CHAPTER XXVIII THE SECRET REVEALED

Lyddy did not have to go all the way to the Pritchett farm to speak with its proprietor. The farmer was wandering up Hillcrest way, looking at the growing corn, and she met him at the corner where the two farms came together.

“Mr. Pritchett,” she said, abruptly, “I want to ask you a serious question.”

He looked at her in his surly way–from under his heavy brows–and said nothing.

“You knew Mr. Spink when you were both boys; didn’t you?”

The old man’s look sharpened, but he only nodded. Cyrus was very chary of words.

“Mr. Spink left Hillcrest this morning. Last night my sister caught him in the east wing, trying to break open grandfather’s desk with a burglar’s jimmy. I am not at all sure that I shan’t have him arrested, anyway,” said Lyddy, with rising wrath, as she thought of the false professor’s actions.

“Ha!” grunted Mr. Pritchett.

“Now, sir, you know why Spink came to Hillcrest, why he has been searching up there among the rocks, and why he wanted to get at grandfather’s papers.”

“No, I don’t,” returned the farmer, flatly.

“You and Spink were up at Hillcrest the first night we girls slept there. And you frightened my sister half to death.”

The old man blinked at her, but never said a word.

“And you were there with Spink the evening Lucas took ’Phemie and me down to the Temperance Club–the first time,” said Lyddy, with surety. “You slipped out of sight when we drove into the yard. But it was you.”

“Oh, it was; eh?” growled Mr. Pritchett.

“Yes, sir. And I want to know what it means. What is Spink’s intention? What does he want up here?”

“I couldn’t tell ye,” responded Pritchett.

“You mean you won’t tell me?”

“No. I say what I mean,” growled Pritchett. “Jud Spink never told me what he wanted. I was up to the house with him–yep. I let him go into the cellar that night you say your sister was scart. But I didn’t leave him alone there.”

“But why?” gasped Lyddy.

“I can easy tell you my side of it,” said the farmer. “Jud and me was something like chums when we was boys. When he come back here a spell ago he heard I was storing something in the cellar under the east wing of the house. He told me he wanted to get into that cellar for something.

“So I met him up there that night. I opened the cellar door and we went down. I kept a lantern there. Then I found out he wanted to go farther. There’s a hatch there in the floor of the old doctor’s workshop—”

“A trap door?”

“Yes.”

“And you let him up there?”

“Naw, I didn’t. He wouldn’t tell me what he wanted in the old doctor’s offices. I stayed there a while with him–us argyfyin’ all the time. Then we come away.”

“And the other time?”

“On Saturday night? I caught him trying to break in at the cellar door. I warned him not to try no more tricks, and I told him if he did I’d make it public. We ain’t been right good friends since,” declared Mr. Pritchett, chewing reflectively on a stalk of grass.

“And you don’t know what it’s all about?” demanded Lyddy, disappointedly.

“No more’n you do,” declared Mr. Pritchett; “or as much.”

“Oh, dear me!” cried Lyddy. “Then I’m just where I was when I started!”

“You wanter watch Jud Spink,” grumbled Mr. Pritchett, rising from the fence-rail on which he had been squatting. “Does he want to buy the farm?”

“Why–I guess not. He only made Aunt Jane a small offer for it.”

“He’ll make a bigger,” said Pritchett, clamping his jaws down tight on that word, and turned on his heel.

She knew there was no use in trying to get more out of him then. Cyrus Pritchett had “said his say.”

When Lyddy got back to the house again she found that Grandma Castle’s folks had come to see her in their big automobile, and she and ’Phemie had to hustle about with Mother Harrison to re-set the enlarged dining table and make other extra preparations for the unexpected visitors.

So busy were they that the girls did not miss Harris Colesworth and his father. They appeared just before the late dinner, rather warm and hungry-looking for the Sabbath, Harris bearing something in his arms carefully wrapped about in newspapers.

“Oh, what have you got?” ’Phemie gasped, having just a minute to speak to the young man.

“Samples of the water Spink has bottled up there,” returned Harris.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. But we’ll find out. Father has an idea, and if it’s so—”

“Oh, what?” cried ’Phemie.

“You just wait!” returned Harris, hurrying away.

“Mean thing!” ’Phemie called after him. “You oughtn’t to have any dinner.”

But there was little chance for Harris to talk with the girls that day. Before the dinner dishes were cleared away, a thunder cloud suddenly topped the ridge, and soon a furious shower fell, with the thunder reverberating from hill to hill, and the lightning flashing dazzlingly.

