Learning Ansible 2 2nd Edition Fabio Alessandro Locati
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- 5. Learning Ansible 2 Second Edition
- 6. Table of Contents Learning Ansible 2 Second Edition Credits About the Author About the Reviewer www.PacktPub.com Why subscribe? Preface What this book covers What you need for this book Who this book is for Conventions Reader feedback Customer support Downloading the example code Errata Piracy Questions 1. Getting Started with Ansible IT automation The history of IT automation Advantages of IT automation Disadvantages of IT automation Limiting the possible damages of an error propagation Types of IT automation Agent-based systems Agent-less systems Agent-based versus Agent-less systems What is Ansible? Secure Shell (SSH) Why Ansible? Installing Ansible Installing Ansible using the system's package manager Installing via Yum Installing via Apt Installing via Homebrew Installing via pip Installing Ansible from source Creating a test environment with QEMU and KVM Version control system Using Ansible with Git Summary 2. Automating Simple Tasks YAML
- 7. Hello Ansible Working with playbooks Studying the anatomy of a playbook Running a playbook Ansible verbosity Variables in playbooks Creating the Ansible user Configuring a basic server Enabling EPEL Installing Python bindings for SELinux Upgrading all installed packages Ensuring that NTP is installed, configured, and running Ensuring that FirewallD is present and enabled Adding a customized MOTD Changing the hostname Reviewing and running the playbook Installing and configuring a web server Publishing a website Jinja2 templates Variables Filters Conditionals Cycles Summary 3. Scaling to Multiple Hosts Working with inventory files The basic inventory file Groups in an inventory file Regular expressions in the inventory file Working with variables Host variables Group variables Variable files Overriding configuration parameters with an inventory file Working with dynamic inventory Amazon Web Services DigitalOcean Working with iterates in Ansible Standard iteration - with_items Nested loops - with_nested Fileglobs loop - with_fileglobs Integer loop - with_sequence Summary 4. Handling Complex Deployment Working with the local_action feature Delegating a task Working with conditionals
- 8. Boolean conditionals Checking if a variable is set Working with include Working with handlers Working with roles Project organization Anatomy of a role Transforming your playbooks in a full Ansible project Transforming a playbook into a role Helper files Transforming the webserver role Handlers in roles Execution strategies Tasks blocks The Ansible template - Jinja filters Formatting data using filters Using filters with conditionals Defaulting undefined variables Security management Using Ansible vault Vaults and playbooks Encrypting user passwords Hiding passwords Using no_log Summary 5. Going Cloud Provisioning resources in the cloud Amazon Web Service AWS global infrastructure AWS Simple Storage Service AWS Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) AWS Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) AWS Route 53 AWS Elastic Block Storage (EBS) AWS Identity and Access Management Amazon relational database service Setting up an account with AWS Simple AWS deployment Complex AWS deployment DigitalOcean Droplets SSH key management Private networking Adding an SSH key in DigitalOcean Deployment in DigitalOcean Summary 6. Getting Notifications from Ansible
- 9. E-mails XMPP Slack Rocket Chat Internet Relay Chat (IRC) Amazon Simple Notification Service Nagios Summary 7. Creating a Custom Module Using Python modules Working with exit_json and fail_json Testing Python modules Using bash modules Using Ruby modules Testing modules Summary 8. Debugging and Error Handling The check mode Indicating differences between files using --diff Functional testing in Ansible Functional testing using assert Testing with tags The --skip-tags Managing exceptions Trigger failure Summary 9. Complex Environments Code based on the Git branch A single stable branch with multiple folders Software distribution strategy Copying files from the local machine Revision control system with branches Revision control system with tags RPM packages Preparing the environment Deploying a web app with revision control systems Deploying a web app with RPM packages Creating a Spec file Building RPMs manually Building RPMs with Ansible Building RPMs with CI/CD pipelines Building compiled software with RPM packaging Deployment strategies Canary deployment Blue/Green deployment Optimizations Pipelining
- 10. Optimizing with_items Understanding what happens when your tasks are executed Summary 10. Introducing Ansible for Enterprises Ansible on Windows Ansible for networking devices Ansible Galaxy Ansible Tower Summary
- 11. Learning Ansible 2 Second Edition
- 12. Learning Ansible 2 Second Edition Copyright © 2016 Packt Publishing All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews. Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book. Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information. First published: November 2014 Second edition: November 2016 Production reference: 1161116 Published by Packt Publishing Ltd. Livery Place 35 Livery Street Birmingham B3 2PB, UK. ISBN 978-1-78646-423-1 www.packtpub.com
