Chapter 2

She grew more and more homesick as the days went on. They were all kind to her, and she became fond of them, especially of the great-great-grandmother of her own age, and the little great-great-aunts, but they seldom had any girlish sports together. Goodwife Hopkins kept them too busily at work. Once in a while, as a special treat, they were allowed to play bean-porridge-hot for fifteen minutes. They were not allowed to talk after they went to bed, and there was little opportunity for girlish confidences.

However, there came a day at last when Captain Hopkins and his wife were called away to visit a sick neighbor, some twelve miles distant, and the four girls were left in charge of the house. At seven o'clock the two younger went to bed, and Letitia and her great-great-grandmother remained up to wait for the return of their elders, as they had been instructed. Then it was that the little great-great-grandmother showed Letitia her treasures. She had only two, and was not often allowed to look at them, lest they wean her heart away from more serious things. They were kept in a secret drawer of the great chest for safety, and were nothing but a little silver snuff-box with a picture on the top, and a little flat glass bottle, about an inch and a half long.

"The box belonged to my grandfather, and the bottle to his mother. I have them because I am the eldest, but I must not set my heart on them unduly," said Letitia's great-great-grandmother.

Letitia tried to count how many "greats" belonged to the ancestors who had first owned these treasures, but it made her dizzy. She had never told the story of the little green door to any of them. She had been afraid to, knowing how shocked they would be at her disobedience. Now, however, when the treasure was replaced, she was moved in confidence, and told her great-great-grandmother the story.

"That is very strange," said her great-great-grandmother, when Letitia had finished. "We have a little green door, too; only ours is on the outside of the house, in the north wall. There's a spruce tree growing close up against it that hides it, but it is there. Our parents have forbidden us to open it, too, and we have never disobeyed."

She said the last with something of an air of superior virtue. Letitia felt terribly ashamed.

"Is there any key to your little green door?" she asked meekly.

For answer her great-great-grandmother opened the secret drawer of the chest again, and pulled out a key with a green ribbon in it, the very counterpart of the one in the satin-wood box.

Letitia looked at it wistfully.

"I should never think of disobeying my parents, and opening the little green door," remarked her great-great-grandmother, as she put back the key in the drawer. "I should think something dreadful would happen to me. I have heard it whispered that the door opened into the future. It would be dreadful to be all alone in the future, without one's kins-folk."

"There may not be any Indians or catamounts there," ventured Letitia.

"There might be something a great deal worse," returned her great-great-grandmother severely.

After that there was silence between the two, and possibly also a little coldness. Letitia knitted and her great-great-grandmother knitted. Letitia also thought shrewdly. She had very little doubt that the key which she had just been shown might unlock another little green door, and admit her to her past which was her ancestors' future, but she realized that it was beyond her courage, even if she had the opportunity, to take it, and use it provided she could find the second little green door. She had been so frightfully punished for disobedience, that she dared not risk a second attempt. Then too how could she tell whether the second little green door would admit her to her grandmother's cheese-room? She felt so dizzy over what had happened, that she was not even sure that two and two made four, and b-o-y spelt boy, although she had mastered such easy facts long ago. Letitia had arrived at the point wherein she did not know what she knew, and therefore, she resolved that she would not use that other little key with the green ribbon, if she had a chance. She shivered at the possibilities which it might involve. Suppose she were to open the second little green door and be precipitated head first into a future far from the one which had merged into the past, and be more at a loss than now. She might find the conditions of life even more impossible than in her great-great-great-grandfather's log cabin with hostile Indians about. It might, as her great-great-grandmother Letitia had said, be much worse. So she knitted soberly, and the other Letitia knitted, and neither spoke, and there was not a sound except the crackling of the hearth fire and bubbling of water in a large iron pot which swung from the crane, until suddenly there was a frantic pounding at the door, and a sound as if somebody were hurled against it.

Both Letitias started to their feet. Letitia turned pale, but her great-great-grandmother Letitia looked as usual. She approached the door, and spoke quite coolly. "Who may be without?" said she.

