CHAPTER XVI--POLLY TELLS A SPOOK STORY
Assured of sufficient funds to complete its season without financialembarrassment, the Hillman's football team seemed to take a new andfirmer grip on things. Practice went well that week, and the playersshowed vim and snap. Perhaps the colder weather helped, too. The line-upthat faced the scrubs on Friday for a short scrimmage was, barringaccidents, that which would, four weeks later, start the game againstHillman's old rival, Farview Academy. Farley and White were at the ends,Captain Stevenson and Pringle were the tackles, Emerson and Corson werethe guards, and Kewpie Proudtree was at center. Frank Brattle atquarter, Mason and Slavin for halves, and Pope at full-back composed therest of the team. There were some weak places, to be sure; but, on thewhole, Coach Mulford was fairly satisfied that he had the parts for acapable machine.
Ned was still playing on the scrub eleven, and doing rather well. As apunter, at least, he deserved his position at left half, and it might bethat he would develop into a fair goal-kicker; for in the last fourdays, under the tuition of the coach and full-back Pope, he had shownexcellent promise. Those morning lessons, now abandoned, had groundedNed well in the art of toeing the pigskin, and, whatever fame the futuremight hold for him as punter or drop-kicker or place-kicker, much of thecredit would be Kewpie's.
To-day, in the second ten minutes of the scrimmaging,--there was buttwenty minutes in all,--Thursby, playing quarter, and probably actingunder instructions, gave Ned his first chance to show what he could doin the way of field goals. Unable to reach a point nearer than twentyyards to the school team's goal, Thursby called for "kick formation,Turner back," and Ned went up-field with his heart in his mouth.Although the cross-bar was less than thirty yards from where he took hisstand and almost directly in front of him, it looked to Ned to be awoeful distance away and the angle much more severe than it was. But hedidn't have much time for reflection, for Thursby called his signalquickly, and the leather came back to him at a good pass, and the schoolteam was crashing through.
Ned always thought that he closed his eyes when he swung his toe againstthe rebounding ball and trusted to luck, but I doubt it, for the pigskindescribed a perfect arc and went well and true over the bar, and if Nedhad had his eyes closed I don't believe the pigskin would have actedthat way at all. Most of the scrub team players thumped him on the backand showed their delight in other ways, for they had not scored on theschool team for nearly a week; while, at a little distance, CoachMulford nodded his head almost imperceptibly. It was too bad Ned didn'tsee that nod, for it would have pleased him far more than the buffets ofhis team-mates.
The next day Hillman's made a trip to Warring and played the Lansingteam to a standstill, returning with a 22-0 victory tucked under itsbelt. Ned got into the game for a bare five minutes at the last, as didhalf a dozen other substitutes; but he was not called on to kick anygoals, for which he was at once sorry and glad. To have had the eyes ofnearly a thousand persons on him would, he thought, have precluded anypossibility of success; but, on the other hand, had he succeeded--Hesighed for lost opportunities!
The attendance that afternoon was a matter of great joy to Manager DaveMurray, for Hillman's went home with a neat sum as its share of theday's profits, a sum far larger than he had counted on--large enough, infact, to make up the difference between the net receipts from the feteand the three hundred and fifty dollars aimed at.
Hillman's good fortune held for another week. There were no accidentsduring practice; every fellow in the line-up played for all that was inhim; and the scrubs took a licking every afternoon. Ned twice moregained glory as a drop-kicker, although on a third occasion he failedlamentably. Unfortunately, neither of his successes brought victory tohis team, since the opponents had on each occasion a safe lead in thescoring. Every afternoon, following the scrimmage, Ned was presented bythe coach with a nice battle-scarred football, and instructed to go downto the east goal and "put some over." Sometimes Hop Kendrick or BenThursby went with him to hold the ball while he tried placement-kicks,and always an unhappy substitute was delegated to retrieve the pigskinfor him; but the coach let him pretty much alone, and Pope looked ononly occasionally and was surprisingly sparing of comment or advice. Andyet, Ned improved, rather to his surprise, since he felt himselfneglected and, as he said to Laurie, didn't see how they expected afellow to learn goal-kicking if they didn't show him a little! But,although he didn't realize it, Ned had reached a point in hisdevelopment where he was best left to his own devices, and Coach Mulfordknew it and forbore to risk confusing him with unnecessary instruction.So Ned pegged away doggedly, and got results, as he considered, in spiteof the coach!