- 13. Credits Authors Fabio Alessandro Locati Copy Editor Madhusudan Uchil Reviewers Tim Rupp Project Coordinator Judie Jose Commissioning Editor Pratik Shah Proofreader Safis Editing Acquisition Editor Divya Poojari Indexer Pratik Shirodkar Content Development Editor Amedh Gemraram Pohad Graphics Kirk D'Penha Technical Editor Vishal Kamal Mewada Production Coordinator Shantanu N. Zagade
- 14. About the Author Fabio Alessandro Locati is a senior consultant at Red Hat, public speaker, author, and open source contributor. His main areas of expertise are Linux, security, cloud technologies, and automation. With more than 10 years of working experience in the field, he has experience in different IT roles, technologies, and languages. He has worked for many different companies, starting from a one-man company to huge companies such as Tech Data and Samsung. This has allowed him to consider various technologies from different points of view, helping him develop critical thinking and swiftly understand whether a particular technology is the right fit for a specific project. Since he is always looking for better technologies, he also tries new technologies to understand their advantages over the old ones as well as their maturity status. One of the most important things he evaluates about a technology is its internal security and the possibility of adding security through configuration or interaction with other technologies. In his work and to manage his own machines, he has used Ansible since 2013. He often gives talks about his work, the projects he helps with in his spare time, and his vision of the IT and security worlds. He is the author of the book OpenStack Cloud Security, Packt Publishing. In his spare time, he helps out on the Fedora Project as well as Wikimedia and Open Street Map. You can find more about him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/fabiolocati/en and at https://fale.io/. I would like to thank my parents, who introduced me to computer science before I was even able to write, and my whole family, who has always been supportive. A special thanks goes to everyone I worked with at Packt Publishing for their hard work and to Tim Rupp for his great feedbacks. Since Ansible is an open source project, I thank all companies that decided to invest into it as well as all people that decided to volunteer their time to the project.
- 15. About the Reviewer Tim Rupp has been working in various fields of computing for the last 10 years. He has held positions in computer security, software engineering, and, most recently, in the fields of cloud computing and DevOps. He was first introduced to Ansible while at Rackspace. As part of the cloud engineering team, he made extensive use of the tool to deploy new capacity for the Rackspace public cloud. Since then, he has contributed patches, provided support for, and presented on Ansible topics at local meetups. Tim is currently a senior software engineer at F5 Networks, where he works on data plane programmability. He is particularly interested in automation and orchestration surrounding F5 products and is the maintainer of the BIG-IP modules in Ansible.
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- 17. Preface The information technology sector is a fast-moving sector that always tries to accelerate. To keep up with this, companies need to be able to move quickly and iterate frequently. Until a few years back, this was mainly true for software, but now we start to see the necessity to change infrastructures at similar speed. Going forward, we will need to change the infrastructure we run our software on at the speed of the software itself. In this scenario, many technologies, such as software-defined everything (storage, network, compute, what have you), will be key, but those technologies need to be managed in an equally scalable way, and that way will be using Ansible and similar products. Ansible is highly relevant today since, differently from competing products, it is agentless, allowing faster deployments, more security, and better auditability. What this book covers Chapter 1, Getting Started with Ansible, explains how to install Ansible. Chapter 2, Automating Simple Tasks, explains how to create simple playbooks that will allow you to automate some simple tasks that you already perform on a daily basis. Chapter 3, Scaling to Multiple Hosts, explains how to handle multiple hosts in Ansible in an easy-to- scale way. Chapter 4, Handling Complex Deployment, explains how to create deployments that have multiple phases as well as multiple machines. Chapter 5, Going Cloud, explains how Ansible can integrate with various cloud offering and how it can simplify your life, managing the cloud for you. Chapter 6, Getting Notifications from Ansible, explains how to set up Ansible to return valuable information to you and other stakeholders. Chapter 7, Creating a Custom Module, explains how to create a custom module to leverage the freedom Ansible gives you. Chapter 8, Debugging and Error Handling, explains how to debug and test Ansible to ensure that your playbooks will always work. Chapter 9, Complex Environments, explains how to manage multiple tiers, multiple environments, and deployments with Ansible. Chapter 10, Introducing Ansible for Enterprises, explains how to manage Windows nodes from Ansible as well as how to leverage Ansible Galaxy and Ansible Tower to maximize your productivity.
