The Whispering Mountain Read Online Free Page A

over the door. Here another notice, fresh-painted, announced that the museum was open from 10 am to 5 pm every day except for the Sabbath, St. David’s Day, St. Ennodawg’s Day, Christmas, Easter, and various other public holidays. It was signed O. Hughes, Custodian. The light above was just bright enough also to reveal some words chalked on the wall under the sign. They said:
    GIVE US BACK OUR SABBATH OPENING! DOWN WITH SLEEPERS’ TICKETS!
    Looking desperately worried, Owen began wiping this message off the wall with his handkerchief, while Arabis exhorted her father,
    â€œCome you now, Tom! Don’t you want to meet Owen’s Granda?”
    â€œOh, well, now, I don’t know,” Mr. Dando said doubtfully, struggling out of his dream. “Meet his grandfather? What for? Do we really want to do that? Eh? More to the purpose, does he want to meet us?”
    â€œOf course!” Arabis gave him an impatient shake and pulled him down, straightening his cloak and putting him to rights. Dislodged from his box he was revealed as an unusually tall, thin man, with wild dark locks beginning to turn grey, and deep-set eyes in a long, vague, preoccupied face.
    Owen by this time had opened the heavy outer doors of the museum and stepped into a large porch. Here he found another damp sheet of paper lying on the floor which,
when he held it towards the light, proved to bear the message:
    LEAVE THIS TOWN, OWEN HUGHES, WE DON’T WANT YOU
    Without a word he folded it small and thrust it into his jacket pocket. Arabis and her father, who came up at this moment, had noticed nothing. Owen pulled on a bell-rope, which hung by the locked inner door, and they all waited, shivering in the damp darkness.
    Owen’s qualm was growing inside him faster than a thundercloud. How would his grandfather receive the visitors?
    He was to discover soon enough.
    The inner door flew open as if it had been jerked by a wire. His grandfather stood just inside, peering angrily out into the gloom.
    â€œIs that you, boy?” he said sharply. “You are over an hour late from school. What kept you, pray? You knew that I particularly required you to be on time today. I will not have such unpunctuality—I have told you before!”
    â€œI—I am sorry,” Owen stammered, “but, you see—’
    â€œCall me sir, or Grandfather! Well! What explanation have you to offer? I suppose you have been idling and playing and wasting time with your classmates.”
    Captain Owen Hughes—or Mr. Hughes, as he preferred to be called, saying there was no sense in using bygone titles—was a smallish, spare, dried-up old gentleman with pepper-and-salt grey hair, worn in a short peruke and tied with a black velvet bow. He had on a jacket and pantaloons
of grey alpaca, exceedingly neat, but shabby. His linen, however, was white as frost, and the buckles on his old-fashioned shoes and his eyes behind his rimless pincenez were needle-bright.
    â€œSir, I m-met the kind friends who carried me all the way to Gloucester last summer. I have brought them to see you—” Owen began again.
    â€œFriends!” exclaimed his grandfather harshly. “I thought you said they were a travelling tinker, or bonesetter, and his gypsy daughter? How can such lower-deck sort of folk be friends?”
    â€œGrandfather—please!” Owen was in agony. “You must not speak of them so! Here they are, Mr. Dando and Arabis—’
    â€œTush, boy, I have no time for them now, or ever. I have an important appointment at the inn and must delay no longer. But I can tell you this: when I return you shall be punished for your tardiness—soundly punished.” He shook himself impatiently into a frieze greatcoat and picked up a shovel-hat and cane, muttering, “Arabis, forsooth! What kind of an unchristian name is that?”
    â€œBut sir, they are here now, in the porch!”
    â€œThen they will just have to