a most mysterious sound in a most mysterious place.—what is it?—general panic.—the adventurous explorers.—they are baffled.—is pat at the bottom of it?—bart takes his life in his hand, and goes alone to encounter the mystery of the garret.
the boys had much to talk about that night. these had been eventful times. there was their excitement about the mineral rod, and their memorable experiment in the cellar; there was the unlading of the stones, and the bright prospect of more holidays; there was the sorrow of corbet over his lost antelope; and finally there was the prospect of the approaching trial, when mr. long would defend the cause of the innocent. were not these matters sufficiently exciting to keep the boys awake till a late hour? methinks they were.
above all, that roar which had startled them at their midnight work never ceased to perplex them. bruce, who was superstitious, still clung to his belief in its supernatural origin, but the other boys were one and all convinced that it was a hoax. but who had done it? did the perpetrators of that hoax belong to the school? or did they belong to the village? or were they gaspereau-gians? on these points they took sides, and had long arguments, which led to no conclusion in particular, but left them where they were.
one conclusion they did come to, however, and that was to keep their adventure a profound secret, and wait to see if the mystery would not be revealed.
in spite of their fatigue, they were so excited by the recent events, that they all remained in the rawdons’ rooms till quite a late hour. the academy was still, and everybody seemed to have gone to bed. bart, tom, and phil were about to retire to their own rooms, when suddenly there occurred something which made every one of them start to his feet.
it was a long, wild, shrill cry, somewhere between a howl and a hoot, and it sounded in the attic above. before they could recover from their first shock it sounded again and again.
bruce’s face grew pale, and the others looked at one another with wide-open eyes.
the rawdons’ rooms were in the third story, and immediately above them was the attic, which ran the whole length of the academy, all unfinished except a little chamber at this end occupied by pat. pat’s room was immediately over bart’s; and as the academy was divided into separate compartments, each with its own entrance and stairways, it had no connection with this part. midway in the unfinished attic rose the cupola, supported by a network of vast beams, a favorite place of resort for the boys, on account of the magnificence of the prospect which it commanded. on rainy days the attic formed a fine place for exercise, but at night its vast and gloomy extent served rather to repel visitors. such was the place through which now sounded that discordant and horrid cry which had so startled the boys.
“there it is again!” said bruce at last.
“pooh!” said bart—“that?—that is nothing to what it was up in the cellar.”
“let’s go up and see what it is,” said bruce, who again, as before, mastered the weakness of his superstitious fear by a supreme effort of courage.
“all right,” said the others. “now’s our chance.”
bruce and arthur each took a lamp, and they started off. scarcely had they passed out into the hall, than another of those shrill cries came, and at the same time they heard three peculiar knocks. they stopped for a moment to listen. as they stopped, the door opposite opened, and jiggins appeared. he looked pale and disturbed.
“what’s all the row, jiggins?” asked bart. “row?” said jiggins; “i don’t know. i don’t like it at all. it don’t somehow sound altogether right. i think you’d better not—”
at this moment jiggins’s voice was drowned by another howl. he started, and looked at the others in silence.
by this time they heard below the noise of doors opening, and shuffling feet. the voices of bogud and billymack, and johnny blue, and muckle, were heard calling up to them. they shouted back, after which the others came up to the hall, and they all stood listening at the foot of the stairs. in the midst of this, other footsteps were heard, and pat made his appearance.
“i ran out,” said he, “an i saw lights up here—an i came up. ye’v heard it—haven’t ye’s?”
“yes,” said bart; “do you know what it is?”
“me!” cried pat; “sure didn’t i hear it close by me room? and didn’t i run for it?”.
“it’s mighty queer,” said jiggins.
“i think we’d better go down,” said david digg; “whatever it is, it’s something that we ought not to face.”
“nonsense, bogud!” said bart; “we’re going up.”
“up, is it?” cried pat; “‘deed, then, an ye’d betther not! ye don’t know what it is that’s up there.”
as he spoke there sounded once more those peculiar knocks.
“many’s the time i heard that,” said pat. “it’s a black, bad place.”
“wern’t you frightened?” asked bogud, solemnly.
“sure it cudn’t make any differ whether i wor frightened or not. the likes of me’s got to bear thim things.”
and now there came another uproar. it was yell after yell, so wild, so harsh, and so discordant, that the former noises were nothing in comparison.
bogud beat a hasty retreat, and jiggins backed into his doorway. the other boys fell back a little, but the “b. o. w. c.” stood their ground, and bruce put his foot on the lowest step to ascend to the attic.
“sure ye’ll not be goin up!” said pat.
“yes, we will,” said bart. “come along—all of you.”
“ips kilt ye’ll be!” wailed pat—“it’s dead intirely ye’ll find yerselves when ye come back!”
“come along, boys,” cried phil, as he hurried up after bruce. “come, pat. it’s all humbug.”
“come along,” cried bart; “you needn’t pretend to be frightened, pat; you’re only humbugging. it’s my belief that you know all about it. can’t i tell by your face whether you’re really frightened or not?”