- 18. What you need for this book This book is written to work with all Linux distributions. Since it’s not practical to always give the same information for all possible distributions, the example commands are for Fedora on the controller machine and CentOS on the controlled machines, if not stated. Experienced users with other distributions will have no problem in translating the commands for their own preferred distribution.
- 19. Who this book is for The book is for developers and sysadmins who want to automate their organization’s infrastructure using Ansible 2. No prior knowledge of Ansible is required.
- 20. Conventions In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning. Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "The ec2.py file will create multiple groups based on the region, availability zone, tags, and so on." A block of code is set as follows: --- - hosts: all remote_user: ansible vars: users: - alice - bob folders: - mail - public_html When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold: --- - hosts: all remote_user: ansible vars: users: - alice - bob folders: - mail - public_html Any command-line input or output is written as follows: $ ansible-playbook -i test01.fale.io, webserver.yaml New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "Clicking the Next button moves you to the next screen." Note Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.
- 21. Tip Tips and tricks appear like this.
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- 25. Chapter 1. Getting Started with Ansible ICT is often described as a fast-growing industry. I think the best quality of the ICT industry is not related to its ability to grow at a super high speed, but to its ability to revolutionize itself and the rest of the world at an astonishing speed. Every 10 to 15 years there are major shifts in how this industry works and every shift solves problems that were very hard to manage up to that point, creating new challenges. Also, at every major shift, many best practices of the previous iteration are classified as anti-patterns and new best practices are created. Although it might appear that those changes are impossible to predict, this is not always true. Obviously, it is not possible to know exactly what changes will occur and when they will take place, but looking at companies with a large number of servers and many lines of code usually reveals what the next steps will be. The current shift has already happened in big companies like Amazon Web Services, Facebook, and Google. It is the implementation of IT automation systems to create and manage servers. In this chapter we will cover: • IT automation • What is Ansible? • The secure shell • Installing Ansible • Creating a test environment with QEMU and KVM • Version control system • Using Ansible with Git IT automation IT automation is in its larger sense—the processes and software that help with the management of the IT infrastructure (servers, networking, and storage). In the current shift, we are assisting to a huge implementation of such processes and software. The history of IT automation At the beginning of IT history, there were very few servers and a lot of people were needed to make them work properly, usually more than one person for each machine. Over the years, servers became more reliable and easier to manage so it was possible to have multiple servers managed by a single system administrator. In that period, the administrators manually installed the software, upgraded the software manually, and changed the configuration files manually. This was obviously a very labor- intensive and error-prone process, so many administrators started to implement scripts and other means to make their life easier. Those scripts were (usually) pretty complex and they did not scale very well. In the early years of this century, data centers started to grow a lot due to companies' needs. Virtualization helped in keeping prices low and the fact that many of these services were web services, meant that many servers were very similar to each other. At this point, new tools were needed to substitute the scripts that were used before, the configuration management tools.
- 26. CFEngine was one of the first tools to demonstrate configuration management capabilities way back in the 1990s; more recently, there has been Puppet, Chef, and Salt, besides Ansible. Advantages of IT automation People often wonder if IT automation really brings enough advantages considering that implementing it has some direct and indirect costs. The main advantages of IT automation are: • Ability to provision machines quickly • Ability to recreate a machine from scratch in minutes • Ability to track any change performed on the infrastructure For these reasons, it's possible to reduce the cost of managing the IT infrastructure by reducing the repetitive operations often performed by system administrators. Disadvantages of IT automation As with any other technology, IT automation does come with some disadvantages. From my point of view these are the biggest disadvantages: • Automating all of the small tasks that were once used to train new system administrators • If an error is performed, it will be propagated everywhere The consequence of the first is that new ways to train junior system administrators will need to be implemented. Limiting the possible damages of an error propagation The second one is trickier. There are a lot of ways to limit this kind of damage, but none of those will prevent it completely. The following mitigation options are available: • Always have backups: Backups will not prevent you from nuking your machine; they will only make the restore process possible. • Always test your infrastructure code (playbooks/roles) in a non-production environment: Companies have developed different pipelines to deploy code and those usually include environments such as dev, test, staging, and production. Use the same pipeline to test your infrastructure code. If a buggy application reaches the production environment it could be a problem. If a buggy playbook reaches the production environment, it could be catastrophic. • Always peer-review your infrastructure code: Some companies have already introduced peer- reviews for the application code, but very few have introduced it for the infrastructure code. As I was saying in the previous point, I think infrastructure code is way more critical than application code, so you should always peer-review your infrastructure code, whether you do it for your application code or not. • Enable SELinux: SELinux is a security kernel module that is available on all Linux distributions (it is installed by default on Fedora, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, Scientific Linux, and Unbreakable Linux). It allows you to limit users and process powers in a very granular way. I suggest using SELinux instead of other similar modules (such as AppArmor) because it is able to handle more situations and permissions. SELinux will prevent a huge
