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St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, September 1878
 
Dab Kinzer: A Story of a Growing Boy

by William O. Stoddard

Chapter XV

The next day's newspapers, from the city, brought full accounts of the stranding of the "Prudhomme," as well as of the safety of her passengers and cargo; but they had nothing whatever to say about the performances of the "Swallow." The yacht had been every bit as well handled as the great steamship, but then she had got home safely, and she was such a little thing, after all. Whatever excitement there had been in the village died out as soon as it was known that the boys were safe; and then, too, Mrs. Lee found time to "wonder wot Dab Kinzer means to do wid all de money he done got for dem blue-fish."

Dab himself had been talking with Ford Foster and Frank Harley, and an original idea of his own was beginning to take some sort of form in his mind. He did not, as yet, mention it to any one, as he wanted very much to consult with Ham Morris about it. As for Frank, Mr. Foster had readily volunteered to visit the steamship office, in the city, when he went over to business, next day, and do whatever might be needed with reference to the young gentleman's baggage. At the same time, Mrs. Foster wrote to her sister, Mrs. Hart, giving a full account of what had happened, and saying she meant to keep Frank as Ford's guest for a while.

The Hart boys hardly knew whether to submit or not, when that letter came, as they had planned for themselves all sorts of rare fun with "the young missionary" in their own home.

"Never mind, Fuz," said Joe, "we'll serve him out when we get to Grantley."

"Yes," replied Fuz; "I'd just as lief not see too much of him before that. He wont have any special claim on us if he doesn't go there from our house."

Other talk they had together, and the tone of it promised very lively times at Grantley Academy for the stranger from India. But while the Hart boys were laying their plans for the future, they were themselves the subjects of more than one discussion, for Ford Foster gave his two friends the benefit of all he knew of his cousins.

"It's a good thing for you that the steamer didn't go ashore anywhere near their house," he said to Frank Harley. "They're a pair of born young wreckers. Just think of the tricks they played on my sister Annie."

After that conversation, it was remarkable what daily care and attention Dab Kinzer and Frank paid to their sparring lessons. It even exceeded the pluck and perseverance with which Dab went to work at his French.

Plenty of fishing, bathing, riding, boxing. Three boys together can find so much more to do than one can alone, and they made it four as often as they could, for Dick Lee had proved himself the best kind of company. Frank Harley's East Indian experience had made him very indifferent to the mere question of color, and Ford Foster had too much manhood to forget that long night of gale and fog and danger on board the "Swallow."

It was only a day or so after the perilous "cruise" that Dab Kinzer met his old playmate, Jenny Walters, just in the edge of the village.

"How well you look, Dabney!" remarked the sharp-tongued little lady. "Drowning must agree with you."

"Yes," said Dab; "I like it."

"Do you know what a fuss they made over you when you were gone? I s'pose they'd nothing else to do."

"Jenny!" suddenly exclaimed Dab, holding out his hand, "you mustn't quarrel with me any more. Bill Lee told me about your coming down to the landing. You may say anything you want to."

Jenny colored and bit her lip, and she would have given her bonnet to know if Bill Lee had told Dab how very red her eyes were as she looked down the inlet for some sign of the "Swallow." Something had to be said, however, and she said it almost spitefully.

"I don't care, Dabney Kinzer. It did seem dreadful to think of you three boys being drowned, and you, too, with your new clothes on. Good-morning, Dab!"

"She's a right good girl, if she'd only show it," muttered Dab, as Jenny tripped away; "but she isn't a bit like Annie Foster. How I do wish Ham would come back!"

Time enough for that; and as the days went by, the Morris homestead began to look less and less like its old self, and more and more like a house made for people to live and be happy in. Mrs. Kinzer and her daughters had now settled down into their new quarters as completely as if they had never known any others, and it seemed to Dab, now and then, as if they had taken almost too complete possession. His mother had her room, as a matter of course, and a big one. There could be no objection to that. Then another big one, of the very best, had to be set apart and fitted up for Ham and Miranda on their return, and Dab delighted in doing all in his power to make that room all it could be made. But, then, Samantha had insisted on a separate domain, and Keziah and Pamela imitated their elder sister to a fraction. The "guest-chamber" had to be provided as well, or what would become of the good old Long Island customs of hospitality?

Dab said nothing for a while, but one day, at dinner, just after the arrival of a letter from Miranda announcing the speedy return of herself and husband, he quietly remarked:

"Now I can't sleep in Ham's room any longer,—I suppose I'll have to go out on the roof. I wont sleep in the garret or in the cellar."