She had taken a musket as she crossed the room, and stood with it levelled. Letitia also took a musket and levelled it, but it shook and it seemed as if her great-great-grandmother was in considerable danger.

There came another pound on the door, and a boy's voice cried out desperately. "It's me, let me in."

"Who is me?" inquired Great-great-grandmother Letitia, but she lowered her musket, and Letitia did the same, for it was quite evident that this was no Indian and no catamount.

"It is Josephus Peabody," answered the boy's voice, and Letitia gasped, for she remembered seeing that very name on the genealogical tree which hung in her great-aunt Peggy's front entry, although she could not quite remember where it came in, whether it was on a main branch or a twig.

"Are the Injuns after you?" inquired Great-great-grandmother Letitia.

"I don't know, but I heard branches crackling in the wood," replied the terrified boy-voice, "and I saw your light through the shutters."

"You rake the ashes over the fire, while I let him in," ordered the great-great-grandmother Letitia, peremptorily, and Letitia obeyed.

She raked the ashes carefully over the fire, she hung blankets over the shutters, so there might be no tell-tale gleam, and the other Letitia drew bolts and bars, then slammed the door to again, and the bolts and bars shot back into place.

When Letitia turned around she saw a little boy of about her own age who looked strangely familiar to her. He was clad in homespun of a bright copperas color, and his hair was red, cut in a perfectly round rim over his forehead. He had big blue eyes, which were bulging with terror. He drew a sigh of relief as he looked at the two girls.

"If," said he, "I had only had a musket I would not have run, but Mr. Holbrook and Caleb and Benjamin went hunting this morning, and they carried all the muskets, and I had nothing except this knife."

With that the boy brandished a wicked-looking knife.

"You might have done something with that," remarked Great-great-grandmother Letitia, and her voice was somewhat scornful.

"Yes, something," agreed the boy. "It is a good knife. My father killed a big Injun and took it only last week. It is a scalping knife."

"Do you mean to say," asked the great-great-grandmother Letitia, "that you don't know enough to use that knife, great boy that you are?"

The boy straightened himself. He saw the other Letitia and his blue eyes were full of admiration and bravery. "Of course I know how," said he. "Haven't I killed ten wolves and aren't their heads nailed to the outside of the meeting-house?"

Letitia was quite sure that the boy lied, but she knew that he lied to please her, and she liked him for it.

Great-great-grandmother Letitia sniffed. "You are the greatest braggart in the Precinct," said she. "Nary a wolf have you killed, and you ran because you heard a wild cat or a bear. Where are the Injuns, pray?"

"I know there were Injuns after me," said the boy earnestly, "but perhaps I frightened them away. I brandished my knife as I ran."

Great-great-grandmother Letitia sniffed again, but she looked anxious. "I hope," said she, "that father and mother will not be molested on their way home."

"Give me a musket," declared the boy bravely, "and I will guard the path."

"You!" returned Great-great-grandmother Letitia scornfully. "You are naught but a child."

"I can handle a musket as well as a man," said Josephus Peabody with such a straightening of his small back that it seemed positively alarming, and another glance at Letitia, who returned it. She thought him a very pretty boy, and quite brave, offering to guard the path all alone, although he was so young, not much older than she was.

Great-great-grandmother Letitia took up a musket decidedly. "Very well," said she, "if you can handle a musket like a man, here be the chance. Take this musket, and I will take one, and Letitia will take one, and we will leave the door ajar, so we can dash in if hard-pressed, and we will keep watch lest father and mother be attacked unawares at the threshold."

Letitia was horribly afraid, but she had learned in the Spartan household of her ancestors, to be more afraid of fear than of anything else, so she pulled a blanket over her head and shouldered a musket, and, after the elder Letitia had unbarred and unbolted the door, they all stepped out into the night, armed and ready to guard the house.

"Candace can handle a musket and so can little Phyllis at a pinch," said the elder Letitia thoughtfully, "but I for one am thinking that your Injuns are catamounts, Josephus Peabody."

"They are Injuns," said the boy stoutly, peering out into the gloom.

They were in perfect darkness, for it was a cloudy night, and not a ray came from the house-door.

