The Clock

by James Lincoln Collier

  I knew I had to get to the Browns’ house soon, or they’d wonder why it had taken so long to come from church. I looked out across the white field with the line of footprints running across it. It was the best chance I’d ever get. So I took another deep breath and began to run across the white field in the moonlight, trying to step in the old footprints as much as I could, so it wouldn’t seem that anybody had followed them.

  I felt naked and scared. It was still light enough so you could see a person against the snow. Mr. Hoggart didn’t live in the mill. He had his own house down the road a ways. But there was no telling where he might be, and if he looked out a window onto the field where I was, he’d know in two seconds who it was running along his footprints.

  I kept on running. The woods came closer. I could see a good ways into them. I ran on, and then I plunged in among the trees. I was a lot safer there. I went in about six steps, stopped, and looked back. There was no sign of a human being, nobody anywhere. I caught my breath, and then I plunged on, following the footprints where they led. Now I was deep in the woodlot. On I went, and within a couple of minutes, I began to see through the trees a shadowy square.

  I slowed down, and then stopped and squinted my eyes to look ahead. It was a shed or a cabin. I began to move forward again, now slipping carefully from tree to tree. In a moment I came to the cabin. It looked like a large tool shed of some kind. There were no windows, and only a small door shut tight. I slipped around behind it. Still no windows, and no windows on the other side either. I guess it had been built as a shed for woodcutters to lock their tools in when they went home at night. You could store a fair amount of wool in it too.

  I stood there, wondering how I could get a look in it to see if there really was wool in it, when I heard a thump, and a bang from inside. I jumped, and then froze still, my heart racing. I listened. There was another thump and a curse. I turned to run, about to head off through the woods by the shortest distance to the road. Just as I put my foot down, I remembered: I’d make a track of footprints as clear as day going out of there. He’d know somebody had been outside while he was in there.

  Should I wait until he left? No, I couldn’t do that, for I’d already made a track of prints all the way around the shack. There was only one thing to do. I began to run off the way I’d come, along the old footprints. And what would happen if he came out right behind me? He wouldn’t be running. He’d be coming along easy; but would he get to the edge of the woods before I got across the field? I began to pray.

  Then I came to the edge of the woods. I turned around to listen. It seemed to me I heard the sound of a door shutting, and a key clinking. I dashed out of the woods into the snowy field, moving my legs as fast as I could go, faster and faster along that line of footprints. The mill came closer; I plunged for it, dove around the corner, and dropped flat into the snow. Then I twisted around and looked back. Mr. Hoggart was just coming out of the woods. I didn’t wait, but ran on down the length of the mill, out the mill road, and onto the village road.

  Had he seen me? I didn’t know. He’d have only got a glimpse of me, but that might have been enough. I didn’t think he could have seen who it was diving around that corner. But if he’d seen someone spying on him, he’d have a pretty good guess as to who it was. I ran off to Hetty Brown’s house as quick as I could manage.

  ******

  But Mr. Hoggart didn’t come around for a couple of days, and I rested easier. In the meanwhile, I got a chance to talk to Robert. Mr. Hoggart had got him carrying yarn down out of our part of the mill, and sometimes he could swing through the slubbing room and talk to me. He looked dreadful; it was hard enough for him to get up and down a flight of stairs by himself, much less carrying a huge bundle of yarn. “He’s trying to kill you,” I said. “He wants to work you to death.”

  “It isn’t as bad as all that,” Robert said. “I’m getting used to it.”

  “He thinks I’m sweet on you, and he’s afraid of what you might know from being tally boy. He wants to kill you.”

  “Don’t exaggerate, Annie. It isn’t that bad. He wants me to quit.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Anyway, I found out where he’s hiding the wool.”

  “What?”

  So I told him the whole story, of seeing the footprints through the snow behind the mill, and tracking them to the shack in the woods.

  “That was a foolish risk, Annie. He’d have beaten the daylights out of you if he’d caught you. He might have killed you.”

