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Page 15
Through the window Sam lowered a bag of tools he had taken
from Winthrop's car.
"Can you open the lock with any of these?" he asked.
"I can kick it open!" yelled Winthrop joyfully. "Get to your
sister, quick!"
He threw his shoulder against the door, and the staples flying
before him sent him sprawling in the coal-dust. When he
reached the head of the stairs, Beatrice Forbes was descending
from the clubroom, and in front of the door the two cars, with
their lamps unlit and numbers hidden, were panting to be free.
And in the North, reaching to the sky, rose a roaring column
of flame, shameless in the pale moonlight, dragging into naked
day the sleeping village, the shingled houses, the clock-face
in the church steeple.
"What the devil have you done?" gasped Winthrop.
Before he answered, Sam waited until the cars were rattling to
safety across the bridge.
"We have been protecting the face of nature," he shouted. "The
only way to get that gang out of the engine house was to set
fire to something. Tommy wanted to burn up the railroad
station, because he doesn't like the New York and New Haven,
and Fred was for setting fire to Judge Allen's house, because
he was rude to Beatrice. But we finally formed the Village
Improvement Society, organized to burn all advertising signs.
You know those that stood in the marshes, and hid the view
from the trains, so that you could not see the Sound. We
chopped them down and put them in a pile, and poured gasolene
on them, and that fire is all that is left of the pickles,
fly-screens, and pills."
It was midnight when the cars drew up at the door of the house
of Forbes. Anxiously waiting in the library were Mrs. Forbes
and Ernest Peabody.
"At last!" cried Mrs. Forbes, smiling her relief; "we thought
maybe Sam and you had decided to spend the night in New
Haven."
"No," said Miss Forbes, "there WAS some talk about spending
the night at Fairport, but we pushed right on."
II
THE TRESPASSERS
With a long, nervous shudder, the Scarlet Car came to a stop,
and the lamps bored a round hole in the night, leaving the
rest of the encircling world in a chill and silent darkness.
The lamps showed a flickering picture of a country road
between high banks covered with loose stones, and overhead, a
fringe of pine boughs. It looked like a colored photograph
thrown from a stereopticon in a darkened theater.
From the back of the car the voice of the owner said briskly:
"We will now sing that beautiful ballad entitled `He Is
Sleeping in the Yukon Vale To-night.' What are you stopping
for, Fred?" he asked.
The tone of the chauffeur suggested he was again upon the
defensive.
"For water, sir," he mumbled.
Miss Forbes in the front seat laughed, and her brother in the
rear seat, groaned in dismay.
"Oh, for water?" said the owner cordially. "I thought maybe
it was for coal."
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