CHAPTER XV.

THE MILITARY BALL.

On the night of the ball Dolly early betook herself to the "ladies' drawing-room," so called. This was simply the big spare room, or bedchamber. A fire had been burning since dusk in the fireplace, but a chilliness, mingled with a faint odor of smoke, still lingered in the atmosphere of the room. In one corner stood a huge tent-bedstead, draped with Indian chintz, upon which strange birds of brilliant plumage perched among still stranger and more brilliant flowers. The window and dressing-table draperies were of the same pattern, so was the covering of the great arm-chair in the chimney-corner.

I hesitate in telling you that this chair came over in the _Mayflower_. There is enough so-called _Mayflower_ furniture in existence in this A. D. 1885 to have filled twice over a bigger vessel than that historic bark, whose tonnage, if I remember aright, fell considerably below two hundred.

But this chair did _really_ come over in the _Mayflower_, and landed at Plymouth December 21, 1620, with the rest of the Pilgrims. It certainly looked ancient enough and battered enough to have been in the Ark at the time of the Deluge, when Aunt Anna hid its age and shabbiness under the aforesaid Indian chintz, and stuffed it with the softest of live-geese feathers. It was a true Sleepy Hollow, and Dolly sank into it with a keen sense of luxurious comfort.

The interval of waiting was not long. She had snuffed the candles in the candelabra on either side of the mirror but once, when a jingling of sleigh-bells was heard, and directly after the door of the bedchamber opened, and a bundle of wraps, from out which a pair of china-blue eyes peeped, came in. The bundle rolled up to the fire, holding out a pair of mittened hands, and exclaiming, "Oh, it's dreadful cold, but the sleighing's gorgeous!"

Pretty soon the hands, getting warm, began to peel off sections of wrapper, as one gets at the heart of an onion--or, to use a prettier and more appropriate simile, the wraps began to unfold like the calyx of a flower, blossoming at last into a pretty little lady with light hair, pink cheeks, and china-blue eyes, and clad in gossamery white tarlatan, with low neck and short sleeves.

"Oh," exclaimed Dolly, with a sympathizing shiver, "weren't you cold riding in that gown?"

"Not a bit!" laughed Blue-eyes. "I was wrapped up so, you know, an' then we had lots o' buffaloes." (She meant carriage-robes.) "An' ma heat two bricks for my feet an' one for my hands. Silas says he'll have 'em heat again when we go home. Oh no--I wa'n't cold a mite!"

She then pulled off two long blue-yarn stockings, displaying a pair of pink silk slippers.

"Ain't they pretty?" she asked, putting them out for Dolly to admire. "Oh, I do hope nobody else won't have pink silk slippers! Silas got 'em for me in Boston. Silas goes to Boston real often."

Having carefully rolled up her wraps, she put them in a corner of the tent-bedstead, where she could get them in the general scrimmage for wraps that would ensue at the close of the ball, and then opened a round purple bandbox which "Silas" had brought to the door. It contained an assortment of artificial roses, mostly pink, which were to be disposed about her small person.

"Ma said I must have a bunch on my skirt where it is caught up, an' another right here"--indicating the edge of her low corsage--"an' some in my hair. I wonder if you could fix me?" she added, looking doubtfully at Dolly. "I expect Daisy ev'ry minute. I call her 'Daisy,' though her real name's Phœbe Ann, you know. She always fixes me, an' I fix her. But p'r'aps you'll do."

"Oh yes," said Dolly, cordially, "I'll like to do it. I sometimes help dress mamma. She says I'm almost as good as Norah--that's her maid, you know," and she took the roses and began draping the somewhat stiff tarlatan.

"Who is your ma?" asked Blue-eyes, "and don't you live here?"

"Oh no, I live in Boston," said Dolly.

"Do tell!" exclaimed Blue-eyes. "Why, I guess you're the little girl we heard about who is visiting here an' lost her pony, ain't you?"

"Yes," replied Dolly, beginning to feel the inconvenience of being famous. "But don't you think this wreath is too heavy for your hair? Let me put just one or two roses in your braids. There! now look."

Blue-eyes tipped her head first on one side and then on the other, and smiled at herself in the mirror, not a little vain of her rustic prettiness.

