John Baring's House

Sitting on the doorstep, Elizabeth Scott leaned her head against the stone wall of the old house. The June twilight was closing in and a hard day’s work was done. Three meals had been prepared and half of the large garden had been hoed and weeded. Feeling that their gardening knowledge was limited, Elizabeth and her brother made up by an excess of cultivation.

A tall, slender boy came round the corner of the house and called “Elizabeth!” There was a dependent quality in his voice; one would have guessed that he was a good deal younger and a good deal less enterprising than the sister whom he addressed.

“Yes, Herbert!” Elizabeth looked up smilingly. Her voice was soft like his, but the words were briskly and firmly spoken. Briskness and firmness were two of Elizabeth’s most noticeable qualities. Those who opposed her called her firmness stubbornness.

There was another quality expressed in her voice--an intense affection for the brother whom she addressed.

“Aren’t you going to bed, Elizabeth?”

“Not yet. Come and sit down.”

Herbert dropped to the doorstep beside his sister. His motions still showed the effect of a long illness from which he had not entirely recovered.

“Are you very tired, Herbert?”

“Not very.”

For a long time both were quiet. The old house seemed gradually to sink into the woodland which rose behind it against the wall of the higher mountains, the shadows of night crept over the miles of fields and orchards which dropped to the distant plain, the garden between the house and the road was blotted out, and the old oak trees on the other side came closer and closer. In the woods whip-poor-wills called, and once an owl flapped low above the doorstep. At that Herbert started and Elizabeth spoke reassuringly.

“Nothing but an owl, dear! He looked like a great moth, didn’t he? Herbert, when we can, we must restore the old driveway. It used to come in from the road in a beautiful curve to the door. Then the garden can be moved, and I believe if we’d cut away that clump of poor trees we could sit here on our own doorstep and see Gettysburg. Think of it, Herbert!”

“Yes,” said Herbert. His voice expressed pleasure, but a qualified pleasure.

“I can’t make it seem real,” said Elizabeth.

“If we can only succeed!”

“Of course we shall succeed!” Any one listening to Elizabeth would have said “Of course!” “In the first place, we have this house, blessed, substantial old thing that it is, only occasionally occupied during forty years and yet habitable after a little mending of the roof. John Baring’s character can be seen in the way he built his house. I’m more proud of him every day. Then we have the acres and acres of woodland behind us, and our garden--think of the produce we have to sell to-morrow! And soon we shall have our orchard,--_our_ orchard, Herbert. They say that men within a few miles have sold a single crop for ten thousand dollars. It will mean work and saving and then comfort for all our lives. Why, we are the most fortunate people in the world!”

Herbert looked back over his shoulder into the dark hall. At the other end a door opened against the black wall of the woodland.

“Doesn’t it make you nervous to think of those men prowling round with their guns and dogs?”

“Not at all. They’ll have to be warned away. I suppose they’re so used to roaming about that they think the place is theirs. I’m not so much afraid of them as I am of their big dogs running over the garden.”

“What is that noise, Elizabeth?”

Elizabeth listened intently. Herbert often heard alarming noises. There was a soft rustle of leaves near at hand.

“A deer, I guess,” she answered cheerfully, “or some other wild thing--nothing to hurt us, I’m sure. I cannot see why our people ever went away from here. Grandfather Baring was a man of standing--why, this must have been the finest place for miles around! Wait till we have a new portico and a little paint on the woodwork and some shrubbery! I should think mother would have been continually homesick.”

“Did she ever say she was?”

“No. When I asked her she used to tell me what she remembered hearing people say about the battle. She was not a talkative person. But all these years the taxes have been paid and there wasn’t even always a renter.”

“Do you think she believed we should ever come back? Do you--” Herbert interrupted himself. “There is some one looking at us now!”

“Where?”

“There’s a man at the edge of the woods with a big dog and a gun!”

Elizabeth turned her head. The moon had risen and its rays shone on a long object of bright steel. This object was not pointed in the direction of the two on the doorstep; it slanted backward from the shoulder which supported it, but it was none the less menacing.

Elizabeth sprang up, a short, somewhat stocky, swiftly moving figure.

“Well, neighbor!” she said loudly. “How are you this evening?”

The man drew back into the shadows, but he was not to be allowed to slink away. Elizabeth went closer to him.

“Aren’t you a neighbor?” she persisted.

“Not close,” was the sullen answer.

“Have you lived about here a long time?”

“’Bout’s long as I’ve lived anywhere.” It was impossible to tell whether this was a humorous way of saying that he had lived here always, or whether it was meant to indicate that he was a wanderer.

“We are going to stay here,” went on Elizabeth. “After a while when our orchard is set out, we shall need a good deal of help. Could you give us a hand sometimes?”

“No.”

“Do you know any one who could?”

“No.”

“We really belong here,” explained Elizabeth pleasantly.

The stranger seemed startled.