  “I know,” I said. “I was almighty scared. I was plain lucky that he didn’t come bursting out of that shed while I was standing there.”

  “You sure were,” he said. I was feeling sort of proud of myself, for it was a brave thing to do, even if it was foolish.

  “Now we know where he’s got the wool. We can tell Colonel Humphreys.”

  He thought about it for a minute. “But you didn’t actually see it. You didn’t get a look inside.”

  “No, that’s true.” I stood there, thinking. “But it has to be in there. What else would he be going out to that cabin for in the dead of winter?”

  “Yes, that’s true. But suppose we can somehow get Colonel Humphreys to look into it. What if there’s no wool in it? What if he’d cleared the wool out? What if he was using the shed for something else in the first place?”

  Well, it was a puzzle. Robert said we’d better think about it for a few days first, before we did anything. So I went on home. But I was feeling a lot better, because I knew Robert would help me, and with Robert I knew I had a chance.

  ******

  Then, a few days later, Mr. Hoggart came after me. It was quitting time, getting dark outside. The bell had just rung, and the girls were putting on their caps and the boys were pushing and jostling to go across to their lodgings and get their suppers. I was putting on my cap, too, and thinking about my own supper, although I knew I wouldn’t get it until six, for Pa was still running everything by the clock. I saw Mr. Hoggart pushing his way through the mob of boys going out. He was heading right toward me, and I jumped under my skin. Quickly I slipped into my coat, and started for the door with the others, hoping to skirt around him. But the next thing I knew he was standing dead in front of me. I tried to skip around him, like I didn’t realize he wanted me, but he grabbed my arm. “Hold up, Annie,” he said, kind of rough. “I want to talk to you.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. I kept my eyes down so as not to encourage him.

  He stood there holding my arm like that until the boys and girls had all filed out and were clumping down the outside stairs. Then he said, “Look at me.”

  I flicked my eyes upward for a second, and then down again.

  “I said look at me.” He let go of my arm, grabbed hold of my chin and twisted my face upward. My heart was going fast.

  “I saw you talking with that dirty little Tom Thrush the other day,” he said.

  What had he overheard? “Yes, sir, I might have been talking to him.”

  He gave my chin a little shake. “I hope you haven’t been fooling around with him, Annie.”

  Mr. Hoggart should have known better than that. “No, sir. All we ever did was talk a little.”

  He shook my face again. “You sure of that?”

  “Yes, sir. My ma warned me against those boys.”

  “A good thing too. You see that you obey your ma. I can tell you’re not the kind who’d have anything to do with those New York boys. You need a better sort of fellow.”

  I didn’t say anything, for I knew what he meant by that.

  He shook me again. “What do you say to that?”

  “My ma says I’m too young for fellows.”

  “Oh, come,” he said. “You’re fifteen, aren’t you? You’re not a girl anymore. You’re a woman. You’re a woman and can do the things that women do.”

  “Please, sir, I have to get home.”

  “They’ll wait for you.” He let go of my chin.

  “Now, Annie, you know
I could do you a lot of good around the mill. Being the lamp girl is a much nicer job than working a slubbing billy.”

  I looked down and didn’t say anything. Suddenly he put his hand around my waist and pulled me toward him. For just a minute he held me like that, our faces a little bit apart. I could feel his breath on my cheek, and smell the rum. “Come on, Annie. I could make life a lot easier for Robert and you if you got friendly with me.”

  I went on staring at him, feeling scared as could be. “Please let me go,” I said. I started to squirm away.

  He let me go and stood there looking at me. “Better think about it,” he said in a harsh voice. “I can make life pretty nice for you and Robert, and I can make it pretty bad too.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. I made a curtsy, and then I ran out of there and headed for home.

  When I got home Pa and George were out in the barnyard, sawing firewood. Ma was in the kitchen, churning butter. “Ma, he did it again.”

  She looked at me. “Who? What?”

  “Mr. Hoggart. He came at me again. He grabbed hold of me and held me tight.”

  Ma banged her hand down on the top of the churn. Then she looked me in the face. “Annie, you swear it’s true.”