"That'll be a good deal as Mrs. Morris says, when she comes," calmly responded his mother.

"As Miranda says!" said Dab, with a long breath.

"Miranda?" gasped Samantha and her sisters.

"Yes, my dears, certainly," said their mother. "This is Mrs. Morris's house, or her husband's,—not mine. All the arrangements I have made are only temporary. She and Ham both have ideas and wills of their own. I've only done the best I could for the time being."

The girls looked at one another in blank amazement over the idea of Mrs. Kinzer being anything less than the mistress of any house she might happen to be in, but Dabney laid down his knife and fork with:

"It's all right, then. If Ham and Miranda are to settle it, I think I'll take the room Sam has now. You needn't take away your books, Sam. I may want to read some of them or lend them to Annie. You and Kezi and Meli had better take that upper room back. The smell of the paint's all gone now, and there's three kinds of carpet on the floor."

"Dabney!" exclaimed Samantha, reproachfully, and with an appealing look at her mother, who, however, said nothing on either side, and was a woman of too much good sense to take any other view of the matter than that she had announced.

Things were all running on smoothly and pleasantly before dinner was over, but Dab's ideas of the way the house should be divided were likely to result in some changes. Perhaps not exactly the ones he indicated, but such as would give him a better choice than either the garret, the cellar, or the roof. At all events, only three days would now intervene before the arrival of the two travelers, and everything required for their reception was pushed forward with all the energy Mrs. Kinzer could bring to bear. She had promised Ham that his house should be ready for him, and it was likely to be a good deal more "ready" than either he or his wife had dreamed of.


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CHAPTER XV.
One of the most troublesome of the annoyances which come to dwellers in the country, within easy reach of the great city, is the kind of patrolling beggar called the "tramp." He is of all sorts and sizes, and he goes everywhere, asking for anything he wants, very much as if it belonged to him, so long as he can ask it of a woman or a sickly-looking man.

There had been very few of these gentry seen in that vicinity that summer, for a wonder, and those who had made their appearance had been reasonably well behaved. Probably because there had been so many healthy-looking men around, as a general thing. But it came to pass, on the very day when Ham and Miranda were expected to arrive, by the last of the evening trains, as Dab Kinzer was coming back from the landing, where he had been for a look at the "Swallow," to be sure she was all right for her owner's eyes, that a very disreputable specimen of a worthless man stopped at Mrs. Kinzer's to beg something to eat, and then sauntered away down the road.

It was a little past the middle of the afternoon, and even so mean-looking, dirty a tramp as that had a perfect right to be walking along then and there. The sunshine and the fresh salt air from the bay were as much his as anybody's, and so was the water in the bay, and no one in all that region of country stood more in need of water than he.

The vagabond took his right to the road, as he had taken his other right to beg his dinner, until, half-way down to the landing, he was met by an opportunity to do more begging.

"Give a poor feller suthin," he impudently drawled, as he stared straight into the sweet, fresh face of Annie Foster. Annie had been out for only a short walk, but she happened to have her pocket-book with her, and she thoughtlessly drew it out, meaning to give the scamp a trifle, if only to get rid of him.

"Only a dime, Miss," whined the tramp, as he shut his dirty hand over Annie's gift. "Come, now, make it a dollar, my beauty. I'll call it all square for a dollar."

The whine grew louder as he spoke, and the wheedling grin upon his disgusting face changed into an expression so menacing that Annie drew back with a shudder, and was about to return her little portemonnaie to her pocket.

"No you don't, honey!"

The words were uttered in a hoarse and husky voice, and were accompanied by a sudden grip of poor Annie's arm with one hand, while with the other he snatched greedily at the morocco case.

Did she scream? How could she help it? Or what else could she have done under the circumstances? She screamed vigorously, whether she would or no, and at the same moment dropped her pocket-book in the grass beside the path, so that it momentarily escaped the vagabond's clutches.

"Shut up, will you!" and other angry and evil words, accompanied with more than one vicious threat, followed thick and fast, as Annie struggled to free herself, while her assailant peered hungrily around after the missing prize.

It is not at all likely he would have attempted anything so bold as that in broad daylight if he had not been drinking too freely, and the very evil "spirit" which had prompted him to his rascality unfitted him for its immediate consequences. These latter, in the shape of Dab Kinzer and the lower "joint" of a stout fishing-rod, had been bounding along up the road from the landing at a tremendous rate for nearly half a minute.

A boy of fifteen assailing a full-grown ruffian?

Why not? Age hardly counts in such a matter, and then it is not every boy of even his "growth" that could have brought muscles like those of Dab Kinzer to the swing he gave that four feet length of seasoned ironwood.

