Helen of the Old House | Page 2

across the river were shining gold. But the slate-colored dust from the unpaved streets of that section of Millsburgh known locally as the "Flats" covered the wretched houses, the dilapidated fences, the hovels and shanties, and everything animate or inanimate with a thick coating of dingy gray powder. Shut in as it is between a long curving line of cliffs on the south and a row of tall buildings on the river bank, the place was untouched by the refreshing breeze that stirred the trees on the hillside above. The hot, dust-filled atmosphere was vibrant with the dull, droning voice of the Mill. From the forest of tall stacks the smoke went up in slow, twisting columns to stain the clean blue sky with a heavy cloud of dirty brown.
The deep-toned whistle of the Mill had barely called the workmen from their dinner pails and baskets when two children came along the road that for some distance follows close to the base of that high wall of cliffs. By their ragged, nondescript clothing which, to say the least, was scant enough to afford them comfort and freedom of limb, and by the dirt, that covered them from the crowns of their bare, unkempt heads to the bottoms of their bare, unwashed feet, it was easy to identify the children as belonging to that untidy community.
One was a sturdy boy of eight or nine neglected years. On his rather heavy, freckled face and in his sharp blue eyes there was, already, a look of hardness that is not good to see in the countenance of a child. The other, his sister, was two years younger--a thin wisp of a girl, with tiny stooping shoulders, as though, even in her babyhood, she had found a burden too heavy. With her tired little face and grave, questioning eyes she looked at the world as if she were wondering, wistfully, why it should bother to be so unkind to such a helpless mite of humanity.
As they came down the worn road, side by side they chose with experienced care those wheel ruts where the black dust lay thickest and, in solemn earnestness, plowed the hot tracks with their bare feet, as if their one mission in life were to add the largest possible cloud of powdered dirt to the already murky atmosphere of the vicinity.
Suddenly they stood still.
For a long, silent moment they gazed at a rickety old wooden stairway that, at this point in the unbroken line of cliffs, climbs zigzag up the face of the rock-buttressed wall. Then, as if moved by a common impulse, they faced each other. The quick fire of adventure kindled in the eyes of the boy as he met the girl's look of understanding.
"Let's go up--stump yer," he said, with a daredevil grin.
"Huh, yer wouldn't dast."
Womanlike, she was hoping that he would "dast" and, with the true instinct of her sex, she chose unerringly the one way to bring about the realization of her hope.
Her companion met the challenge like a man. With a swaggering show of courage, he went to the stairway and climbed boldly up--six full steps. Then he paused and looked down, "I don't dast, don't I?"
From the lower step she spurred his faltering spirit, "Dare yer--dare yer--dare yer."
He came reluctantly down two steps, "Will yer go up if I do?"
She nodded, "Uh-huh--but yer gotter go first."
He looked doubtfully up at the edge of the cliff so far above them. "Shucks," he said, with conviction, "ain't nobody up there 'cept old Interpreter, an' that dummy, Billy Rand. I know 'cause Skinny Davis an' Chuck Wilson, they told me. They was up--old Interpreter, he can't do nothin' to nobody--he ain't got no legs."
Gravely she considered with him the possible dangers of the proposed adventure. "Billy Rand has got legs."
"He can't hear nothin', though--can't talk neither," said the leader of the expedition. "An' besides maybe he ain't there--we might catch him out. What d'yer say? Will we chance it?"
She looked up doubtfully toward the unknown land above. "I dunno, will we?"
"Skinny an' Chuck, they said the Interpreter give 'em cookies--an' told 'em stories too."
"Cookies, Gee! Go ahead--I'm a-comin'."
That tiny house high on the cliff at the head of the old, zigzag stairway, up which the children now climbed with many doubtful stops and questioning fears, is a landmark of interest not only to Millsburgh but to the country people for miles around.
Perched on the perilous brink of that curving wall of rocks, with its low, irregular, patched and weather-beaten roof, and its rough-boarded and storm-beaten walls half hidden in a tangle of vines and bushes, the little hut looks, from a distance, as though it might once have been the strange habitation of some gigantic winged creature of prehistoric ages. The place may be reached from