  “I swear it, Ma.”

  She went on looking me in the face. “He grabbed you, touched you.”

  “He pulled me up against him, and I thought he was going to kiss me, but he didn’t.” I shuddered, just remembering it. “I’ve got to tell Pa.”

  She looked off at the wall, thinking. “Annie, you best leave that to me,” she said finally. “Your pa’s got bad money troubles.”

  “Troubles?”

  “The price of that blamed merino ram has burst. With the price up so high people were bound to take advantage of it. Somebody brought a shipload of them from Spain to New York. They aren’t scarce anymore; and the price dropped and is still dropping, with no end in sight. Pa isn’t going to get but a fraction of what he owes for his. He owes for the clock as well. People are beginning to get after him.”

  “He needs my wages, doesn’t he, Ma?”

  “Without them he’s in a heap of trouble. If his creditors really want to be hard on him, he could go to prison.”

  I just felt sick. “So I’m stuck,” I said. “He’ll keep me in the mill forever and ever.”

  She sighed. “I hope not,” she said. “I won’t let him sign you on again for another six months if I can help it. But it’ll be worse for all of us if he goes to debtors’ prison. I’ll tell him, though. I’ll tell him what happened, just so he knows he’d better not sign you up again.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE BIG PROBLEM, that I could see right off, was that Robert and I were plain mill hands, and didn’t have any right to speak to Colonel Humphreys. He was a mighty important man, and you just didn’t go up to his house and knock on his door like he was an ordinary farmer. He had a big house on a hill just on the edge of Humphreysville. I knew where it was, because I’d been past it plenty of times heading down to Derby to see Ma’s cousins. I could go around to the back door and tell the servants that I had a message for the colonel. But the servants weren’t likely to take much note of me. They’d want to know what the message was, and all of that, and wouldn’t believe me if I told them, anyway. What were we going to do? I didn’t know. All I could do was go on from day to day and hope I would come up with an answer.

  Two nights later, when I came home from the mill, Pa was sitting at the table waiting for me. “Sit down, Annie,” he said.

  I sat down at the table. “What’s wrong, Pa?”

  He looked at me. “Daniel Brown came by this morning. He seems to know this story of yours about Mr. Hoggart pestering you.”

  Daniel Brown was Hetty’s pa. “I didn’t tell him, Pa.”

  “He thought I didn’t know about it. He came to warn me. It was mighty embarrassing for me, Annie.”

  “I swear I didn’t say anything to him, Pa.”

  “Who did, then?”

  “Hetty must have. She knows all about it.”

  “How does she know? Did you tell her some story?”

  I blushed, for I had told her, and she’d told some of the other girls. “Pa, the girls all know. They’re all afraid Mr. Hoggart will try the same on them.”

  “Annie, you shouldn’t be spreading these stories. It could cause us a lot of trouble if it got back to Mr. Hoggart that you were spreading gossip about him.”

  “Pa, it’s not just stories. It’s true.” It was making me feel sort of crazy and sick that he wouldn’t believe me.

  “What about that tale that Mr. Hoggart’s been stealing wool? You have no proof of that.”

  Suddenly I was worried. Hetty had promised not to tell her pa about that. “Did Mr. Brown tell you I’d said that?”

  “No,” Pa said. “He didn’t seem to have heard that.”

  So Hetty hadn’t told. “It’s true, anyway.”

  “Annie, you can’t go around saying things like that without proof.”

  But we had proof. I’d seen that cabin in the woods. “Pa—” Then I realized that I couldn’t say anything about it, for he’d be dreadful angry at me if he found out I’d tracked Mr. Hoggart through the woods. “Robert says the tally sheets didn’t work out. That’s proof.”

  “No, it’s not.” He slapped the palm of his hand down on the table. “It doesn’t prove anything at all. There could be a whole lot behind this that you don’t know anything about.” He gave me a stern look. “Now, I want you to stop all this. We could get into serious trouble if it got back to Mr. Hoggart that you were spreading these kinds of rumors about him.”