- 27. amount of damage because, if correctly configured, it will prevent many dangerous commands from being executed. • Run the playbooks from a limited account: Even though user and privilege escalation schemes have been in UNIX code for more than 40 years, it seems as if not many companies use them. Using a limited user for all your playbooks, and escalating privileges only for commands that need higher privileges will help prevent you nuking a machine while trying to clean an application temporary folder. • Use horizontal privilege escalation: The sudo is a well-known command but is often used in its more dangerous form. The sudo command supports the '-u' parameter that will allow you to specify a user that you want to impersonate. If you have to change a file that is owned by another user, please do not escalate to root to do so, just escalate to that user. In Ansible, you can use the become_user parameter to achieve this. • When possible, don't run a playbook on all your machines at the same time: Staged deployments can help you detect a problem before it's too late. There are many problems that are not detectable in a dev, test, staging, and qa environment. The majority of them are related to load that is hard to emulate properly in those non-production environments. A new configuration you have just added to your Apache HTTPd or MySQL servers could be perfectly OK from a syntax point of view, but disastrous for your specific application under your production load. A staged deployment will allow you to test your new configuration on your actual load without risking downtime if something was wrong. • Avoid guessing commands and modifiers: A lot of system administrators will try to remember the right parameter and try to guess if they don't remember it exactly. I've done it too, a lot of times, but this is very risky. Checking the man page or the online documentation will usually take you less than two minutes and often, by reading the manual, you'll find interesting notes you did not know. Guessing modifiers is dangerous because you could be fooled by a non- standard modifier (that is, -v is not the verbose mode for grep and -h is not the help command for the MySQL CLI). • Avoid error-prone commands: Not all commands have been created equally. Some commands are (way) more dangerous than others. If you can assume a cat command safe, you have to assume that a dd command is dangerous, since dd perform copies and conversion of files and volumes. I've seen people using dd in scripts to transform DOS files to UNIX (instead of dos2unix) and many other, very dangerous, examples. Please, avoid such commands, because they could result in a huge disaster if something goes wrong. • Avoid unnecessary modifiers: If you need to delete a simple file, use rm ${file} not rm - rf ${file}. The latter is often performed by users that have learned that; "to be sure, always use rm -rf", because at some time in their past, they have had to delete a folder. This will prevent you from deleting an entire folder if the ${file} variable is set wrongly. • Always check what could happen if a variable is not set: If you want to delete the contents of a folder and you use the rm -rf ${folder}/* command, you are looking for trouble. If the ${folder} variable is not set for some reason, the shell will read a rm -rf /* command, which is deadly (considering the fact that the rm -rf / command will not work on the majority of current OSes because it requires a --no-preserve-root option, while rm -rf /* will work as expected). I'm using this specific command as an example because I have seen such situations: the variable was pulled from a database which, due to some maintenance work, was down and an empty string was assigned to that variable. What happened next is probably easy to guess. In case you cannot prevent using variables in dangerous places, at least
- 28. check them to see if they are not empty before using them. This will not save you from every problem but may catch some of the most common ones. • Double check your redirections: Redirections (along with pipes) are the most powerful elements of Linux shells. They could also be very dangerous: a cat /dev/rand > /dev/ sda command can destroy a disk even if a cat command is usually overlooked because it's not usually dangerous. Always double-check all commands that include a redirection. • Use specific modules wherever possible: In this list I've used shell commands because many people will try to use Ansible as if it's just a way to distribute them: it's not. Ansible provides a lot of modules and we'll see them in this book. They will help you create more readable, portable, and safe playbooks. Types of IT automation There are a lot of ways to classify IT automation systems, but by far the most important is related to how the configurations are propagated. Based on this, we can distinguish between agent-based systems and agent-less systems. Agent-based systems Agent-based systems have two different components: a server and a client called agent. There is only one server and it contains all of the configuration for your whole environment, while the agents are as many as the machines in the environment. Note In some cases, more than one server could be present to ensure high availability, but treat it as if it's a single server, since they will all be configured in the same way. Periodically, client will contact the server to see if a new configuration for its machine is present. If a new configuration is present, the client will download it and apply it. Agent-less systems In agent-less systems, no specific agent is present. Agent-less systems do not always respect the server/ client paradigm, since it's possible to have multiple servers and even the same number of servers and clients . Communications are initialized by the server that will contact the client(s) using standard protocols (usually via SSH and PowerShell). Agent-based versus Agent-less systems Aside from the differences outlined above, there are other contrasting factors which arise because of those differences. From a security standpoint, an agent-based system can be less secure. Since all machines have to be able to initiate a connection to the server machine, this machine could be attacked more easily than in an agent-less case where the machine is usually behind a firewall that will not accept any incoming connections.
