The Young Adult Award-Winners Megapack

by Emily Cheney Neville

  At first he could not see the water, but, as they pressed into the crowd, he caught sight of the broad pool, dark even in the moonlight. It was over the road, now, through the fence, and had crept halfway across the stretch of grass before John Massey’s door. Tom Brighton’s white-clad figure was going back and forth among the men, but it was Cousin Jasper, standing high above the others on the seat of a wagon, who was directing operations and getting this confused army of workers into rapid organization.

  “Tom, take half the men to shovel dirt and pile up the sand sacks, and send the other half back to the sand pits to fill them. Clear the road so that the wagons can go back and forth. Henry Brook, take out your horses and join your team with Johnson’s, the tractor can pull two wagons and we need four horses to each of the others. Now, go to it and bring the sandbags as fast as they can be filled. We can’t save John Massey’s house, but we will build a dam to hold the water a hundred yards back, where the ground begins to rise. And remember, you can’t be too quick if you want to save the valley.”

  Oliver took off his coat and jumped out of the car.

  “Go over where Polly is,” he told Janet. “I am going into this game with the others.”

  He was in every portion of it, as the night wore by, never quite knowing how he passed from one task to another, but following orders blindly, hour after hour. He helped to dig, but was not quite so quick as the others; he carried the sacks of sand that were brought up, loaded high upon the wagons, but he had not the quick swing of the more sturdy farmers. He found himself at last on the high, vibrating seat of the heavy tractor, rumbling down the road with a line of wagons behind him, stopping at the sand pits to have them filled, then turning laboriously to haul them back again. The owner sat beside him on the first trip, directing him how to manage the unfamiliar machine, but as they made ready for a second he ejaculated, “You’ll do,” and jumped down to labor with the diggers. Oliver was left to drive his clumsy, powerful steed alone.

  He saw the broad, semicircular wall of piled sandbags, banked with earth, rise slowly as the men worked with feverish haste, he saw the water come up to the foot of it, seem to hesitate, and then creep up the side. He saw, suddenly, just as they had all stopped to breathe, a long portion of the dike begin to tremble, then cave in with a hideous, sucking crash that shook the ground under them, he saw the flood of muddy water come roaring in and sweep against the painfully built rampart which swayed and crumbled to its fall.

  In a wild turmoil of running, shouting men, backing wagons and rearing horses, he managed to extricate the clumsy monster that had been put under his care, brought it laboring and snorting out on higher ground and fell to work again. The barrier they had set up with so much toil was tumbling and collapsing in great gaps where the hungry current flung against it, but it held just long enough for them to raise another wall, longer, higher, firmer than the other and built with the frantic haste of desperate men.

  The hours went by, it was long after midnight, with the sky growing pale for the morning. Once or twice Oliver had seen Anthony Crawford working among the rest, carrying sacks of sand, jostled and cursed by the men about him, but in spite of their abuse, toiling steadily onward. When the dike collapsed and the men ran for their lives, one wagon lurched off the road; its driver was flung from the seat and caught under the wheel, while the horses, having jammed the tongue against the bank, reared and plunged helplessly. Oliver saw Anthony Crawford run out, with the swift, muddy water flowing knee-deep around him, watched him extricate the man, drag him to the seat, and back the frantic horses away from the bank to bring them struggling through the water to safety. There was no time for words of commendation. Both men at once went back to their task of carrying sacks as the slow building of another wall began.

  Some one had built a fire on the knoll, and here the farmers’ wives, with Janet and Polly among them, were boiling coffee, frying bacon, and serving out food to the hungry, worn-out men. Oliver had munched a generous sandwich as he drove down the road. As he came back again he noticed a strange lull and observed that the men were leaning on their shovels and that the work had ceased. Tom Brighton, wet and muddy from head to foot, motioned him to come near.

