Ruth Fielding Down East Part 28

CHAPTER XXI

A HERMIT FOR REVENUE ONLY

The bays and inlets of the coast of Maine have the bluest water dotted by the greenest islands that one can imagine. And such wild and romantic looking spots as some of these islands are!

Just at this time, too, a particular tang of romance was in the air. The Germans had threatened to devastate our Atlantic coast from Eastport to Key West with a flock of submersibles. There actually were a few submarines lurking about the pathways of our coastwise shipping; but, as usual, the Hun's boast came to naught.

The young people on the _Stazy_ scarcely expected to see a German periscope during the run to Reef Harbor. Yet they did not neglect watching out for something of the kind. Skipper Phil Gordon, a young man with one arm but a full and complete knowledge of this coast and how to coax speed out of a gasoline engine, ordered his "crew" of one boy to remain sharply on the lookout, as well.

The _Stazy_ did not, however, run far outside. The high and rocky headland that marked the entrance to Reef Harbor came into view before they had more than dropped the hazy outline of Beach Plum Point astern.

But until they rounded the promontory and entered the narrow inlet to Reef Harbor the town and the summer colony was entirely invisible.

"If a German sub should stick its nose in here," sighed Helen, "it would make everybody ash.o.r.e get up and dust. Don't you think so?"

"Is it the custom to do so when the enemy, he arrive?" asked Colonel Marchand, to whom the idiomatic speech of the Yankee was still a puzzle.

"Sure!" replied Tom, grinning. "Sure, Henri! These New England women would clean house, no matter what catastrophe arrived."

"Oh, don't suggest such horrid possibilities," cried Jennie. "And they are only fooling you, Henri."

"Look yonder!" exclaimed Captain Tom, waving an instructive hand. "Behold!

Let the Kaiser's underseas boat come. That little tin lizzie of the sea is ready for it. Depth bombs and all!"

The grim looking drab submarine chaser lay at the nearest dock, the faint spiral of smoke rising from her stack proclaiming that she was ready for immediate work. There was a tower, too, on the highest point on the headland from which a continual watch was kept above the town.

"O-o-oh!" gurgled Jennie, snuggling up to Henri. "Suppose one of those German subs sh.e.l.led the movie camp back there on Beach Plum Point!"

"They would likely spoil a perfectly good picture, then," said Helen practically. "Think of Ruthie's 'Seaside Idyl!'.

"Oh, say!" Helen went on. "They tell me that old hermit has submitted a story in the contest. What do you suppose it is like, Ruth?"

The girl of the Red Mill was sitting beside Aunt Kate. She flushed when she said:

"Why shouldn't he submit one?"

"But that hermit isn't quite right in his head, is he?" demanded Ruth's chum.

"I don't know that it is his head that is wrong," murmured Ruth, shaking her own head doubtfully.

Here Jennie broke in. "Is auntie letting you read her story, Ruth?" she asked slyly.

"Now, Jennie Stone!" exclaimed their chaperon, blushing.

"Well, you are writing one. You know you are," laughed her niece.

"I--I am just trying to see if I can write such a story," stammered Aunt Kate.

"Well, I am sure you could make up a better scenario than that old grouch of a hermit," Helen declared, warmly.

Ruth did not add anything to this discussion. What she had discovered regarding the hermit's scenario was of too serious a nature to be publicly discussed.

Her interview the evening before with Mr. Hammond regarding the matter had left Ruth in a most uncertain frame of mind. She did not know what to do about the stolen scenario. She shrank from telling even Helen or Tom of her discovery.

To tell the truth, Mr. Hammond's seeming doubt--not of her truthfulness but of her wisdom--had shaken the girl's belief in herself. It was a strange situation, indeed. She thought of the woman she had found wandering about the mountain in the storm who had lost control of both her nerves and her mind, and Ruth wondered if it could be possible that she, too, was on the verge of becoming a nervous wreck.

Had she deceived herself about this hermit's story? Had she allowed her mind to dwell on her loss until she was quite unaccountable for her mental decisions? To tell the truth, this thought frightened the girl of the Red Mill a little.

Practical as Ruth Fielding ordinarily was, she must confess that the shock she had received when the hospital in France was partly wrecked, an account of which is given in "Ruth Fielding Homeward Bound," had shaken the very foundations of her being. She shuddered even now when she thought of what she had been through in France and on the voyage coming back to America.

She realized that even Tom and Helen looked at her sometimes when she spoke of her lost scenario in a most peculiar way. Was it a fact that she had allowed her loss to unbalance--well, her judgment? Suppose she was quite wrong about that scenario the hermit had submitted to Mr. Hammond?

The thought frightened her!

At least, she had nothing to say upon the puzzling subject, not even to her best and closest friends. She was sorry indeed two hours later when they were at lunch on the porch of the Reef Harbor House with some of the Camerons' friends that Helen brought the conversation around again to the Beach Plum Point "hermit."

"A _real_ hermit?" cried Cora Grimsby, a gay, blonde, irresponsible little thing, but with a heart of gold. "And is he a hermit for revenue only, too?"

"What do you mean by that?" Helen demanded.

"Why, we have a hermit here, you see. Over on Reef Island itself. If you give us a sail in your motor yacht after lunch I'll introduce our hermit to you. But you must buy something of him, or otherwise 'cross his palm with silver.' He told me one day that he was not playing a nut for summer folks to laugh at just for the good of his health."

"Frank, I must say," laughed Tom Cameron.

"I guess he's been in the hermit business before," said Cora, sparkling at Tom in his uniform. "But this is his first season at the Harbor."

"I wonder if he belongs to the hermit's union and carries a union card,"

suggested Jennie Stone soberly. "I don't think we should patronize non-union hermits."

"Goody!" cried Cora, clapping her hands. "Let's ask him."

Ruth said nothing. She rather wished she might get out of the trip to Reef Island without offending anybody. But that seemed impossible. She really had seen all the hermits she cared to see!

She could not, however, be morose and absent-minded in a party of which Cora Grimsby and Jennie Stone were the moving spirits. It was a gay crowd that crossed the harbor in the _Stazy_ to land at a roughly built dock under the high bluff of the wooded island.

"There's the hermit!" Cora cried, as they landed. "See him sitting on the rock before the door of his cabin?"

"Right on the job," suggested Tom.

"No unlucky city fly shall escape that spider's web," cried Jennie.

He was a patriarchal looking man. His beard swept his breast. He wore shabby garments, was barefooted, and carried a staff as though he were lame or rheumatic.

"Dresses the part much better than our hermit does," Helen said, in comment.