  Well, there wasn’t any point in trying to argue with him. I had a funny feeling that he believed me, at least partly. He’d known me all my life, and he knew I wasn’t the kind to make up stories like that. But what with the mess he’d got himself in, he couldn’t afford to believe me. For if he believed me, he’d have to take me out of the mill.

  Anyway, I realized that I’d better make sure Hetty didn’t tell her pa about the wool, so that night I walked her home. “Did you know your pa came to see my pa about what Mr. Hoggart tried to do to me?

  “He said he was going to. I figured maybe he could get your pa to take it serious.”

  “It didn’t help. Pa still doesn’t believe it. He told your pa it was all just stories.”

  “But it isn’t stories,” Hetty said. “The girls all know about it.”

  “Hetty, you didn’t tell your pa about Mr. Hoggart stealing wool, did you?”

  “Oh, no,” she said. “You made me promise. Besides, I don’t know as Pa would believe it unless you had proof.”

  But now I had proof. I wondered: Ought I to tell Mr. Brown myself? “Hetty, does your pa know Colonel Humphreys?”

  “I think he knows him some,” Hetty said. “He made a farm wagon for him once, and he mends his wagon wheels for him sometimes. I reckon he knows him.”

  But I decided I’d better talk it over with Robert before I said anything more. So I changed the subject, and we talked about the new bonnet Hetty was making herself until we got to her house and I headed for home.

  For the next few days I hardly got a chance to see Robert. Mr. Hoggart had got him limping here and limping there all day long, carrying things. It was taking all the strength out of him, and the few times I saw him he looked so tired I didn’t want to bring up anything that would cause him worry. But finally I did. “Robert, Mr. Brown knows Colonel Humphreys. Leastwise, he did some work for him.”

  Robert thought about it. “Annie, I reckon we ought to go slow. We still aren’t exactly sure that there’s wool in that cabin. Suppose we got Mr. Brown to go out there and break into the place, and there wasn’t any wool? That’d be the end of you and me. Mr. Hoggart would let me go first thing. I’d have to leave town for sure then.”

  “But you can’t go on like this, Robert. It’ll kill you.

  “Oh, I’ll manage for a while. Meanwhile we’ll k
eep our eyes open and see if we can get better proof.”

  “Well, then we have to go back out to the cabin some night and find out.”

  “We could try it. But we’d have to find a way to open the lock.”

  “I’ll think of something.”

  It snowed some that night, and off and on the next day, and then the sky cleared and the temperature began to drop. We were in for a real cold spell, with everything frozen up tight. Pa and George took the ox sledge over to the woodlot, where last year’s cutting was piled, ready to be sawed and split. They were gone all day, and when they came back the sweat was freezing to their faces. But they had enough firewood to hold us through a cold spell, if it didn’t go on for more than a week or so.

  Pa was still campaigning about the clock; he wouldn’t let up on it. We had our meals to it, said our prayers to it, and went to bed to it. Ma fought it off as best she could. Meals didn’t come just so, but ten or fifteen minutes late, and when Pa told her it was time for bed she’d generally find something that had to be done, leaving Pa to grumble—why couldn’t it wait until morning, or why hadn’t she thought of it before. But she couldn’t stretch it too far: She knew Pa had the right and duty to set the rules around the house. He wouldn’t let off talking about it. We had to hear about it all the time. “It’s a marvel,” Pa said. “Once only the rich could afford clocks, but with the new methods of manufacturing, these mechanisms will soon be found in every home, no matter how humble. That’s the great value of these new methods. Where it used to take a clockmaker a week to make one of these, six men in a factory using this system can turn out several a day.”

  “Bound to put a lot of clockmakers out of work, I should reckon,” Ma said.

  “Not a bit of it,” Pa said. “That’s the beauty of the new system. It brings the price down so that every farmer in the country can afford to own a clock. Naturally, demand for clocks will shoot up, and soon there’ll be more clockmakers at work than ever. You’ll see.”