"Oh yes, I like that real well; they kind o' bring out the plaits, don't you think so? It took ma four hours to do those plaits, an' I thought I _should_ die--I _was_ so tired! But it pays," she added, smiling again at herself in the mirror.

Before Dolly had altogether finished Blue-eyes there was another entrance--a rush, an embrace, a sound of broken kisses, and then Daisy, _alias_ Phœbe Ann, blossomed out from her calyx, a brown little lady, with brown hair and brown eyes, clothed in pink tarlatan, with low neck and short sleeves. She had a green bandbox containing white roses.

"Why, where's your wreath, Pansy?" she asked, in a disappointed tone. "We were goin' to fix our hair just alike, I thought."

"Oh, this little girl fixed my hair. She thought it looked nicer so, an' so do I. She'll fix yours just like it, I guess."

Blue-eyes, or Pansy, as we may call her now, was just sixteen, and to her, thirteen-year-old Dolly was still a "little girl." There's a vast distance between thirteen and sixteen--a good deal more than there is between twenty-five and twenty-eight.

So Dolly, ready to oblige and always liking to do that sort of thing, proceeded to "fix" Phœbe Ann's plaited brown locks, and before that was done there were more arrivals.

The jingling of sleigh-bells became almost incessant, and the door of the "drawing-room" only closed to open upon a new arrival. The room grew crowded, the bundles of wraps on the tent-bedstead multiplied, and there was a continuous chattering and fluttering, and mingling of rainbow tints, and a sweet odor of musk and rose as in a garden of blossoming plants. Half a dozen faces at a time were mirrored in the looking-glass, one above another, and the owners nodded and smiled at each other, and displayed their white teeth in joyous anticipation of the near pleasures of the ball.

Pansy and Daisy, having got "fixed" to their satisfaction, came and sat down on low stools upon the hearth-rug by the fire, and chattered like a couple of English sparrows.

"Silence Rose 'll be the belle o' the ball, I s'pose," twittered Pansy. "Nobody else has a chance when she's 'round."

"An' she's twenty-five, 'f she's a day. An' it's time she gave way to us young ones, ma says," returned Daisy, who had also reached the mature age of sixteen.

"Well, she _is_ handsome," sighed Pansy. "Oh, there she comes now!"

Dolly looked with some curiosity to see this Silence emerge from _her_ calyx. Her head was swathed in a cloud-like wrap of soft white wool, and from head to foot she was clothed in a garment of white fur. She was tall, and looked like a lily in her white wraps.

The calyx unfolded and displayed a slender young woman with jet-black hair, a complexion of cream-and-roses, and a pair of eyes of the soft brilliancy of stars.

A cry of admiring surprise, followed by a murmur of unqualified delight, accompanied the falling of the wrap of white fur on the floor.

"It's a military ball, you know," said Silence, with a comprehensive smile around the room, "and so I thought I'd come as the Daughter of the Regiment."

She had chosen the colors of our national flag for her dress. The skirt was of alternate stripes of red and white, the waist of blue, trimmed with scarlet bands and gilt buttons, while a cunning little epaulet adorned either shoulder. On her head she wore the jaunty cap our Goddess of Liberty usually wears. A strap went over her right shoulder and under her left arm. There were thirteen gilt stars on this strap, and to it was attached a canteen, around the edge of which was printed in gold letters, "THOMAS ROSE, 1775."

"Oh, oh!" exclaimed the multitude. "Where _did_ you get that, Silence? Isn't it cute?"

"My grandfather carried it in the revolutionary war," she replied, somewhat proudly, turning her head and stretching her neck to get a glimpse of it where it rested on the full skirt.

She then went up to the looking-glass and surveyed herself hastily, in an indifferent sort of way.

"Oh!" said the envious Daisy, "_she_ can afford not to look at herself."

Just then the squeak of violins was heard from the dancing-hall, from which a single partition only separated the ladies' drawing-room. At the sound Pansy and Daisy hastily arose and began to settle their skirts; Dolly, too, sprang from the depths of the Sleepy Hollow, and there was a simultaneous preening of fine feathers.

"When you hear the fiddles begin to tune up, Dolly, you must start," Ned had said. "Just come up to the back door of the hall, an' I'll be there, an' we'll get in time enough to see 'em come in."