  “We’ve done all we can,” the big farmer beside them was saying, “the sacks are nearly gone and the men are dead beat. If she breaks through now, the whole valley will have to go under.”

  The water was halfway up the side of the earth-banked wall and was still rising. Here and there a muddy trickle came oozing through, to be stopped by a clod of earth, but otherwise there was nothing to do. To Oliver it seemed that they stood for hours, staring, waiting as the water lifted slowly, rose half an inch, paused and rose again. It was three-fourths of the way up; it was a foot below the lip of the wall. The space of a foot dwindled to six inches.

  “If there should be a wind, now,” said the man beside him hoarsely.

  Oliver looked back along the valley at the arch of sky showing blue instead of gray, at the trees moving gently in a morning breeze that touched the hilltop, but that did not stir the still air below. He heard Tom Brighton suddenly draw a sharp breath and he looked back quickly. Was that space above the water a little wider, was there a wet black line that stretched all along the rough wall where the flood had touched and fallen again? He was not dreaming; it was true. The level of the muddy tide was dropping, the crest of the flood had passed.

  It was broad daylight now, with the morning sunlight moving slowly down the slope into the valley. For the first time Oliver could see clearly the sullen, yellow pool of water, the crevasse in the dike, and John Massey’s little house, submerged to its very eaves. He watched the shining streak of wet earth that marked the drop in the water, he saw it broaden into a ribbon and from a ribbon turn into a wide, glistening zone of safety that proved to all the danger had gone by.

  “We can go now,” said Cousin Tom at last. “There is work enough still to do, but it is time for us all to rest a little. We are certainly a wet and weary-looking crew.”

  They had breakfast, all of the cousins together, at Cousin Jasper’s house, where Mrs. Brown, having spent half the night wringing her hands in helpless anxiety, had seemed to spend the other half superintending the preparation of a feast that should be truly worthy of the occasion. The guests were all cheerful and were still so keyed up by the struggle of the night that they did not yet feel weariness. Anthony Crawford sat on one side of Cousin Jasper, Tom Brighton on the other, while the three younger members of the party watched them wonderingly from the other end of the table. Everything, for the moment, seemed forgotten except the old comradeship of their boyhood. The only reminder of the unhappy days just passed lay in the atmosphere of relief and peacefulness that seemed to pervade the whole house.

  The windows stood wide open and the morning wind came in to lift the long curtains and to stir the great bowl of flowers on the table. Oliver, hungrily devouring chicken and rolls and bacon and sausages and hot waffles with maple sirup, was saying little but was listening earnestly to the jokes and laughter of Cousin Jasper. After a day and night of anxiety, depression, struggle, and victory, he seemed suddenly to have become a new man. They were talking, the three elders, of their early adventures together, but Oliver noticed that the reminiscences never traveled beyond a certain year, that their stories would go forward to the time when they were nearly grown, and then would slip back to their younger days again. Some black memory was laid across the happy recollection of their friendship, cutting off all that came after; yet they talked and laughed easily of the bright, remote happiness that was common to them all. The boy noticed, also, as they sat together, that Anthony was like the others in certain ways, that his eyes could light with the same merriment as Cousin Jasper’s, and that his chin was cut in the same determined line as Torn Brighton’s. Yet—no—there was something about his face that never could be quite like theirs.

  They had finished at last, and Anthony Crawford, pushing back his chair, came abrup
tly out of the past into the present. He thrust his hand into the inner pocket of his coat and brought out some legal-looking papers like those that Cousin Tom had locked away in the tin box.

  “Here is the deed that you made out, Jasper, for the house and the land that you gave up to me. I put it in my pocket yesterday morning; it seems a year ago. The purpose I had then is something that I would rather forget, if I ever can. But this is what I do with it now.”

  He tore the heavy paper into pieces, smaller and smaller, as though he could not demolish completely enough the record of what he had demanded. The breeze from the garden sent the scraps fluttering over the table and across the rug, it carried the round, red seal along the tablecloth and dropped it into Janet’s lap.

