The Oakdale Affair

"Yes," he replied, "I am going down. I doubt if I shall find anything there; but if I do it is better to come upon it when I am looking for it than to have it come upon us when we are not expecting it. If there is to be any hunting I prefer to be hunter rather than hunted."

He wheeled and placed a foot upon the cellar stairs. The youth followed him.

"What are you going to do?" asked the man.

"I am going with you," said the boy. "You think I am a coward because I am afraid; but there is a vast difference between cowardice and fear."

The man made no reply as he resumed the descent of the stairs, flashing the rays of the lamp ahead of him; but he pondered the boy's words and smiled as he admitted mentally that it undoubtedly took more courage to do a thing in the face of fear than to do it if fear were absent. He felt a strange elation that this youth should choose voluntarily to share his danger with him, for in his roaming life Bridge had known few associates for whom he cared.

The beams of the little electric lamp, moving from side to side, revealed a small cellar littered with refuse and festooned with cob-webs. At one side tottered the remains of a series of wooden racks upon which pans of milk had doubtless stood to cool in a long gone, happier day. Some of the uprights had rotted away so that a part of the frail structure had collapsed to the earthen floor. A table with one leg missing and a crippled chair constituted the balance of the contents of the cellar and there was no living creature and no chain nor any other visible evidence of the presence which had clanked so lugubriously out of the dark depths during the vanished night. The boy breathed a heartfelt sigh of relief and Bridge laughed, not without a note of relief either.

"You see there is nothing," he said--"nothing except some firewood which we can use to advantage. I regret that James is not here to attend me; but since he is not you and I will have to carry some of this stuff upstairs," and together they returned to the floor above, their arms laden with pieces of the dilapidated milk rack. The girl was awaiting them at the head of the stairs while the two tramps whispered together at the opposite side of the room.