So Dolly slipped out from the room, and ran down-stairs through the long entrance-hall and the dining-room, to the flight of stairs that led up into the L, in the rear of the dancing-hall. Ned was in waiting as he had promised, and there was just time to seat themselves comfortably on one of the benches that stood against the wall, and look about a bit, before the entrance of the dancers.

The walls of the hall were dazzlingly white, having been recently whitewashed, and were draped with flags and trimmed with evergreens, with which were mingled the plumes of the Byfield Light Infantry. These were tall, stiff made feathers of white, tipped with scarlet. Custom, of course, would not permit the wearing of these plumes at the ball with the accompanying box-like hat of shiny leather, decorated with a gilt eagle and scarlet tassels, so they had been put to this decorative purpose. The hall was lighted with the best of sperm-oil, in small globe lamps with tin reflectors. In these days of the brilliant and odorous kerosene, not to mention gas, the hall would doubtless seem dim, but it certainly did not seem so to Dolly and Ned.

"Oh," said Dolly, with a deep sigh of content, "it's perfectly lovely!"

The musicians sat on a platform built into a recess on one side of the fireplace at the upper end of the hall. There were three violins, a 'cello, a harp, cymbals, and a bugle.

"D'ye see that man with the bugle? That's Kendall," said Ned. "He's tip-top."

The players having at last brought their various instruments into harmony, struck into the first chords of the "Wood-up Quickstep;" and presently in swept the Daughter of the Regiment, led by a tall, handsome man whom Ned said was her brother, the captain of the light infantry. They were followed by the whole company in pairs, who moved up the hall, then across, and down past where Dolly and Ned were sitting, and so round and round many times, moving gracefully and slowly, with soft rustle of tarlatan and silk and muslin, and manly tread of soldierly feet, and bewildering color of scarlet and white and blue. The uniform of the light infantry consisted of white trousers with a scarlet stripe down the outside, and coats of blue, decorated with scarlet and gilt, a very effective costume for a ballroom.

At the very last came Cousin Kitty.

Cousin Kitty had brought with her to Byfield no ball-dress proper, and at first said she would wear a pale blue cashmere. But Aunt Anna had remonstrated.

"My dear," she said, "it will be a great pleasure for our young people to see you in full dress. We don't often get a glimpse of such elegancies here; not once in a lifetime, indeed. Besides, I'm afraid if you wear an ordinary dress they may take offence, and feel that you didn't think it worth while to 'dress up' for country-folk."

So Cousin Kitty had one of her party dresses sent down from Boston--the very gown, in fact, in which she had been presented at the court of the good Queen Adelaide, which fact being whispered about the ballroom, caused her at first to be regarded with considerable awe, until it was ascertained that she was much like other mortals.

Her gown was of white silk with a long, undulating train, but with no garniture except the Little Madam's chrysanthemums, which, you may remember, Dolly had fondly hoped to have worn on this occasion, as an accompaniment to the yellow satin. She did wear chrysanthemums, as it was. She and Cousin Kitty had divided them, and very pretty they were, with her blue velvet frock for background.

Cousin Kitty's partner was not in military dress, but wore the usual full dress of a gentleman, and Dolly did not at first recognize in him the brown-eyed doctor whom she was most used to see driving at headlong speed behind his white-eyed racker, with a small trunk of medicines at his feet.

"How pretty Pansy looks!" said Dolly, as Blue-eyes went dimpling by with Silas, a diminutive, fair-haired young soldier.

"Pansy!" repeated Ned, scornfully. "Her name's Betsey Jane Bump. What geese girls are!--some girls, I mean," bethinking himself that he was talking to one of the "geese." "I'd knock a boy into the middle o' next week that called _me_ 'Pansy.'"

"Oh, well, that's different," said Dolly. "Of course a boy wouldn't want to be called Pansy."

"Well, I shouldn't think a girl would, either, 'f she had any sense."

A cotillion followed the polonaise, and this was succeeded by money-musk, which in turn was followed by another cotillion, and Dolly found herself taken out by a tall, military gentleman, who was presented to her by her friend the brown-eyed doctor, and she danced her very best, while Ned looked on admiringly.