"For what reason were you abroad to-night?" inquired the elder in what Letitia considered a disagreeably patronizing tone as addressed to such a pretty brave little boy.

"I went to visit my rabbit traps," replied the boy, but his voice was slightly hesitant.

"In this darkness?"

"I had a pine knot, but I flung it away when I heard the noises."

"A pine knot, and Injuns around, and you with naught but a scalping knife? 'Tis not bravery but tomfoolery," said the elder Letitia. "I'll warrant you stole out without the knowledge of Goodman Cephas Holbrook and Mistress Holbrook, and they having taken you in as they did and given you food and shelter, with nine of their own to care for, and not knowing of a certainty who you might be."

Letitia felt sure that the boy hung his head in the darkness. He mumbled something incoherent.

"It was out of the window in the lean-to you got, and ran away," declared the elder Letitia severely. "You are not a boy to be trusted. You can remain here with Letitia, and I will stand guard a little way down the path; and do not speak above a whisper, although I be sure there be none but catamounts to hear."

With that, Great-great-grandmother Letitia, musket over shoulder, moved down the path and stood quite concealed as if by a vast cloak of night, an alert vigilant young figure with the hot blood of her time leaping in her veins, and the shrewd brain of her time alive to everything which might stir that darkness with sound or light.

"Who are you?" whispered Letitia to the boy.

"I am Josephus Peabody, but I was always called Joe till I came here," the boy whispered back.

Letitia pondered. The name sounded very familiar to her, just as the boy's face had looked. Then suddenly she remembered. "When I was a little girl," she whispered, "not more than seven--I am going on ten now--I knew a little boy named Joe Peabody, and he was visiting his grandmother, Mrs. Joe Peabody. She lives about half a mile from my Aunt Peggy's around the corner of the road. It is a big white house next to the graveyard."

"That was me," said the boy. "At least," he added in rather a dazed and hopeless tone, "I suppose it was, and I guess I remember you too. You had curls, and we went coasting down that long hill near Grandmother's together."

"Seems to me we did," said Letitia, and her own tone was dazed and hopeless.

"Since I have been here," whispered the boy, "I haven't been exactly sure who I was and that is the truth. The folks where I am staying are real good. They go to meeting all day Sunday and they don't work Saturday nights, but I can't understand it. We have to make all the things I have seen already made, for one thing."

Letitia nodded in the dark.

"That is the way here," said she.

"And Mr. Cephas Holbrook has just the name that my great-great-great-uncle on my mother's side had," said the boy, in a whisper so puzzled that it was fairly agonized. "Grandmother has told me about him. He had a battle with six Injuns and killed them all himself, and this Mr. Cephas Holbrook has done just that same thing. And he killed ten wolves and nailed their heads to the meeting-house. Say," the boy continued confidentially, "those were the heads I meant, you know."

"Of course I know," whispered Letitia. "I wouldn't speak to you if you had done such awful things."

"I didn't, honestly," said Josephus Peabody. "Where did you come from to-night?" asked Letitia.

"Why, I came from Mr. Cephas Holbrook's. It's about ten miles away on that side." The boy pointed in the dark.

"You came all that way?"

"I had to if I came at all. I don't get any time to see my traps day-times. I have to work. I have to chop wood, and make wooden pegs. I never saw wooden pegs, till--till I came here. I have to work all day. Eliphalet Holbrook, he's a boy about my size, got out of the window one night, when it was moonlight, and we set traps, and we haven't either of us had a chance to look at them and see if we've caught anything; but to-night, I had a cold and they sent me to bed early and I whispered to Eliphalet, that I'd see those traps; and I had a pine knot, and I run and run, but I couldn't find the traps."

"You didn't run ten miles?"

"No, the traps were set only about three miles from where we live and I rather think I lost my way. Then I heard the Injuns--say, I used to call them Indians."

"So did I," said Letitia.

"They say Injuns here. Then I heard them, and I run the rest of the way, and then I saw your light. Are you one of Captain John Hopkins' children?"

"I don't know. I don't think I am," replied Letitia miserably.

"What is your name?"