“me!” cried pat, with a very queer intonation, that sounded like a mournful wail struggling with wild laughter. “is it me? o woro-o-o! isn’t it to danger yere goin thin! don’t blame me if i didn’t warrun ye’s. och, but it’s a black day intirely! come along, boys,” he said to the others who were left. “let’s go down out of this to the flure below.”
these last words were not heard by the “b. o. w. c.,” who were by this time in the attic, peering through the gloom, and waiting for a recurrence of the sound.
they listened for a long time, but they heard no noise at all. no shrieks, no knocks whatever were heard. at length they began to go about. they walked first towards that end of the attic where pat’s room was, and the only noise they heard was the heavy footsteps of pat as he ascended the stairs and entered his room.
“it’s my firm belief,” said bart, “that pat is at the bottom of all this humbug. of course we won’t find anything. there won’t be so much as a knock, let alone a howl.”
they walked all about, and at last reached the place where the cupola arose. it was built over the main part of the academy, from which wings extended on either side. this main part was taken up with the academy hall, which, however, did not rise so high as the floor of the attic, and the consequence was, that there yawned here a dark abyss some fifteen feet in depth, and sixty or eighty feet square. above rose the stout timbers, crossing one another in all directions, through the midst of? which ladders ascended into the cupola. some loose planks laid across this abyss, from beam to beam, formed a rather dangerous pathway. this the boys traversed, and crossing to the opposite side, they wandered about the long, dark loft, gazing curiously in all directions. there was no flooring on this side, but only beams, with the laths and plaster of the lower rooms between them. their search took them over this, but nothing whatever came of it.
they searched the whole attic most thoroughly, but could find nothing.
“well, boys,” said bart, “we can’t do anything more. for my part i’m fagged out, and i’m going to bed.”
this proposal met with the approbation of all the others. they were all very tired, very sleepy, and very much disgusted at their failure.
so they went down the steps, and the rawdons went into their room, and the others turned to go down.
but just at that moment the yells and the hoots sounded out again in a deafening volley—then all was still.
“o, yell away!” cried bart, angrily; “we’ll find you out some day. depend upon it, boys, pat’s at the bottom of it. if he is, let him look out; that’s all. i’ll teach him a lesson that he won’t forget in a hurry. come, phil. come, tom. good by, bruce and arthur. if you feel inclined for another hunt to-night, you may make it yourselves. i’m going to bed, and i’ll sleep till nine tomorrow in spite of all the noises that can be scared up.”
with these words bart retired along with tom and phil; and he kept his word, for he slept as sound as a top, and did not make his appearance on the next day till long after the other boys were up.
after getting his breakfast from solomon, he wandered out into the grounds in front of the academy, where he found nearly all the school gathered, and in a great excitement. the noises had been heard all through the night by most cf them, and had excited every varying shade of superstitious terror. bogud had told them about the attempt of the “b. o. w. c.” to find out the mystery, and tom had been forced to acknowledge their failure. all this, of course, made an immense sensation.
different theories arose among them, most of them tinged with superstition. all these theories referred to an old legend that the academy had been built on a spot where some french houses had once stood, and that the cellars were beneath the building. out of this legend some of the boys created a wild theory, which connected the harm-less acadians with the hideous noises of the past night. jiggins and bogud were both inclined to this. pat was very industrious in going about among the boys with terrific descriptions of what he had heard; and as his room was actually in the attic, and only separated from its gloomy extent by a thin board partition, his authority was considered sufficient for any belief, however wild. pat, in fact, was a great man that day, and fairly revelled in the awe-struck faces of the small boys as they questioned him about his experience. these small boys all lived in another building called the boarding house, which stood near the academy, but apart from it; and as they listened to pat’s wild stories they congratulated themselves that they were not within hearing of such terrific sounds.
bart heard all this, he watched the effect which this story had produced, and he saw how pat was glorifying himself on this occasion.
“i tell you what it is, boys,” said he to his friends, as they found themselves together apart from the others. “in all this school there is one, and only one, that knows about this row, and that is pat. i’m sure of it. if i had a doubt before, it’s vanished now. why, look at him over there, frightening the small boys out of their wits. well,” he continued, after a pause, “very well; just wait a while, and see if i don’t pay up pat for this.”
as soon as bart could do it unobserved, he went up to explore the attic. he spent a long time there, and did not come down till the dinner bell rang. then after dinner he went up again, and spent the afternoon. his investigation was long and searching; but what he found, and where he found it, and how he found it, and in fact whether he found anything at all or not, he did not tell to a single soul, no, not even to the “b. o. w. c.” as bart preserved such secrecy, i’m sure i’m not going to divulge it just yet. i will do as bart did, and keep my own counsel, and wait till the proper time comes for the disclosure.
and any boy who thinks there’s going to be a ghost in the garret, or a phantom in the french orchard, had better,—well, he had better keep reading straight on. that’s about the best advice i can give him.