The Little Madam came in and formed a part of the group of lookers-on at the lower end of the hall, of whom Thankful was one and Betty's mother, who had come in to help about the supper, another. They had left the turkeys comfortably browning in the brick ovens while they took this outing.

"Wa'al," sighed Betty's mother, a stout, middle-aged woman weighing about two hundred and fifty pounds, "my dancin' days 're over. But I did use t' like it when I's a gal. An' I like t' look on now 's well 's I ever did."

"Wa'al, for my part, I never had no dancin' days," rejoined Thankful. "Never had no time f' caperin'."

"You don't mean t' say, now, Miss Makepeace, that y' don't a'prove o' dancin'?" asked Betty's mother, anxiously.

"I a'prove on't if anybody c'n do it," said Thankful. "Look at Miss Kitty there! I a'prove o' _her_ dancin'."

Cousin Kitty was dancing the Spanish Dance, in which she managed her long train so admirably as to call forth the unqualified commendation of her admirers at the foot of the hall.

"Dew see now!" exclaimed Betty's mother. "She jest giv' a kind o' a fling an' scooped it round quicker'n a wink! Anybody else 'd 'a' sot down on it."

"Wa'al, a young woman that's be'n t' a real court an' shook han's 'ith th' queen, an' jest as like's not danced 'ith th' king, 'd ough' t' know how t' manage the tail o' her gown!" said Thankful, with some asperity.

"Dew tell, now! Y' don't say so, reelly, Miss Makepeace! Be'n t' court! Wa'al, wa'al, this is new times f' Byfield!"

And so the winged moments flew by all too swiftly, and twelve o'clock, the hour for serving the supper, drew nigh.

"I s'pose we'll have to go to bed as soon as we've seen the tables," said Dolly, as she seated herself by Ned, flushed and sparkling from a "grand right and left" all around the hall.

"Yes, I s'pose so," replied Ned, discontentedly. "I wish we could have some turkey, but mother said only bread and butter. I say, Dolly, when I'm a man I don't believe I'll touch bread and butter. I'm just sick of it!"

"I don't care much about the turkey, but I do love the dancing," was Dolly's reply.

"Dotty," said Cousin Kitty, coming up just then, "will you run down and ask Auntie exactly the hour that supper is to be served? Doctor Stone would like to know. He is to visit a patient at one o'clock."

"Stay just there, Ned, and I'll be back in a minute," said Dolly; and she ran quickly down the long passage and the stairway leading to the outer kitchen, opened the kitchen door, and stepped into a pan of gravy which Betty, not expecting arrivals from that quarter, had left upon the floor. She had come down with such vehemence that she sent a shower of greasy drops over the floor, and, what was still worse, over her pretty frock of blue velvet.

"Oh! oh!" she cried out in dismay, withdrawing her foot well covered with "thickening." "I didn't mean to! I didn't know 'twas there!"

"Of course you didn't," was Aunt Anna's reply, who always took the sunny view of things. "I'm glad it wasn't hot, that's all. Just run to your room now, my dear, and change your dress. Lay it carefully by itself--we can take it all out, I think."

Dolly paused for only just one look around the kitchen, which was just then so full of steam from the boiling vegetables as to obscure the light of the many candles, each of which seemed isolated in a little island of mist. Then she turned, by force of habit, to take what Ned would have called the "short cut" to her room--viz., that leading through the main entrance hall. As she opened the door of the great dining-room which led into this hall, however, she caught a glimpse of a group of gentlemen in military dress standing at the farther end.

No; that would never do! she could not go that way; she could not expose to the eye of any one she might chance to meet her gravy-bedaubed velvet. She paused, with her hand resting on the latch, to consider.

There was one other way--a way, too, where there would not be the remotest possibility of meeting anybody. That way led from the dining-room up the old flight of stairs to the secret chamber, thence through the Little Madam's room to the passage which passed by her own door. The Little Madam she had just left busy at mashing turnips in the kitchen, and the coast was clear in that direction.