  “Tom will have to make out some official papers,” he said, “but I want you to understand this fully, that there among those fragments lies the end of this whole affair.”

  Cousin Jasper was about to speak, but Tom Brighton broke in ahead of him.

  “It has turned out better than we could have hoped, Anthony,” he began, “so that we can all agree to let bygones be bygones.”

  Anthony Crawford turned very slowly and looked, with those penetrating gray eyes, at Oliver.

  “We owe a great deal to these children here,” he said, “and as for one of them—”

  Convinced that something was about to be said of him, Oliver got up quickly, pretending that it was merely because he had finished his breakfast and wished to be excused, hurried across the room, and slipped out through one of the long windows that opened on the terrace. He could still hear Anthony Crawford’s voice, however, in the room behind him saying:

  “It was these children who found the leak in the dike; it was Oliver who thought of going to look for it. It was Oliver who saw through me, saw that I had not a shred of honor or honesty behind my claim and told me what I was.”

  The boy moved farther away from the window so that he could not hear and stood, his hands clenched on the terrace rail, looking out over the garden, across the pools of color and stretches of green lawn, over the wall and down the white road that led away the length of the valley. No matter what words they might speak of him they could never make him forget how he had walked away down that road, meaning to leave all this vaguely understood trouble behind him. Only a chance meeting, the Beeman’s friendly smile, the interest of a story that had caught him for a moment, and all would have been changed. No, there should be no words of praise for him.

  The voices were louder behind him, for the three men were passing through the library, and Cousin Jasper was speaking just within.

  “We still have to talk over this matter of rebuilding the dike,” he said. “We must have your advice in that, Anthony.”

  “Go into the study,” Anthony Crawford replied. “I must speak to Oliver for a moment.”

  He came out through the window while the others walked on together. Oliver turned to face him.

  “I am going now,” Anthony said quietly. “I thought you would be ready to help me when it was time.”

  Oliver reddened when he remembered the promptness of his offer the evening before.

  “Do you need to go,” he said awkwardly, “when you are friends again with every one here? Even the men in the valley don’t hate you,” he added bluntly, “after what you did last night. I believe Cousin Jasper will want you to stay.”

  “If I let him tell me so, I will not go,” the other replied quickly. “It must be this minute, while my mind is still made up, or never. I will write to Martha to follow, I cannot even trust myself to wait for her. It is better that I should go, better for them, in the study there, better for the community, for myself, even better for you, Oliver, I know. Come,” he insisted, as the boy still hesitated, “my confidence in you will be less great if you do not tell me that you know it also.”

  “Yes,” returned Oliver grudgingly at last. “Yes, I know it too.”

  They drove away down the rain-washed, empty road with the early morning wind rushing about their ears. As they climbed to the highest ridge, Anthony Crawford stood up to look back down the sun-filled, green length of Medford Valley. Yet he did not speak until they had reached the station, with the train thundering in just as they drew up beside the platform.

  “Good-by, Oliver,” he said briefly.

  The boy knew that the word of farewell was not for him but for all that the man was leaving—friends, memories, the place that he had loved in his strange, crooked way, all that he was putting behind him forever. A bell rang, a voice shouted the unintelligible something that stands for “All aboard,” the train ground into motion, and he was gone.

  Almost every one in Medford Valley must have slept that morning through the long hours until far past noon. But by four o’clock Oliver had slumbered all his weariness away, and so had Janet. They were restless after their excitement of the night before, and they found the house very still and with Cousin Jasper nowhere visible. They went out to the garage, got into the car, and set off along the familiar way toward the Windy Hill.

  “Just to see if they are there,” as Oliver said to Janet.

