Andre Norton Super Pack. Andre Norton

that’s what you really think of me!” observed Rupert. “Go reason with that wildcat of yours if you want to. I’m beginning to believe that you are two of a kind.” He turned abruptly down the hall.

      Val opened the door of the bedroom. The sunlight was fading fast and already the corners of the large room were filled with the gray of dusk. But light from the windows swept full across the bed and its occupant. Val hobbled stiffly toward it.

      “Hello.” The brown face on the pillow did not change expression as Val greeted the swamper. “How do you feel now?”

      “Bettah,” Jeems answered shortly. “Ah’m good but they won’t le’ me up.”

      “The Doc says you’re in for a couple of days,” Val told him.

      Somehow Jeems looked smaller, shrunken, as he lay in that oversized bed. And he had lost that air of indolent arrogance which had made him seem so independent in their swamp and garden meetings. It was as if Val were looking down upon a younger and less confident edition of the swamper he had known.

      “What does he think?” There was urgency in that question.

      “Who’s he?”

      “Yo’ brothah.”

      “Rupert? Why, he’s glad to have you here,” Val answered.

      “Does he know ‘bout—”

      Val shook his head.

      “Tell him!” ordered the swamper. “Ah ain’t a-goin’ to stay undah his ruff lessen he knows. ‘Tain’t fitten.”

      At this clean-cut statement of the laws of hospitality, Val nodded. “All right. I’ll tell him. But what were you after here, Jeems? I’ll have to tell him that, too, you know. Was it the Civil War treasure?”

      Jeems turned his head slowly. “No.” Again the puzzled frown twisted his straight, finely marked brows. “What do Ah want wi’ treasure? Ah don’t know what Ah was lookin’ fo’. Mah grandpappy—”

      “Val, supper’s ready,” came Rupert’s voice from the hall.

      Val half turned to go. “I’ve got to go now. But I’ll be back later,” he promised.

      “Yo’ll tell him?” Jeems stabbed a finger at the door.

      “Yes; after supper. I promise.”

      With a little sigh Jeems relaxed and burrowed down into the softness of the pillow. “Ah’ll be awaitin’,” he said.

      On Such a Night as This—

       It had been on of those dull, weepy days when a sullen drizzle clouded sky and earth. In consequence, the walls and floors of Pirate’s Haven seemed to exude chill. Rupert built a fire in the hall fireplace, but none of the family could say that it was a successful one. It made a nice show of leaping flame accompanied by fancy lighting effects but gave forth absolutely no heat.

      “Val?”

      The boy started guiltily and thrust his note-book under the couch cushion as Charity came in. Tiny drops of rain were strung along the hairs which had blown free of her rain-cape hood like steel beads along a golden wire.

      “Yes? Don’t come here expecting to get warm,” he warned her bitterly. “We are very willing but the fire is weak. Looks pretty, doesn’t it?” He kicked at a charred end on the hearth. “Well, that’s all it’s good for!”

      “Val, what sort of a mess have you and Jeems jumped into?” she asked as she handed him her dripping cape.

      “Oh, just a general sort of mess,” he answered lightly. “Jeems had callers who forgot their manners. So Ricky and I breezed in and brought the party to a sudden end—”

      “As I can see by your black eye,” she commented. “But what has Jeems been up to?”

      Val was suddenly very busy holding her cape before that mockery of a blaze.

      “Why don’t you ask him that?”

      “Because I’m asking you. Rupert came over last night and sat on my gallery making very roundabout inquiries concerning Jeems. I pried out of him the details of your swamp battle. But I want to know now just what Jeems has been doing. Your brother is so vague—”

      “Rupert has the gift of being exasperatingly uncommunicative,” his brother told her. “The story, so far as I know, is short and simple. Jeems knows a secret way into this house. In addition, his grandfather told him that the fortune of the house of Jeems is concealed here—having been very hazy in his description of the nature of said fortune. Consequently, grandson has been playing haunt up and down our halls trying to find it.