Against the Queens Preparatory Institute, which journeyed up from thecity on Saturday, the Blue was able to emerge from four gruelingfifteen-minute periods with the score 6-6, from the Blue's standpoint avery satisfactory showing, for Q. P. I. was a much-heralded team and haddowned stronger elevens than Hillman's. So November began its secondweek, and cloudy days and not infrequently rainy ones took the place ofthe sunny weather of October.
Laurie would have been somewhat at a loss for a way in which to spendhis afternoons at that time, had it not been for Bob Starling'sovermastering desire to build a tennis-court in the garden of theCoventry place. The weather was far too cold for tennis, although nowand then he and Bob played George and Lee Murdock, and the wrecking ofthe old grape-arbor, preparatory to digging up the sod, proved a welcomediversion. Sometimes Thomas took a hand; but Thomas had plenty to doindoors, and the work was accomplished almost wholly by Bob and Laurie,with the occasional moral support of George or Lee.
Usually an hour's labor with hammer or crowbar ended with an adjournmentto the Widow Deane's, by way of the back fence, for refreshments.Sometimes it was warm enough to foregather in the little garden behindthe shop and, armed with cream-puffs or tarts, spend a jolly half-hourin the society of Polly and Mae. At such times Mrs. Deane, hearing theshouts and laughter, came to the back door and smiled in sympathy.
One glorious afternoon of mingled sunlight and frost there was anexcursion afoot out into the country in search of nuts. Polly and Maeand Laurie and George and Bob and Lee formed the party. They carried twobaskets, one of which George wore on his head most of the way, to thewonderment of the infrequent passers. Mae knew, or thought she knew,where there were chestnut trees, and led the way for three miles to whatis called Two Jug Ridge. The chestnut trees, however, were, according toLaurie, away for the afternoon. They found some hickory nuts, not quiteready to leave their husks, and a few beech-nuts, and after gatheringthose they sat on a broad, flat boulder and looked down on Orstead andLittle Windsor and some twelve miles of the Hudson River, and talked agood deal of nonsense--all except Lee, who went to sleep with his cappulled over his eyes, and had a cold in his head for days after. Georgedecided that when he was through college and was married, he would comeback there and build a bungalow just where they were seated.
"This will do for the front door-step," he expounded, "and over therewill be a closed-in porch with an open fireplace and a Gloucesterhammock."
"That all you're going to have?" asked Bob. "No kitchen?"
"Oh, there'll be a kitchen, all right, and a dining-room--no, I guesswe'll eat on the porch. Wouldn't it be a dandy place, though? Look atthe view!"
"Fine," said Laurie, without much enthusiasm, remembering the lastuphill mile. "Don't mind if I don't come to see you often, though, doyou?"
"Not a bit! Nobody asked you, anyway."
"You could live on nuts," murmured Polly, "and could have shaggy-barksfor breakfast and beech-nuts for dinner and--"
"Grape-nuts for supper," said Laurie, coming to the rescue.
"And you could call the place the Squirrel-Cage," suggested Bob.
And that reminded Mae of a story her father had told of a man who hadlived in the woods farther down the river some years before, and who atenothing but nuts and things he found in the forest. "He lived all alonein a little cabin he'd built, and folks said he
was a deserter from thearmy, and--"
"What army?" George asked.
"The Northern Army, of course."
"I thought you might mean the Salvation Army. Then this was quite awhileago, wasn't it?"
"Of course, stupid! Years and years ago. And finally, when he died,folks found that he wasn't a deserter at all, but a general or a majoror something, and they found a prize that the government had given him,some sort of a medal for bravery in battle. Wasn't that sad?"
