sweet char-i-_ot_, comin' fer to carry me home!"
+
+A Jersey cow lowed at the pasture bars, and from away over in the
+woodland came the cooing of a dove. Three little waifs had found
+a home.
+
+Mr. Maclntyre looked from the commonplace countenances of the boys
+climbing out of the carriage to Malcolm's noble face. "It is a doubtful
+experiment," he said to himself. "They may never amount to anything, but
+at least they shall have a chance to see what clean, honest, country
+living can do for them." And then there swept across his heart, with a
+warm, generous rush, the impulse to do as much for every other
+unfortunate child he could reach, whose only heritage is the poverty and
+crime of city slums. He had seen so much in that one short visit. The
+misery of it haunted him, and it was with a happiness as boyish and keen
+as Malcolm's that he led these children he had rescued into the home
+that was to be theirs henceforth.
+
+Keith did not see "Fairchance" until Memorial Day. Then they took him
+over in the carriage in the afternoon, and showed him every nook and
+corner of the place. There were six boys there now, for room had been
+made for two little fellows from Louisville, whom Mr. Maclntyre had
+found at the Newsboys' Home. "I've no doubt but that there'll always be
+more coming," he said to Mr. Sudsberger, with a smile, as he led them
+in. "When you once let a little water trickle through the dyke, the
+whole sea is apt to come pouring in."
+
+"Happy the heart that is swept with such high tides," answered the old
+German. "It is left the richer by such floods."
+
+Several families in the Valley were invited to come late in the
+afternoon to a flag-raising. The great silk flag was Virginia's gift,
+and Captain Dudley made the presentation speech. He wore his uniform in
+honour of the occasion. This was a part of what he said:
+
+"This Memorial Day, throughout this wide-spread land of ours, over every
+mound that marks a soldier's dust, some hand is stretched to drop a
+flower in tender tribute. Over her heroic dead a grateful country
+wreathes the red of her roses, the white of her lilies, and the blue of
+her forget-me-nots, repeating even in the sweet syllables of the flowers
+the symbol of her patriotism,--the red, white, and blue of her
+war-stained banner.
+
+"My friends, I have followed the old flag into more than one battle. I
+have seen men charge after it through blinding smoke and hail of
+bullets, and I have seen them die for it. No one feels more deeply than
+I what a glorious thing it is to die for one's country, but I want to
+say to these little lads looking up at this great flag fluttering over
+us, that it is not half so noble, half so brave, as to live for it, to
+give yourselves in untiring, every-day living to your country's good. To
+'let _all_ the ends thou aim'st at be thy country's, thy God's, and
+truth's.' I would rather have that said of me, that I did that, than to
+be the greatest general of my day. I would rather be the founder of
+homes like this one than to manoeuvre successfully the greatest battles.
+
+"May the 'Two Little Knights of Kentucky' go on, out through the land,
+carrying their motto with them, until the last wrong is righted, and
+wherever the old flag floats a 'fair chance' may be found for every one
+that lives beneath it. And may these Stars and Stripes, as they rise and
+fall on the winds of this peaceful valley, whisper continuously that
+same motto, until its lessons of truth and purity and unselfish service
+have been blazoned on the hearts of every boy who calls this home. May
+it help to make him a true knight in his country's cause."
+
+There was music after that, and then old Colonel Lloyd made a speech,
+and Virginia and the Little Colonel gathered roses out of the old
+garden, so that every one could wear a bunch. A little later they had
+supper on the lawn, picnic fashion, and then drove home in the cool of
+the evening, when all the meadows were full of soft flashings from the
+fairy torches of a million fireflies.
+
+With Keith safely covered up in a hammock, they lingered on the porch
+long after the stars came out, and the dew lay heavy on the roses. They
+were building other air-castles now, to be rebuilt some day, as Jonesy's
+home had been; only these were still larger and better. The older people
+were planning, too, and all the good that grew out of that quiet evening
+talk can never be known until that day comes when the King shall read
+all the names in his Hall of the Shields.
+
+"It has been such a beautiful day," said Virginia, leaning her head
+happily against her mother's shoulder. Then she started up, suddenly
+remembering something. "Oh, papa!" she cried, "let's end it as they do
+at the fort, with the bugle-call. I'll run and get my old bugle, and you
+play 'taps.'"
+
+A few minutes later the silvery notes went floating out on the warm
+night air, through all the peaceful valley; over the mounds in the
+little churchyard, wreathed now with their fresh memorial roses; past
+"The Locusts" where the Little Colonel lay a-dreaming. Over the woods
+and fields they floated, until they reached the flag that kept its
+fluttering vigil over "Fairchance."
+
+Jonesy sat up in bed to listen. Many a reveille would sound before his
+full awakening to all that the two little knights had made possible for
+him, but the sweet, dim dream of the future that stole into his grateful
+little heart was an earnest of what was in store for him. Then the
+bugle-call, falling through the starlight like a benediction, closed the
+happy day with its peaceful "Good night."
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Two Little Knights of Kentucky
+by Annie Fellows Johnston
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