THE Mystery of the Locks

BY E. W. HOWE

AUTHOR OF "THE STORY OF A COUNTRY TOWN"

BOSTON
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY
1885

Copyright, 1885,
By James R. Osgood and Company.

All Rights Reserved.

C. J. Peters and Son,
Electrotypers.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I. The Town of Dark Nights
CHAPTER II. The Locks
CHAPTER III. The Face at the Window
CHAPTER IV. Davy's Bend
CHAPTER V. A Troubled Fancy
CHAPTER VI. Pictures in the Fire
CHAPTER VII. The Locks' Ghost
CHAPTER VIII. A Remarkable Girl
CHAPTER IX. The "Apron and Password"
CHAPTER X. Tug Whittle's Booty
CHAPTER XI. The Whispers in the Air
CHAPTER XII. Ruined by Kindness
CHAPTER XIII. The Rebellion of the Baritone
CHAPTER XIV. The Ancient Maiden
CHAPTER XV. A Shot at the Shadow
CHAPTER XVI. The Step on the Stair
CHAPTER XVII. The Pursuing Shadow
CHAPTER XVIII. The Rise in the River
CHAPTER XIX. Mr. Whittle makes a Confession
CHAPTER XX. The Search in the Woods
CHAPTER XXI. Little Ben
CHAPTER XXII. Tug's Return
CHAPTER XXIII. The Going Down of the Sun

By the Same Author.

THE MYSTERY OF THE LOCKS.

CHAPTER I.

THE TOWN OF DARK NIGHTS.

Davy's Bend—a river town, a failing town, and an old town, on a dark night, with a misty rain falling, and the stars hiding from the dangerous streets and walks of the failing town down by the sluggish river which seems to be hurrying away from it, too, like its institutions and its people, and as the light of the wretched day that has just closed hurried away from it a few hours since.

The darkness is so intense that the people who look out of their windows are oppressed from staring at nothing, for the shadows are obliterated, and for all they know there may be great caverns in the streets, filled with water from the rising river, and vagabond debris on their front steps. It occurs to one of them who opens the blind to his window a moment, and looks out (and who notices incidentally that the rays from his lamp seem afraid to venture far from the casement) that a hard crust will form somewhere above the town, up where there is light for the living, and turn the people of Davy's Bend into rocks as solid as those thousands of feet below, which thought affects him so much that he closes his blinds and shutters tighter than before, determined that his rooms shall become caves.

The rain comes down steadily, plashing into little pools in the road with untiring energy, where it joins other vagrant water, and creeps off at last into the gutter, into the rivulet, and into the river, where it joins the restless tide which is always hurrying away from Davy's Bend, and bubbles and foams with joy.

The citizen who observed the intense blackness of the night comes to his window again, and notes the steady falling of the rain, and in his reverie pretends to regret that it is not possible for the water to come up until his house will float away like an ark, that he may get rid of living in a place where the nights are so dark and wet that he cannot sleep for thinking of them. When he returns to his chair, and attempts to read, the pattering rain is so persistent on the roof and at the windows that the possibility of a flood occurs to his mind, and he thinks with satisfaction that, should it come to pass, Davy's Bend would at last be as well off as