I need not dwell upon my return to Waydean that evening. It is still painful to recall my sensations as I stepped from the train, on finding that Joe Wrigley had so completely disregarded my instructions to tell no one of the discovery that the usually quiet country road between the station and Waydean swarmed with pedestrians returning from an inspection of William Wedder's handiwork. Had I been permitted, as I had hoped, to publicly expose the fraud, I could have risen to the occasion and perhaps found a certain solace in doing so; but to find that in my absence the prying eyes of my neighbors had found the ingenious mechanism by which William had manufactured a flowing well of refined petroleum, and had attributed it to me, was crushing. I could bear up under the[Pg 237] facetious remarks of the people who complimented me on my success in taking such an excellent rise out of Peter, but when Andy Taylor rushed out of his house and clapped me on the back, I could only look at him in sorrowful reproach, at which his merriment increased. "Mr. Carton," he gasped, "it beats the way you done up that Griggs all hollow. I knew you'd get back on Peter, but I didn't know it'd be so—gosh—darn—rich. Oh Lordy, to see him when the loose dirt shifted and showed the blue end of the coal-oil barrel!"

"The coal-oil barrel?"

"Yes,—you'd ought to have laid a few boards of top of the heap, and it wouldn't have shifted with people trampin'. You must have let ten gallons run down that iron pipe—and how did you ever get it drove so far? I suppose that joke cost you as much as five dollars, but I'd say it was cheap at ten."

In vain I assured Andy that I was innocent; he only laughed the harder, reiterating his belief that I beat the Dutch and that I was a natural born play-actor; that the[Pg 238] Griggs episode, charming as it had been, was discounted by my latest histrionic venture.

By the dim light of my lantern, Marion, Paul and I viewed the wreck of the Waydean Oil Well when I reached home. Our coal-oil barrel, exhumed from the loose earth that had covered it, had been rolled away from the edge of the hole, leaving the iron pipe exposed. The ground was packed hard with the trampling of many feet.

"I didn't think there could be such a crowd of people in the country, except at a funeral or an auction sale," said Marion indignantly. "I was just enraged to sit in the house and see them pass through the yard as if it were a common. I'll never forgive William Wedder—I wish I had never baked him a pie."

"I hope he'll have to live on hygienic wheat biscuits when he gets home," I responded. "I hope his wife has learned to cook them in two hundred ways, and whether they're mashed, stewed, fried, pied, creamed, puddinged or jellied, he'll have[Pg 239] disappointment three times a day of finding that they are still the same old wheat biscuits. That'll be punishment enough for him, but it won't make Peter believe I didn't do this, and by this time he must have got Roper's letter cancelling the agreement."

"I suppose we'll have to give up the place in the end," said Marion, with a sigh.

"Don't let Paul hear," I said in a low tone, "or he'll make the dickens of a row."

At that moment Paul was leaning over the edge dangling a long string into the well; fishing, I supposed, in my ignorance. For days he had been going about with a dreamy look on his face that betokened a secret play of absorbing interest. I drew a breath of relief when I saw that he didn't look up at Marion's unguarded remark. All would have been well had I not been so misguided as to make a suggestion that aroused Marion's sense of duty and her persistent belief that I tried to shirk mine.

"Paul," said she, and even in that one word I detected the compassionate severity suitable to the extraction of a tooth—"do you know that we'll have to leave——"

[Pg 240]

"Marion," I implored, "wait till we get him into the house—he'll rouse the neighborhood."

I should have known better than to protest. Once started in the track of duty nothing short of a disastrous collision would stop her. She did pause, but merely to make a remark to me that led to a sharp altercation. We forgot our rule never to give way to our angry passions before Paul; indeed, he was so unusually silent that we didn't remember his presence until we were suddenly struck dumb by a shrill exclamation of impatient wrath that arose from the other side of the well.

"Dar-r-n it!" he ejaculated, with petrifying distinctness.

If he had turned into a quick-firing gun and dropped a shell at our feet the effect could not have been more paralyzing. Our boy had been carefully screened, not only from evil, but from vulgarity; he had never gone to Sunday school, nor been left to the care of a nursemaid. His companions were his toys and domestic pets; other children he had seen only from a distance, and he[Pg 241] regarded them as curious, but not interesting, little animals. His face reflected the purity of his mind. I hesitate to say so, for obvious reasons, but his face at the age of seven was simply angelic; I mean, of course, normally, not when his mouth was wide open in the act of expressing bodily or mental anguish. And this is not merely his mother's opinion and mine; it is Aunt Sophy's also. Indeed, Aunt Sophy, who is never tired of drawing attention to his remarkable resemblance to a photograph of me as a boy, has gone much farther, and has given utterance to thoughts that we only think.

Therefore, we turned to each other in dumb amazement; then I raised the lantern to make sure that it really was Paul who had spoken. He was getting up from his crouching position and the light showed that his little mouth was tightly set and that his wide-open eyes sparkled like stars. Even as we stared at him his lips parted again, and again he said: "Dar-r-r-n it!"

I am thankful that the well was partially covered and that I was able to keep Marion[Pg 242] from sliding into it. "Paul!" she cried in horror, "oh, Paul!"

I hastened to follow her lead. "Paul," I said, with fierce sternness, "what do you mean, sir?"

"I mean," he replied accusingly, "that it's all spoiled. They've taken fright at your squabbling and put out their lamps."

Again we stared at each other in questioning silence. What had taken fright we knew not, but we did know that we had squabbled.

"Where did you hear that dreadful word?" demanded Marion.

"Darn?" queried Paul, with innocent pride. "I heard William Wedder say something when the coal-oil barrel rolled on his foot, and when I asked him 'I beg your pardon?' he couldn't remember what he had said, then when I kept on asking him to try to remember he said it must have been an exclamation called darn. I think it's ever so much nicer than bother or good gracious."

"It's a vulgar word, and only vulgar people use it," I commented reprovingly.

[Pg 243]

"Why, father, William said that when Joe Wrigley's horse stood up on his hind legs you said——"

"Paul," I interrupted hurriedly, "you said something took fright, and——"

"Hush!" said he, in a mysterious whisper, coming close to me. "It was the fairies. William said if we made an oil well and didn't say anything about it, they'd be sure to come to fill their lamps, and they have. I saw three of them climbing up my rope ladder when you frightened them off."

"Then you knew that William made this?" I exclaimed.

"Of course. I helped him to bury the barrel so that the fairies wouldn't know it wasn't a real natural well. He said if we kept it a secret it would be a pleasant surprise to you when I showed you the fairies. Hush! They're climbing up the rope ladder again. Peep down through that crack and you'll see them—very—ve—ry—quietly. There now—stand back. I'm going to help them up over the edge."

The next morning Peter Waydean came over to see me, his face wreathed in smiles,[Pg 244] his manner most cordial. "Mr. Carton," he said genially, "I ain't on the hunt for oil wells this morning, but I was on my way to thank you for the trouble you took in rigging up that one when I met your little boy coming over to see me."

"Paul!" I exclaimed—"to see you?"

Peter nodded. "Great head on that little chap," he said. "'I don't want you to be angry at father about the oil well,' he says to me, 'for William and I made it together, and father didn't know anything about it,' says he, standing up straight and stiff. Then he told me the whole business, and although it turned out a good thing for me, I'm glad to know it was that scoundrel Wedder t............