Читать книгу The Hermit of Proud Hill - Lilian Garis - Страница 5

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They paid no attention to the wilted geraniums that used to look so pretty outside the latticed windows, but walked boldly up and tried to peer inside.

No sooner had their forms shadowed the window they were both trying to see through, than something banged against the pane from the inside.

“Oh, goodness! What’s that?” Cecy cried, springing back to the path.

“Something soft, like an animal,” Kay said quickly. “I’ll bet a cat has been locked in there and maybe is mad from hunger.”

“Or a wildcat,” breathed Cecy. “Let’s get away. There’s a little chimney, it could climb out of that.”

“But we must try to see what it is first,” Kay insisted. “Probably just a poor cat— Oh!” she called out in new alarm. “There it is again!”

This time the lunge against the window, which all but wrecked the shade, was certainly that of a furry animal, as Kay had said, very likely mad with hunger.

“It is a cat,” she declared. “Poor thing; starved, of course. We have got to get it out of there.”

Cecy Duncan was not really afraid of such animals as might inhabit these woods, but any animal “mad with hunger” could be dangerous, she realized. Kay, however, seemed to think only of getting “the thing” out of there, and had no thought of personal danger.

“Yes, it is a cat,” Cecy agreed. “See, it’s got its paws on the sill. But, Kay, look out. It might dash through that window. Oh, see its eyes!”

Kay was not watching the cat’s eyes, however. She was scurrying around the little place looking for some possible way to let that cat out.

“Everything is nailed down,” she complained, again coming up to the window where, alternately the cat would lunge and the shade would snap in and out. “Only thing to do is to break a window——”

“Oh, you wouldn’t do that,” Cecy protested.

“We’ll have to. Can’t let an animal starve, can we? Whoever could be careless enough to go away and leave it locked in there?”

“It may have tunneled in some way,” Cecy suggested. “Look, there it is. A big gray tiger.”

“Big enough to look like a tiger, too,” Kay added. “See, he’s quieting down now. He hears our voices, poor thing. I wonder if I can break that glass with a club.”

Cecy did not like the idea; at the same time she agreed with Kay that they would have to release the animal. He poked his big gray striped head up on the low window sill hopefully now, and the girls started to call out to him, coaxingly.

“He’s got a collar on,” Kay said, as now the head of the frightened animal remained still, long enough for the collar to be seen. “Somebody’s pet, trapped in there and starving,” she declared, now looking about for a club strong enough to break the glass.

“Better get a long one,” Cecy cautioned. “You ought to stand back at the side so he won’t jump at you when you do break it.”

“I guess you’re right,” Kay agreed. “Even a nice tame cat might scratch or bite if someone got in its way. Here, this looks strong enough,” and she tested a stout stick by whacking it against a tree. It swung back with such force it stung Kay’s hand. “That ought to do,” she declared, and crept up to the side of the window preparing for the attack on the glass.

Taking the club in both her hands the girl aimed a blow. Crash! Glass splintered and the cat disappeared—on the inside!

“He couldn’t get through that opening,” Cecy said. “Here, let me try a stone. That ought to settle it. The glass is smashed and it might as well all go,” she decided. Then Cecy took aim with a stone that certainly did send the rest of the glass into the little cottage, and plentifully splintered it all about the outside, as well.

The destruction was complete. The girls stood breathlessly looking at it. The cat did not dash out as they thought he would. In fact, he seemed to have dashed in.

“We’re criminals,” said Kay dryly. “Breaking if not entering. And we are the girls who aim to be honest and brave.”

“We really could get in trouble for this,” Cecy said seriously. “Let’s get away and leave the old cat to his fate. I suppose we had better hunt up the owner and report the window.”

“Yes, that’s what I think,” Kay answered. “The cat will smell the air and can come out when he feels like it. Old Spike Johnson will have something to hold over me now, I suppose.”

They were anything but cheerful as they made their way through the shallow woods that edged the old road. Kay didn’t know where she could find Tom Johnson, to confess to him that she had smashed his nice little window.