Annie saw him coming, but her assailant did not until it was too late for anything but to turn and receive that first hit in front instead of behind. It would have knocked over almost anybody, and the tramp measured his length on the ground, while Dabney plied the rod on him with all the energy he was master of.

"Oh, don't, Dabney, don't; you'll kill him!" pleaded Annie.

"I wouldn't want to do that," said Dabney, but he added, to the tramp: "Now you'd better get up and run for it. If you are caught around here again it'll be the worse for you."

The vagabond staggered to his feet, looking savagely enough at Dab, but the latter seemed so very ready to put in another hit with that terrible cudgel, and the whole situation was so unpleasantly suggestive of further difficulty, that the youngster's advice was taken without a word.

"Here it is. I've found my pocket-book," said Annie, as her enemy made the best of his way off.

"He did not hurt you?"

"No, he only scared me, except that I s'pose my arm will be black and blue where he caught it. Thank you ever so much, Dabney! You're a brave boy. Why, he's almost twice your size."

"Yes, but the butt end of my rod is twice as hard as his head," replied Dabney. "I was almost afraid to strike him with it, because I might have broken his skull."

"You didn't even break your rod."

"No, and now I must run back for the other pieces and the tip. I dropped them in the road."

"Please, Dabney, see me home first," said Annie. "I know it's foolish and there isn't a bit of danger, but I must confess to being rather frightened."

Dab Kinzer was a little the proudest boy on Long Island, as he marched along in compliance with her request. He went no further than the gate, to be sure, and then returned for the rest of his rod, but, before he got home, Keziah hurried back from a call on Mrs. Foster, bringing a tremendous account of Dab's heroism, and then his own pride was a mere drop in the bucket compared to that of his mother.

"Dabney is growing wonderfully," she remarked to Samantha. "He'll be a man before any of us know it."

If Dabney had been a man, however, or if Ham Morris or Mr. Foster had been at home, the matter would not have been permitted to drop there. That tramp ought to have been followed, arrested and shut up where his vicious propensities could have been restrained for a while. As it was, after hurrying on for a short distance and making sure that he was not pursued, he sprang over the fence and sneaked into the nearest clump of bushes. From this safe covert he watched Dab Kinzer's return after the lighter joints of his rod, and then even dared to crouch along the fence until he saw which house his young conqueror went into.

"That's where he lives, is it?" exclaimed the tramp, with a scowl of the most ferocious vengeance. "Well, they'll have fun before bed-time, or I'll know the reason why."

The bushes were a good enough hiding-place for the time, and he went back to them with the air and manner of a man whose mind is made up to something.

Ford Foster and Frank Harley were absent in the city that day, with Mr. Foster, attending to some affairs of Frank's, and when the three came home and learned what had happened, they were all on the point of rushing over to the Morris house to thank Dab, but Mrs. Foster interposed.

"I don't think I would. To-morrow will do as well, and you know they're expecting Mr. and Mrs. Morris this evening."

It was harder for the boys than for Mr. Foster, that waiting, and they lingered near the north fence two hours later, even though they knew that the whole Kinzer family were down at the railway station waiting for Ham and Miranda.

There was a good deal of patience to be exercised, for that train was behind time, and the darkness of a moonless and somewhat cloudy night had settled over the village and the outlying farms long before the engine puffed its way in front of the station platform. Just at that moment, Ford Foster exclaimed, "What's that smell?"

"It's like burning hay," replied Frank.

"Where can it come from, I'd like to know? We haven't had a light out at our barn."

"Light?" exclaimed Frank. "Just look yonder!"

"Why, it's that old barn away beyond the Morris and Kinzer house. Somebody must have set it on fire. Hullo! I thought I saw a man running. Come on, Frank."

There was indeed a man running just then, but they did not see him, for he was already very nearly across the field, hidden by the darkness. He had known how to light a fire that would smolder long enough for him to get away. There had been no sort of lingering at the railway station, for Ham and Miranda were as anxious to get at the "surprise" they were told was waiting for them as their friends were to have them come to it. Before they were half-way home, however, the growing light ahead of them attracted their attention, and then they began to hear the vigorous shouts of "Fire" from the throats of the two boys, now re-enforced by Mr. Foster himself. Dabney was driving the ponies, and they had to go pretty fast for the rest of that short run.

"Surprise!" exclaimed Ham. "I should say it was. Did you light it before you started, Dabney?"

"Don't joke, Hamilton," remarked Mrs. Kinzer. "It may be a very serious affair for all of us. But I can't understand how that barn could have caught fire."
 

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