It was part of the functions of John Milton Harkutt to take down the early morning shutters and sweep out the store for his father each day before going to school.It was a peculiarity of this performance that he was apt to linger over it,partly from the fact that it put off the evil hour of lessons,partly that he imparted into the process a purely imaginative and romantic element gathered from his latest novel-reading.In this he was usually assisted by one or two school-fellows on their way to school,who always envied him his superior menial occupation.To go to school,it was felt,was a common calamity of boyhood that called into play only the simplest forms of evasion,whereas to take down actual shutters in a bona fide store,and wield a real broom that raised a palpable cloud of dust,was something that really taxed the noblest exertions.And it was the morning after the arrival of the strangers that Johh Milton stood on the veranda of the store ostentatiously examining the horizon,with his hand shading his eyes,as one of his companions appeared.
"Hollo,Milt!wot yer doin'?"
John Milton started dramatically,and then violently dashed at one of the shutters and began to detach it."Ha!"he said hoarsely.
"Clear the ship for action!Open the ports!On deck there!
Steady,you lubbers!"In an instant his enthusiastic school-fellow was at his side attacking another shutter."A long,low schooner bearing down upon us!Lively,lads,lively!"continued John Milton,desisting a moment to take another dramatic look at the distant plain."How does she head now?"he demanded fiercely.
"Sou'by sou'east,sir,"responded the other boy,frantically dancing before the window."But she'll weather it."They each then wrested another shutter away,violently depositing them,as they ran to and fro,in a rack at the corner of the veranda.Added to an extraordinary and unnecessary clattering with their feet,they accompanied their movements with a singular hissing sound,supposed to indicate in one breath the fury of the elements,the bustle of the eager crew,and the wild excitement of the coming conflict.When the last shutter was cleared away,John Milton,with the cry "Man the starboard guns!"dashed into the store,whose floor was marked by the muddy footprints of yesterday's buyers,seized a broom and began to sweep violently.A cloud of dust arose,into which his companion at once precipitated himself with another broom and a loud BANG!to indicate the somewhat belated sound of cannon.For a few seconds the two boys plied their brooms desperately in that stifling atmosphere,accompanying each long sweep and puff of dust out of the open door with the report of explosions and loud HA'S!of defiance,until not only the store,but the veranda was obscured with a cloud which the morning sun struggled vainly to pierce.In the midst of this tumult and dusty confusion--happily unheard and unsuspected in the secluded domestic interior of the building--a shrill little voice arose from the road.
"Think you're mighty smart,don't ye?"
The two naval heroes stopped in their imaginary fury.and,as the dust of conflict cleared away,recognized little Johnny Peters gazing at them with mingled inquisitiveness and envy.
"Guess ye don't know what happened down the run last night,"he continued impatiently."'Lige Curtis got killed,or killed hisself!Blood all over the rock down thar.Seed it,myseff.Dad picked up his six-shooter,--one barrel gone off.My dad was the first to find it out,and he's bin to Squire Kerby tellin'him."The two companions,albeit burning with curiosity,affected indifference and pre-knowledge.
"Dad sez your father druv 'Lige outer the store lass night!Dad sez your father's 'sponsible.Dad sez your father ez good ez killed him.Dad sez the squire'll set the constable on your father.Yah!"But here the small insulter incontinently fled,pursued by both the boys.Nevertheless,when he had made good his escape,John Milton showed neither a disposition to take up his former nautical role,nor to follow his companion to visit the sanguinary scene of Elijah's disappearance.He walked slowly back to the store and continued his work of sweeping and putting in order with an abstracted regularity,and no trace of his former exuberant spirits.
The first one of those instinctive fears which are common to imaginative children,and often assume the functions of premonition,had taken possession of him.The oddity of his father's manner the evening before,which had only half consciously made its indelible impression on his sensitive fancy,had recurred to him with Johnny Peters's speech.He had no idea of literally accepting the boy's charges;he scarcely understood their gravity;but he had a miserable feeling that his father's anger and excitement last night was because he had been discovered hunting in the dark for that paper of 'Lige Curtis's.It WAS 'Lige Curtis's paper,for he had seen it lying there.A sudden dreadful conviction came over him that he must never,never let any one know that he had seen his father take up that paper;that he must never admit it,even to HIM.
It was not the boy's first knowledge of that attitude of hypocrisy which the grownup world assumes towards childhood,and in which the innocent victims eventually acquiesce with a Machiavellian subtlety that at last avenges them,--but it was his first knowledge that that hypocrisy might not be so innocent.His father had concealed something from him,because it was not right.