The bushes lined the path closely and caught in the girls’ skirts as they left the place, and Cecy soon discovered she had lost her camp neckerchief.

“But no matter; I can easily get another,” she decided. “I probably dropped it when we were pegging stones at that window.”

“We’ll leave the wheel home and then go down to the village to ask someone where Johnson might be,” Kay suggested to Cecy. “This is a fine way to welcome you back to Melody Lane,” she went on, “practically putting you in jail first thing.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time I went to jail,” Cecy laughed that off. “If I wasn’t actually behind bars I went to see folks who were,” she explained, referring to some of her wild adventures as related in other volumes of this series.

It was at the Post Office that the girls found out Tom Johnson was away, had been away for two weeks past. Kay learned, too, that as far as the clerk knew, Johnson had no one attending to his business. He also told the girls that an old woman called once in a while for the mail. Out where Johnson lived, the post office clerk explained critically, there was rural delivery but Johnson would not put up a box on the street line to have his mail left there.

“But I must find someone to fix up that damage with,” Kay told Cecy. “Is it too late for you to go out to the old farm with me? Mother wouldn’t like to have her only daughter going ’round bustin’ windows; I know that.”

“Couldn’t we get a glazier to put one in?” Cecy ventured.

“No, I couldn’t touch anything there without permission. We have got to find someone who will give us that permission or let me pay for the window,” Kay decided. And even Kay’s general good humor seemed shattered with that demolished half window in the woods.

“Cheer up!” Cecy chirped, as she always did when she said something unimportant, “we’ve made a good start: a scratched leg and a broken window. And even that old cat didn’t come out to applaud.”

“Yeah,” drawled Kay. “But where does old Johnson hide, I wonder? I prided myself I knew this place from treetops to toadstools, but I guess I was just bragging.”

They were hurrying along the dirt road that they hoped would lead them to the Johnson farm. Anyone there surely ought to be willing to listen to their story.

“Too bad your smart boy doesn’t come running along to meet us. I’ll bet he knows about the Johnsons,” Cecy said, just to make talk.

“I’ll bet he does too,” Kay agreed. “But boys rarely show up when they’re wanted most. Hey! Listen a minute! Isn’t that someone singing?”

A voice was coming through the shadowy trees, and it was a deep, rich, male singing voice.

“From the hill!” Kay exclaimed. “I’ll bet that’s the Hermit of Proud Hill. I heard he was sort of a woodsman singer, like the Swiss Alps men, you know.”

“Whoever he is, he certainly can sing,” Cecy agreed. “You mean there’s a hermit on the hill?”

“Oh, I forgot you’ve been away so long, Cecy,” said Kay, “you don’t know about our hermit. He lives in a cabin up there and is very mysterious. Mother says she thinks perhaps he’s a writer or maybe some one crossed in love,” Kay tittered at the idea. “At any rate, very few people claim to see him around, and no one really knows him, or admits it, if they do.”

“Have you ever seen him?”

“Oh, yes. I haunt these woods, you know. In fact maybe I’m the very ghost people talk about.”

“Let’s go up on the hill and ask him about the Johnson people?”

“Why not? It will only be asking.” Kay agreed. “But it’s a pity to stop his song, isn’t it?”

They did not have to stop it, for as soon as they turned into the strip of path that led to stone steps in front of the queer bungalow, the voice stopped suddenly.

“H’m’m!” breathed Kay. “He knows we’re coming.”

Then Cecy grabbed her arm and they both saw it. The tiger cat, with the leather collar, the cat they had broken the window to release, was seated on the top step at the doorsill of the shack, calmly washing behind his ears, with tongue licked paws.

Both girls at that moment were thinking exactly the same thing. Here was the rescued cat. Inside the queer house a man had been singing a moment before. This gave the girls just the chance they needed. They would ask the man whose cat they had saved and where they might find Tom Johnson.