"Well," replied Laurie, doubtfully, "I suppose it was. I suppose thegovernment would have shown better judgment if they'd given him a bag ofnuts. Of course, he couldn't eat that medal!"
"You're horrid! Anyway, it just shows that you mustn't judge folksby--by outward appearances, doesn't it?"
"Rather! I've always said that, too. Take George, for example. Just tolook at him, you'd never think he had any sense at all; but at times--"
"Lay off of George," interrupted that young gentleman, threateningly."If folks judged you by the way you talk, you'd be inside a nice highwall!"
Why the talk should have drifted from there to the subject of ghosts anduncanny happenings isn't apparent, but it did. In the midst of it, Leegave a tremendous snore that scared both the girls horribly, and sat upsuddenly, blinking. "Hello!" he muttered. Then he yawned and grinnedfoolishly. "Guess I must have dropped off," he said apologetically.
"You didn't," said George. "If you had you'd have waked up quicker! Cutout the chatter; Polly's telling a spook yarn."
Lee gathered up a handful of beech-nuts and was silent except for thesound he made in cracking the shells.
"It isn't much of a story," disclaimed Polly, "but it--it _was_ funny.It began just after Mama and I came here. I mean, that was the firsttime. One night, after we had gone to bed, Mama called me. 'I thinkthere's some one downstairs, Polly,' she whispered. We both listened,and, sure enough, we could hear a sort of tapping sound. It wasn't likefootsteps, exactly; more--more hollow, as if it came from a long wayoff. But it sounded right underneath. We listened a minute or two, andthen it stopped and didn't begin again; and presently we lighted acandle and went downstairs, and nobody was there and everything wasquite all right. So we thought that perhaps what we'd heard was some onewalking along the street.
"We didn't hear it again for nearly two weeks, and then it lastedlonger--maybe two minutes. It got louder; and stopped, and began again,and died away; and we sat there and listened, and I thought of ghostsand everything except robbers, because it didn't sound like any one inthe store. It was more as if it was some one in the cellar."
"Well, maybe it was," suggested Laurie, when Polly paused.
"That's what we thought, Nod, until we went to see. Then we rememberedthat there wasn't any cellar!"
"Oh!" said Laurie.
"What happened then?" asked Lee, flicking a shell at George.
"It kept on happening every little while for two years. We got so wedidn't think any more about it. Mr. Farmer, the lawyer, said what weheard was probably a rat. But I know very well it wasn't that. It wastoo regular. It was always just the same each time. At first we couldjust hear it a little, and then it grew louder and louder, and stopped.And then it began again, loud, and just sort of--of trailed off till youcouldn't hear it at all. I suppose we never would have heard it if ithadn't been for Mama not sleeping very well, because it always cameafter midnight, usually about half-past twelve. After a while I didn'thear it at all, because Mama stopped waking me up."
"Spooks," declared George, with unction. "The house is haunted, Polly."
"Wish I lived there," said Bob eagerly. "I'm crazy about ghosts. Theytold me that old Coven--I mean your uncle, Polly--haunted the housewe're in; but, gee! I've been around at all times of night and neverseen a thing! There are lots of jolly, shivery noises--stairs creaking,and woodwork popping, and all that, you know; but nary a ghost. Lookhere, Polly! Let me sit down in the store some night, will you? I'd loveto!"
"You've got funny ideas of fun," murmured George.
"Oh, but it's gone now," said Mae. "Hasn't it, Polly? You haven't heardthe noise for a long time, have you?"
"No, not for--oh, two years, I think. At least, that's what Mama says.Maybe, though, she sleeps better and doesn't hear things."
"I guess Mr. What's-his-name was right," said Lee. "It was probably arat, or a family of rats."
"Rats wouldn't make the same sound every time," scoffed Laurie.
"They might. Trained rats might. Maybe they escaped from a circus."
"And maybe you escaped from an asylum," responded Laurie, getting up."Let's take him home before he gets violent."