"Letitia Hopkins."

"Then you must be."

"I don't believe I am."

Suddenly Letitia felt a hard little boy-hand clutch hers in the dark. The boy's voice whispered forcibly in her ear. "Say," said the voice, "did you--did you get here, I wonder, in some queer way just as I did?"

Letitia whispered forcibly, "Through a little green door in my Great-aunt Peggy's cheese-room."

"Had she told you never to open it?"

"Yes, but she and Hannah left me alone when they went to meeting and I found the key in a little box, and the key had a green ribbon and it unlocked the door, and I was in the woods around here, and Aunt Peggy's house was gone and everything."

"How long have you been here?"

"I don't know. It must have been a long time, for I have done so much work, and learned to do so much that I had started with all done."

"It is just the same with me," whispered the boy.

Letitia shivered, half with joy, half with horror. "Did you come through a little green door?"

"No, I came through a book."

Letitia jumped. "A book!" she repeated feebly.

"Yes, it was a book. I didn't know it at first. I thought it was just a wooden box up in Grandmother Peabody's garret, and it was always locked, and Grandmother Peabody said I was never to ask any questions about it, and never to try to open it. I expect she was afraid I might try to pick the lock. Then I began to suspect that it was a book, and then I found the key. I stayed at home from meeting just like you, and I had a cold. My father had died, and I had come to live with Grandmother Peabody."

"I remember now Aunt Peggy told Hannah about it," whispered Letitia with sudden remembrance.

"I don't know how long ago it was, for I have done so much work making wooden nails, when all the nails I had ever seen were bought at a shop, and such things, that it seems an awful long time; but I was left alone just the way you were, and I found the key to that book that looked like a wooden box. It was in a little drawer of Grandmother's secretary."

"Did it have a green ribbon on it?" whispered Letitia breathlessly.

"Yes, it did, honest, a green ribbon, and I went up in the garret and I unlocked that book, and first thing I knew I was in the woods around the house where I live now, and a wolf was chasing me, and Mr. Cephas Holbrook shot him, and took me home."

Letitia sighed. "Do you like it here?" she whispered.

"I think it is awful, don't you?"

"Yes, I do, but I don't dare say so."

"I do," said Josephus Peabody. "I ain't afraid of anything that ain't bigger and stronger than I am, honest, and I have killed one wolf my own self. That is true, but I didn't kill the others. I told that because that other girl was turning up her nose so at me. But I don't like to live here at all. I used to complain when I was Joe instead of Josephus, and had to learn lessons, and do errands. But this is worse than anything I ever dreamed about when I had the nightmare."

"That is the way I feel," said Letitia soberly. "I used to complain, but I wouldn't now. I've been living back of complaints too long."

"So have I," said Josephus. Then he added, "Say, I'm awful glad I got scared, and ran here, and found you."

"So am I."

"There's something I want to tell you that's very queer," whispered Josephus. "There is a wooden book just like the one in Mr. Holbrook's house under the eaves in the lean-to, and I know where the key is. It is in the chest in the kitchen, in the till hidden under a lot of linen night-caps."

"Has it a green ribbon on it?" whispered Letitia fearfully.

"Yes, it has. Say, don't you ever think you'd like to run away from here?"

"Yes, but I'm afraid I might get into something worse."

"That's the way I feel. Otherwise we might both watch our chance and go through that wooden book in our lean-to, but we might find ourselves in Grandmother Peabody's garret where I came from, and we might find ourselves in a place full of worse wild animals than there are here, and things worse than Injuns. And we might have to learn more than we've learned here, and work harder, and I don't feel as if I could stand that."

"I don't either." Then Letitia whispered very violently, "There is a little green door here, and I know where the key is, with a green ribbon, but I am afraid."

"That's very funny--just like me," said Josephus.

"Well, I may make up my mind to take the chance anyhow, and if I do you had better. Say, if you hear I've gone, you just go through your little green door, will you?"

