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Page 81
Futile, flurried days of digging followed for which Kenny, delving
desperately in his memory, supplied forgotten clues. Fearful lest the
villagers might take it into their heads to climb the hill to Craig
Farm and help them dig, he pledged every one to secrecy and went on
digging, with Hughie at his heels. The suspense became fearful and
depressing.
On the third day Hannah rebelled. The gloom and mystery were getting
on her nerves.
"Hetty," she said irritably, "if you're standin' at the window there,
figurin' out where Mr. Craig's money is likely to be buried, you can
stop it this minute and clean the lamps. Your father's out pulling up
the floor-boards in the barn and Mr. O'Neill's digging up the lilac
bush for the third time. And that's enough. It beats me how Mr.
O'Neill can go on rememberin' so much now he's got his memory started.
He just seems to unravel things out of it overnight. It keeps me all
worked up. I feel as if I ought to whisper when I speak and every
night the minute I get to sleep I find myself diggin' in first one
outlandish place and then another. And if I'm not diggin' in my sleep,
your father is, with jerks and starts and grunts enough to wake the
dead. I'm all unstrung. So far as I can see the only thing we're
findin' is nerves. One thing I will say: It was dull and lonesome
before Mr. O'Neill came and I missed him when he went but dear knows,
it was peaceful. It's been one thing right after the other. Who upset
Mr. Abbott in the river, I'd like to know, and almost hit him in the
head with an oar? Who kept Mr. Craig so upset that he threw his brandy
bottle at your father most every morning? Who sang the roan cow into
kickin' at the milk? Who--"
"Sh!" said Hetty.
It seemed that Mr. O'Neill at that minute was not digging up the lilac
bush. There was a sound of hurried footsteps in the room beyond and he
came in with a piece of letter paper in his hand.
"Look, Hannah," he cried. "Look! I found it among Mr. Craig's papers.
It's a rude chart of the farm, picked out here and there in dots."
Hannah wiped her arms and put on her glasses. The paper filled her
with excitement.
"Sakes alive, Mr. O'Neill," she exclaimed, "what will you do now?"
"Do?" said Kenny wildly. "Do? There's only one thing to do, of
course. Hughie and I will dig up the dots. I wish to Heaven I could
find a Leprechaun somewhere under a thorn-bush."
"What's a Leper John?" demanded Hannah.
"A fairy shoemaker," explained Kenny absently, "in a red coat and he
wears buckled shoes and knee-breeches and a hat with a peak and always
he's mendin' a shoe that he doesn't finish, find him and never once let
him trick you into lookin' away and he'll tell you where treasure is
hidden, always."
Hannah blinked.
"What ye need most to my mind, Mr. O'Neill," she said earnestly, "is a
regiment of grave-diggers and stone-cutters to help you and Hughie get
the thing done."
Night came upon them with Hughie digging up a dot beside the well and
Kenny again in the orchard. Everything led back somehow to the
orchard, his memory, the chart, even his own conviction.
That night in a dream Kenny distinctly saw the weary little doctor with
a bag of mystery in his hand and a spade over his shoulder walking down
the orchard hill.
He awoke at dawn with a shiver of excitement. The doctor! What could
be more reasonable? Adam had known him for a lifetime. Whom else
would he trust? The thought nerved him to heroics.
Kenny climbed out of bed and dressed, shiveringly conscious that the
morning was cold enough to turn his breath to steam. It was that
period of indistinctness moreover when farmers and roosters, he knew,
were getting up all over the dawn, but Kenny, with little time and no
inclination at all for melancholy rebellion, tip-toed down the stairway
with his shoes in his hand. He put them on by the kitchen fire. There
was water by the window in a milk-pail. He poured some in a basin,
washed his face and hands and found the water cold enough to hurt his
face. Still his excitement kept him keyed to a pitch of singular and
optimistic hilarity. Through the kitchen window came the pale glimmer
of snow. He hoped Hughie wouldn't hear him harnessing Nellie, and
shoot at the barn. The possibility sent him to the kitchen stairway.
It wound upward in an old-fashioned twist to the room above.
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