So, leaving the dining-room, she groped along with outstretched arms through the narrow entry and up the dark stairs, making a slight noise as she stumbled once or twice over the unfamiliar steps; for though she had often gone over them in the daytime, when the light, though dim, was sufficient, she had never attempted to do so in the night. Having arrived, as she judged, at the panel, she put out her hand in search of the magic clover-leaf--the "open sesame" to what she sometimes called her Ali Baba's cave--when she felt it seized by another hand, and she was drawn firmly but gently within the secret chamber, while a familiar voice hoarsely whispered, "'Sh! 'sh! don't y' make no noise! It's me, Dolly! y' needn't b' scared. I'm mighty glad y're come!"

"Why, 'Zekle, what's the matter, and what are you doing here?" asked the startled Dolly, suppressing by a hair's-breadth the scream that had rushed to her lips when 'Zekle touched her hand.

"'Sh! 'sh! don't make no noise! the critter 'll hear. He's right here, a-gittin' in t' the Little Madam's winder. I see him a-skulkin' 'roun', an' jes' kep' watch o' the pesky critter; an' he's a-walkin' inter th' trap 's innercent 's a weasel." And 'Zekle chuckled a very subdued chuckle, as befitted the situation.

"But who is it? Who's a-getting into the window?" asked Dolly.

"Why, the identikle vill'in that stole Skatta, an' killed Gaston, an' tried t' rob the squire; an' _this_ time he's a goner."

"But where is he?" persisted Dolly, still slightly bewildered.

"Why, a-gittin' inter th' Little Madam's winder, didn't I tell y'?" replied 'Zekle, impatiently. "Jest look 'n here!" and he slipped the noiseless panel into the Little Madam's room, and Dolly saw the thief by the window quite plainly, for the night was clear though moonless. While they were looking, he slipped out the pane of glass upon the setting of which he had been at work.

"There!" said 'Zekle, closing the panel. "Now you jest run an' git the squire here quicker 'n scat. He'll find that spring in a minute, an' I might manage him alone, an' then ag'in I mightn't." And while he was yet speaking, Dolly was off, flying with winged feet, utterly unmindful of the gravy-bedaubed velvet, in search of Uncle Harry, whom she found at last talking politics in the bar-room with some of the neighbors, who had sauntered in, as usual, to look at the dancing and partake of the good cheer.

She whispered just a word or two in his ear, and he immediately followed her out of the room. She had only said, "Oh, Uncle Harry, he's come again, and 'Zekle's got him."

But as they hurried along she told him who had come, and explained the situation, and he took down his musket in passing.

"Don't come any farther, Dolly," he said, peremptorily, as they reached the stairs leading to the secret chamber, and she was forced to obey, though fired with a sudden courage, and an intense desire to be in at the capture of her old enemy. She listened, however--she was not forbidden to do that. A few whispered words passed between Uncle Harry and 'Zekle; then there was the sound of a window cautiously lifted, a muffled footstep upon the floor of the Little Madam's room; these were succeeded by a brief struggle, and then there was silence.

Presently Uncle Harry came to the door of the secret chamber, from which a light was now streaming, and peered into the dark depths below.

"Are you there, Dolly?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Just go and get Doctor Stone, will you? And don't tell anybody else."

Doctor Stone! Where was Doctor Stone? In the ballroom, of course. And how am I to get to him without everybody seeing me? And if everybody sees me, how can I keep them from finding out that something has happened, anyhow?

These were some of the perplexing questions that slipped through Dolly's mind as she half-mechanically made her way to the rear entrance of the hall, where she had left Ned, and where she hoped still to find him. There he was, with his eyes fixed on the door, momentarily expecting her to come in to report the exact hour for supper, and wondering what was keeping her so long.

She beckoned to him. "Ned," she said, holding the door open a couple of inches, "just tell Doctor Stone to come down into the little entry off the dining-room. Don't let anybody hear you tell him, and he mustn't tell and you mustn't." And having so spoken, she attempted to close the door, but Ned was too quick for her: he grasped her sleeve, exclaiming,

"What's the matter, Dolly? How your eyes shine! 'Tisn't mother?" he added, anxiously.

"Nothing's the matter to trouble about; but oh, let me go! And do hurry, Ned! You'll know by-and-by." And shutting the door, she hurried to the entry, where it seemed ages before Doctor Stone appeared, although it was really only about two minutes. She explained at once: "'Zekle and Uncle Harry have got the thief that killed Gaston. He was getting in at a window, and they caught him, and Uncle Harry wants you."