  They came up the slope through the grass and saw the blue wood smoke rising lazily above them, unmistakable signal that the Beeman was at work. Polly greeted them gayly, for she, like them, was quite refreshed by the hours of slumber that had passed. Her father still looked weary, as though he had spent the interval in troubled thought rather than sleep, but he hailed them cheerily. All up and down the hill was a subdued and busy humming, for the day after rain is the best of all seasons for bees to gather honey.

  “We thought we must find out what the storm had done to our hives,” the Beeman said. “Only three were blown over, but there must have been a great commotion. Now we have everything set to rights and we are not in the mood, to tell the truth, for a great deal more work today.”

  “Are you too tired,” Janet asked, “for—for a story?”

  “No,” he answered, “stories come easily for a man who has had training as Polly’s father. I thought there was no one like her for demanding stories, but you are just such another.”

  They sat down on the grass with the broad shadow of the oak tree lying all about them and stretching farther and farther as the afternoon sun moved down the sky. They had chosen the steeper slope of the hill so that they could look down upon the whole length of the winding stream, the scattered housetops, and the wide green of those gardenlike stretches that still lay, safe and serene, ripening their grain beside the river. The Beeman’s eyes moved up and down the valley, resting longest upon the slope opposite, where the yellow farmhouse stood at the edge of its grove of trees and showed its wide gray roof, its white thread of pathway leading up to the door, its row of broad windows that were beginning to flash and shine under the touch of the level rays of the sun.

  “Poor Anthony,” he said slowly at last, “to be banished from a place he loved so much. And yet a person thinks it a little thing when he first confuses right with wrong!”

  He drew a long breath and then turned to the girls with his old cheery smile.

  “A story?” he repeated. “It will not be like the others, a tale from old dusty chronicles of Medford Valley, to tell you things that you should know. We have lived the last chapter of that tale and now we will go on to something new.”

  Oliver leaned back luxuriously in the grass, to stare up at the clear sky and the dark outline of the oak tree, clear-cut against the blue. Its heavy branches were just stirring in the unfailing breeze that blew in from the sea, and its rustling mingled sleepily with the Beeman’s voice as he began:

  “Once upon a time—”

  TOD OF THE FENS, by Elinor Whitney

  A Newbery Honor Book, 1929.

  CHAPTER I

  The Minstrel

  At the beginning of the fifteenth century, England was in a very unsettled condition. Richard II had been deposed, and Henry of Bolingbroke, who was responsible for this deed and who usur
ped the throne thus left empty, found himself in no wise with a well-ordered kingdom under him. Everything was in upheaval. Some of the nobles rallied around the king, but others offered open resistance to him. The young Prince of Wales, while yet a boy, was set at the head of an army and sent into Wales to quell an uprising led by Owen Glendower, who had chosen this favorable time to try to separate Wales from the rule of Henry IV. While the king and the nobles were thus spending their time quarreling and making war on each other, the townspeople of England were doing their best to settle down and lead their own lives in peaceful pursuits. They were interested in their craft industries, their trade guilds, and the growth of commerce with the outside world.

  In the district of Lincolnshire to the north of London and not far in from the coast was a small town which was fast becoming a flourishing trading center. This was the town of Boston.

  Far back in the seventh century, St. Botolph, a wise and good man, withdrew from the world to found a monastery. He chose a desolate spot then called Icanhoe. It was on the bank of the Lindis, a tidal river which swept in from the sea four miles distant, inundating the low lands and leaving them again a wide expanse of treacherous fens. Here stagnant pools intercepted the wayfarer and sent him out of his way or even caused the death of the man and horse overtaken by night in their midst. In spite of the isolation of this ancient monastery, as time went on a town grew up around it, which came to be known as St. Botolph’s Town. At the time of this story St. Botolph’s Town was shortened to Boston, and although the monastery had been destroyed during an invasion of the Danes in the ninth century, on its site the parish church of St. Botolph had arisen, and its fine tower was capped by an immense lantern which sent its rays far out to sea and also across the fens to west, north, and south, so that it was a guiding light on that dangerous coast.