"Maybe," whispered Letitia doubtfully, and then her Great-great-grandmother Letitia came back. "There isn't a sign of an Injun here," said she, "and I am 'most froze. I'm going to start the fire, and you boy, you had better come too. You can sleep on the floor by the fire to-night and go home in the morning. Father and mother are coming. I heard their horses. Mother's is a little lame, and favors one foot, and I know. They're right here, and they'll be cold, and I've got to start up the fire."

"I'll help," cried Josephus.

"You'd better," said the elder Letitia; "if I had a brother as big as you, he'd have to work instead of hunting rabbits."

Josephus flew about the kitchen dragging heavy logs, and poking the fire, and Letitia quite admired him, but her great-great-grandmother simply scolded. "You are a most unhandy boy," said she. "You can have had little training in making hearth fires."

However, the flames leaped high into the great chimney mouth, when Captain John Hopkins and his wife entered.

"How pleasant it is, and how thankful we ought to be to have a good warm room to enter," said Great-great-great-grandmother Letitia Hopkins, although she looked very grave. The sick neighbor was very sick unto death, it was feared, and she was a good woman and a good neighbor.

Josephus Peabody stayed all night and slept wrapped up in a homespun blanket beside the fire, but the next morning it was hardly daylight before Goodman Cephas Holbrook came for him. Cephas Holbrook was a very stern man, and he believed in the rod. Before Josephus left he had just one chance and he improved it. It was while Mr. Holbrook was partaking of a glass of something warm and spicy which Great-great-great-grandmother Letitia Hopkins mixed for him. It was a cordial of her own compounding and a good thing for the stomach on a bitter morning, and this morning was very bitter.

Josephus whispered to Letitia: "He will give me an awful licking when we get home, and I am not afraid, honest. But if I can get hold of that key, I mean to go into that book this very night."

Letitia looked frightened.

"You had better--" began Josephus, and he nodded meaningly.

Letitia knew what he meant, but she had no chance to reply, for Mr. Holbrook had finished his cordial and had Josephus by the hand, and was jerking him rather forcibly out of the door.

"A froward child, I fear," remarked Captain John Hopkins when they had gone.

"Yes," assented his wife.

"He is afraid of Injuns when there are none, too," said Great-great-grandmother Letitia.

"That is an evil thing, too," said her father. "It is distrusting the Almighty to fear where is nothing to fear. A froward child, and I trust that Goodman Holbrook will not spare the rod."

Letitia was very sure that he would not, and she pitied poor Josephus Peabody with all her heart. She also pitied herself more than usual that day, for the cold was stinging, and she was put to hard tasks, and she felt forlorn at the thought that her little brother in the hardships of the Past might that very night strive to make his escape. Gradually her own resolve grew. She was horribly afraid, but she was also horribly homesick, and homesickness will urge to desperate deeds.

That night, also, Captain John Hopkins and his wife went to visit the sick neighbor, and, after the younger sisters were in bed, Letitia was left alone with her great-great-grandmother, who was sleepy. Letitia did not talk; she knitted, with a shrewd eye upon the elder Letitia, who presently fell fast asleep. Then Letitia rose softly, and laid down her knitting work. It might be her chance for nobody knew how long, and Josephus might even now be entering his book. She pulled off her shoes, tiptoed in her thick yarn stockings up to the loft, got her own clothes out of the chest, and put them on. The little great-great-aunts did not stir. Letitia blew a kiss to them. Then she tiptoed down, got the key out of the secret drawer, blew another farewell kiss to her sleeping great-great-grandmother and was out of the house.

It was broad moonlight outside. She ran around to the north side of the house, and there was the little green door hidden under the low branches of the spruce tree. Letitia gave a sob of fear and thankfulness. She fitted the key in the lock, turned it, opened the door, and there she was back in her great-aunt's cheese-room.

She shut the door hard, locked it, and carried the key back to its place in the satin-wood box. Then she looked out of the window, and there was her great-aunt Peggy, and the old maid-servant just coming home from meeting.

Letitia confessed what she had done, and her aunt listened gravely. Letitia did not say anything about Josephus Peabody.

She was not sure that he had made his escape, and if he had his grandmother might punish him, and she considered that he had probably suffered enough at the hands of Goodman Cephas Holbrook.