The Boys of Bellwood School | Page 9

to change my opinion by thinking you believe what Gill Mace said about my being a thief."
Frank looked so manly and earnest as he spoke these words that his hearers were impressed. One of them stepped up and shook hands with him. Another remarked that he believed no story until he had evidence of its truthfulness, and a third half intimated that he would have served Gill Mace just as Frank had done if he made an untrue accusation.
When Frank got home he discovered that his pocket knife was missing. He tried to remember what had become of it, and finally decided that he must have left it on the log frame or dropped it to the ground when he had started out to meet Gill Mace. Frank valued the knife as a pleasant reminder of Ned Foreman, and planned to get up extra early the next morning and make a search for it.
He was pretty well satisfied as he closed his eyes in sleep that the jeweler would not dare to have him arrested for the theft of the diamond bracelet.
Nothing would probably come of the ridiculous charge, except that the underhanded public insinuations of Mace would damage Frank's character. Now that he had taught Gill Mace a needed lesson, of course his family would be more bitter against Frank than ever.
"The thing will die down," decided Frank. "If they get too rampant, I'll-- yes, I'll actually sue them for slander."
It must have been about midnight when Frank awoke with a shock. The echo of a frightful rumble and crash deafened his ears, and he fancied that the bed was vibrating. A scream inside the house made him sit up and listen. He was startled and bewildered.
"Frank! Frank!" quavered the terror-filled tones of his aunt, as she knocked sharply at the door of his bedroom, "get up at once!"
"What has happened?" inquired Frank quickly.
"I don't know--something dreadful, I am sure!" gasped the affrighted spinster. "It felt like an earthquake. It shook the whole town. It must have been an explosion."
"Humph! Good thing you know I'm in the house," observed Frank, as he jumped to the floor and hustled into his clothes.
"Why is that, Frank?"
"Because it may have been a dynamite explosion blowing up somebody's safe, and of course Mace would say I did it."
"Don't jest, Frank," pleaded his aunt. "I'm chilled through and shaking all over. Get outside and see if you cannot learn what it all means."
"I think myself it was probably an accidental blast at the quarry down the river," said Frank; "but I'll soon find out."
He did not dress fully, and let himself out on the porch in his slippers. As he walked down to the gate Frank noticed lights appear in many houses nearer the village, as if their inmates had been suddenly aroused from sleep.
Then distant voices, a rumbling wagon, people talking in loud tones, boyish shouts and a vague chorus of sounds unusual for the midnight hour, were drifted to Frank's hearing. From all this, however, he could think out no coherent idea as to what might be going on nearer town.
"It's not a fire, for there's no glare," he decided. "There's some kind of a commotion over near the schoolhouse, it seems. Reckon I'll dress fully and investigate."
There was a certain attraction for Frank in the distant bustle and turmoil. He went back into the house to find his aunt seated in the front hall. She was wrapped up in a shawl, pale and shivering.
"Oh, Frank, what is it?" she chattered.
"I didn't find out, but I'm going to," he announced, as he hurried on to his room.
"Is--is it coming here?"
"Is what coming here?"
"The--the--whatever it is."
"It hasn't hurt us any, has it? And I don't think it will."
Frank got back to the road ten minutes later and started on a run toward the town. Taking the middle of the road, he nearly bumped into a man where the highway turned.
"Hi, there!" challenged the latter.
"Hello!" responded Frank, recognizing a truck gardner who lived just beyond the Jordan place. "What's happened, Daley?"
"Old Dobbins' house."
"What, the one they're moving?"
"Yes. It broke loose from its bearings and has rolled right back to where it stood."
"You don't say so?" exclaimed Frank, with something of a shock.
"Yes, it has," asserted Daley, "only it's the greatest wreck of bricks and plaster now you ever saw."
"No one hurt, I hope?"
"No, except old Dobbins' feelings. He's capering around at a great rate, saying that the town, or the county, or the government, will have to pay him for the damage."
"The movers couldn't have understood their business very well to have such a thing happen." said Frank.
"Looks that way," acceded Daley, and they parted at the gateway of the Jordan home.
Frank advised his aunt of the state of affairs and went back to