Doctors are never taken by surprise, whether it's an earthquake or a fit, a revolution or a gunshot wound. But they always feel safest when they have their remedies at hand; so the doctor said, "Oughtn't I to go out and get my medicine-chest?"

"Oh no, I don't believe it's that," said Dolly. "I didn't hear anything."

"Oh, but--halloo!" said the doctor, incoherently, "how did you happen to be there?"

"I wasn't there--only part way there," said Dolly; "and I mustn't go any farther," she added, as they reached the staircase.

"Well, this is interesting!" said the doctor. "Seems like the first chapter in a first-rate novel. I never saw this secret chamber before; heard of it, though."

Uncle Harry only wanted to consult with the doctor, as the most judicious person at hand, as to what disposal to make of the thief until morning, when of course he could be taken to the county jail at Plymouth. They had already tied his hands with a rope which 'Zekle had taken the precaution to have at hand.

"It's just as well to get the fellow off quietly," Mr. Park said. "I suppose nobody knows anything about it but you," turning to 'Zekle.

"I said nothin' t' nobody," replied 'Zekle. "Tho' 'f I'd had time when I see him a-makin' f' th' winder, I might 'a' got some help."

"Everything's so full here to-night, outbuildings and all, there don't seem to be any place to put him," continued Mr. Park.

"Put him in my office," rejoined the doctor. "'Zekle can keep watch over him, I suppose."

"I reckon he won't be likely to get away," was 'Zekle's grim response. "Here's his own wep'n," displaying the huge pistol.

So between them Mr. Park and 'Zekle led the thief out by a side door opening into the garden, and over to Doctor Stone's office, and neither the dancers in the ballroom, nor the busy caterers in the kitchen, nor the gossiping neighbors in the bar-room, got a hint of this comedy which had come nigh to being a tragedy, and the knowledge of which the next day stirred Byfield to its very depths.

The doctor stayed to replace the pane the thief had taken from the window, and then going home he laid aside his dress suit for his ordinary suit of tweed, and went off for a five-mile ride, to visit a patient dangerously ill with lung fever.

Meanwhile Dolly soothed the perturbed cockatoo, whose midnight slumbers had been abruptly broken by the sharp though brief struggle made to secure the thief.

"Oh dear! oh dear! Where is she? Where's my love? Kiss poor Polly--poor Polly--poor--poor--Pol--ol--ol--" and he was again asleep.

"I'll go to bed. It'll never do for me to see Ned. He'll get it out of me," Dolly was saying to herself, as she stepped out into the passage, and almost ran plumply into that young gentleman himself, who had been seeking her vainly everywhere.

"Good-night!" she cried out, hastily retreating towards her own room.

Ned made a plunge at her, attempting to seize her arm again, and only missing it by half an inch, and the next instant she was inside her room with the door shut.

He retreated from the field beaten and not a little sore. What _was_ this wonderful secret, and he went off in search of the doctor. He was not to be found, neither was his father, and even 'Zekle had mysteriously disappeared.

He went to the dining-room, where his mother was superintending the taking in of the supper.

"Mother, what's the matter with Dolly?" he asked.

"She stepped into a pan of gravy," was the unsatisfactory reply.

"But she's gone to bed," persisted Ned.

"Well, I dare say she felt too tired to change her clothes," said Mrs. Park, absently, as she indicated to Betty where to place the last of a long line of vegetable dishes.

"Too tired!" reflected Ned, in disgust. "Why, not half an hour ago she was for setting up all night." And utterly baffled, he, too, went off to bed.

Here the slayer of Gaston, the thief, drops out of our story. He was tried and condemned to fifteen years' imprisonment on two indictments, viz., "assault and battery" and "breaking and entering." His doings were more than a nine-days' wonder in Byfield. He made no confession, but it was supposed he had been hanging about ever since the return of Skatta, waiting for a chance to get possession of the Little Madam's reported "treasure," in the existence of which everybody but himself had ceased to believe. He had fixed upon the night of the ball as a favorable time in which to make the attempt, with what success we have seen.