- 29. From a performance point of view, agent-based systems run the risk of having the server saturated and therefore the roll-out could be slower. It also needs to be considered that, in a pure agent-based system, it is not possible to force-push an update immediately to a set of machines. It will have to wait until those machines check-in. For this reason, multiple agent-based systems have implemented out-of-bands wait to implement such feature. Tools such as Chef and Puppet are agent-based but can also run without a centralized server to scale a large number of machines, commonly called Serverless Chef and Masterless Puppet, respectively. An agent-less system is easier to integrate in an infrastructure that is already present, since it will be seen by the clients as a normal SSH connection and therefore no additional configuration is needed.
- 30. What is Ansible? Ansible is an agent-less IT automation tool developed in 2012 by Michael DeHaan, a former Red Hat associate. The Ansible design goals are for it to be: minimal, consistent, secure, highly reliable, and easy to learn. The Ansible company has recently been bought out by Red Hat and now operates as part of Red Hat, Inc. Ansible primarily runs in push mode using SSH, but you can also run Ansible using ansible-pull, where you can install Ansible on each agent, download the playbooks locally, and run them on individual machines. If there is a large number of machines (large is a relative term; in our view, greater than 500 and requiring parallel updates), and you plan to deploy updates to the machines in parallel, this might be the right way to go about it.
- 31. Secure Shell (SSH) Secure Shell (also known as SSH) is a network service that allows you to login and access a shell remotely in a fully encrypted connection. The SSH daemon is today, the standard for UNIX system administration, after having replaced the unencrypted telnet. The most frequently used implementation of the SSH protocol is OpenSSH. In the last few months, Microsoft has shown an implementation (at the time of writing) of OpenSSH for Windows. Since Ansible performs SSH connections and commands in the same way any other SSH client would do, no specific configuration has been applied to the OpenSSH server. To speed up default SSH connections, you can always enable ControlPersist and the pipeline mode, which makes Ansible faster and secure.
- 32. Why Ansible? We will try and compare Ansible with Puppet and Chef during the course of this book since many people have good experience with those tools. We will also point out specifically how Ansible would solve a problem compared to Chef or Puppet. Ansible, as well as Puppet and Chef, are declarative in nature and are expected to move a machine to the desired state specified in the configuration. For example, in each of these tools, in order to start a service at a point in time and start it automatically on restart, you would need to write a declarative block or module; every time the tool runs on the machine, it will aspire to obtain the state defined in your playbook (Ansible), cookbook (Chef), or manifest (Puppet). The difference in the toolset is minimal at a simple level but as more situations arise and the complexity increases, you will start finding differences between the different toolsets. In Puppet, you need to take care of the order, and the Puppet server will create the sequence of instructions to execute every time you run it on a different box. To exploit the power of Chef, you will need a good Ruby team. Your team needs to be good at the Ruby language to customize both Puppet and Chef, and there will be a bigger learning curve with both of the tools. With Ansible, the case is different. It uses the simplicity of Chef when it comes to the order of execution, the top-to-bottom approach, and allows you to define the end state in YAML format, which makes the code extremely readable and easy for everyone, from development teams to operations teams, to pick up and make changes. In many cases, even without Ansible, operations teams are given playbook manuals to execute instructions from, whenever they face issues. Ansible mimics that behavior. Do not be surprised if you end up having your project manager change the code in Ansible and check it into Git because of its simplicity!