Behind this shower came a wind-storm that threatened, for a couple of hours, to do much damage. Everybody was kept indoors, and as the night fell dark and threatening the Castles had to be put up until morning.

The wind quieted down at last; so did the nervous members of the party inside Hillcrest. When Lyddy and ’Phemie thought almost everybody else was abed but themselves, and they were about to lock up the house and retire, a candle appeared in the long corridor, and behind the candle was Harris Colesworth, fully dressed.

“Sunday is about over, girls,” he said, “and I can’t possibly sleep. I must do something. Didn’t you tell me, Miss ’Phemie, there were retorts and test-tubes, and the like, in your grandfather’s rooms?”

“In the east wing?” cried Lyddy.

“Yes.”

“Why, the back room was his laboratory. All the things are there,” said the younger girl.

“Let me go in there, then,” said Harris, eagerly. “I want to test these samples of water father and I brought down from the rocks to-day.”

“My mercy me!” gasped ’Phemie. “You don’t suppose there’s gold–or silver–held in solution in that water—”

Lyddy laughed. “How ridiculous!” she said.

“Perhaps not exactly ridiculous,” returned Harris, shaking his head, and smiling.

“Why, Harris Colesworth! who ever heard of such a thing?” cried Lyddy. “I’m no chemist, but I know that would be impossible.”

“Will you let me have the key of the green door?” he demanded.

“Yes!” cried ’Phemie, who had continued to carry it tied around her neck. “But we’ll go with you and see you perform your nefarious rites, Mr. Magician!”

Lyddy went for a lamp and brought it, lighted. “A candle won’t do you much good in there,” she said to Harris.

“Verily, it is so!” admitted the young man, with an humble bow.

“Now, let me go first!” cried ’Phemie. “You’d both be scared stiff by my friend, Mr. Boneypart.”

“Your friend who?” cried Lyddy.

Harris began to laugh. “So you claim Napoleon as your friend; do you, Miss ’Phemie? What do you suppose old Spink thinks about him?”

’Phemie giggled as she ran ahead with the young man’s candle and closed the door of the skeleton case in the inner office.

“For the simple tests I have to make,” said Harris, as Lyddy’s lamp threw a mellow light into the room, “I see no reason why those old tubes won’t do. Yes! there’s about what I want on that bench.”

“But, oh! the dust!” sighed Lyddy, trying to find a clean place on which to set the lamp.

“Your grandfather must have been something of a chemist as well as a medical sharp,” observed Harris, gazing about. “I’m curious to look this place over.”

“We ought to ask Aunt Jane,” said Lyddy, doubtfully. “We really haven’t any business in here.”

“She’s never told us we shouldn’t come,” ’Phemie returned, quickly.

“Now you young ladies sit down and keep still,” commanded Harris, authoritatively, removing his coat and tying an apron around his waist–the apron being produced from his own pocket.

“Now if you had your straw cuffs you’d look just as you used to—”

“At the shop, eh?” finished Harris, when Lyddy caught herself up quick in the middle of this audible comment.

“Ye-es.”

“So you did notice me a bit when you were working around the little kitchen of that flat?” chuckled the young man.

“Well!” gasped Lyddy. “I couldn’t very well help remembering how you looked the night of the fire when you came sliding across to our window on that plank. That was so ridiculous!”

“Just so,” responded Harris, calmly. “Now, please be still, young ladies and–watch the professor!”

And for an hour the girls did actually manage to keep as still as mice. Their friend certainly was absorbed in the work before him. He tested one sample of water after another, and finally went back and did the work all over upon one particular bottle that he had brought down from Spink’s hiding place among the rocks.

“Just as I thought,” he declared, with a satisfied smile. “And just as father suspected. Prepared to be surprised–pleasantly. Your Aunt Jane must be warned not to sell Hillcrest at any price–just yet.”

“Oh, why not?” cried ’Phemie.

“Because I believe there is a valuable mineral spring on it. This is a sample of it here. Mineral waters with such medicinal properties as this contains can be put on the market at an enormous profit for the owner of the spring.

“I won’t go into the scientific jargon of it now,” he concluded. “But the spring is here–up there among the rocks. Spink knows where it is. That is his secret. We must learn where the water flows from, and likewise, see to it that your Aunt Jane makes no sale of the place until the matter is well thrashed out and the value of the water privilege discovered.”