- 33. Another Random Scribd Document with Unrelated Content
- 34. “Yes, Jean; but they are not out of shape at least.” “No, just rough and her finger-nails are all broken. I suppose the washing does it and I don’t know what else she does, but she happened to speak of doing that. She had a big bundle of clothes in the boat last evening. How are we going to manage this, Molly?” “What do you mean, Jean?” “Why, if you tell her before us, won’t she feel worse? Suppose Nan and I make some excuse and leave you with her?” “Oh, no, Jean—please! I need support; and besides, she admires you most of all. I can tell. You just slip an arm around her if she needs one!” “We’d better give her her breakfast first, for fear she’ll be too stirred up to eat,” Nan suggested. “Good idea, Nan. Your head is always level.” “Then if that’s so, I’d better see about the breakfast. You go down to meet her, Jean.” Nan and Molly hurried in, while Jean went down to the little dock to welcome their guest. “I was a little afraid you might not come, Greta, for it looks so much like a storm,” said Jean, while Greta was fastening her boat securely. “I think that I would have come in a storm, if there had been no other way. But it is a good thing that I was to come early, I suppose.” “Molly and Nan went in to hurry up the breakfast. We had the milk heated and the bacon cooked. There will be just us four to have
- 35. breakfast together. Grace took the rest on a breakfast hike, but I’m afraid that they’re going to get caught in a storm if they don’t hurry back. We have two girls from our town visiting us and that is the reason for the trip. They are crazy to do everything and we are crazy to show them everything we do. Nobody slept much last night.” “I’m afraid that you wanted to go with the other girls,” thoughtfully said Greta. “Oh, no. Especially after Molly told us what she wants to tell you, —and we did not mention it to the rest. But we’ll forget that now and have a jolly good breakfast if we can. I’m not sure but ice-cold lemonade would be better than hot cocoa in this kind of weather,— funny to have a hot night on our lake.” If the cocoa was hot, it was bracing to Greta. She sat at the yellow and brown and white table, on a yellow, brown and white chair and had her bacon and eggs served on the yellow dishes decorated with daisies. “We are sibyls in our club,” Molly explained, “and our colors are yellow and white, but we aren’t what the boys call ‘yellow,’ for our motto is ‘sans peur,’ that means ‘without fear,’ and we’ve already discovered that to have courage is one of the most necessary things anywhere. Mine was at a low ebb last night, I can tell you, but this morning I’m all braced up.” Jean looked at Molly with amused affection. She understood how Molly dreaded to tell Greta what she must. Greta was bright enough to have an inkling of what Molly meant. Her own courage was sinking, and had been all night. What had Molly heard? What new and dreadful thing might she have to meet at home? Jacob Klein had not come home the night before. Perhaps it was something about him. But the breakfast was good and the girls were kind and interesting. She did not seem to feel awkward with managing to eat before them. Her mother had always made fun of her “fussy ways,”
- 36. as her German expressions meant. A good breeze was blowing through the big room and making them all more comfortable. After the meal the girls left the table as it was and took Greta outdoors to a nook among the trees where they had fixed a rope swing and some seats out of logs. On one of these they sat down, though Nan presently jumped up, saying that she’d better clear the table, for the whole lot of girls would be back soon, she thought. They all looked at the gathering clouds. The storm seemed to be a long time coming. Perhaps it would pass around them. In any event, Molly was thinking how she would tell Greta and Greta was more interested in what she was to hear than in the storm. “Greta,” began Molly, “does Mrs. Klein treat you kindly?” Greta’s dark eyes looked soberly into Molly’s. “I’d rather not say,” she replied. “Yes, I will, too. It is a chance to tell some one. My mother was good to me for a long time after I had a bad sickness, and forgot things, they said. Then she changed and although she would never let Jacob Klein abuse me, she can’t care much for me or she would never put the heaviest work on me, even when she is well enough to help more. I want to go away from home to work, and I thought that perhaps you girls could help me find a way, to help some one with any kind of work; and then I could send the money home to my mother and the children. I heard her say when they were quarreling, after Jacob Klein threw me against the tubs and hurt my head, that he must leave me alone and that I was not his child.” All this came tumbling out rapidly, as if Greta had planned it, which was not the case. It was only that she was so full of her unhappiness and puzzles. “Did you ever think that perhaps you were not her child either?” Greta looked startled. Then she said, slowly, “I thought that she might have been married before and that my father might have had
- 37. dark eyes like mine. All the rest have blue eyes and light hair, if you noticed, and the horse-doctor that came to look after me as well as the horse asked my mother where she found a little girl with brown eyes. He was joking, but my mother didn’t like it and said that families were not always of one complexion, or something like that. She talks mostly German.” “I know,” answered Molly, who had heard her. “I understand German, for we had a good woman that helped us for a long time when one of the children was little and Mother was not strong. She started me because she loved to talk her own language with some one, and I’ve kept it up. But you haven’t a bit of a German accent and talk English as well as we do. How does it happen?” “That is what I have been wondering about for a long time. After this sickness I had to be taught German, but could talk English. My mother said that I had been bewitched,—that is what it would mean in English. She taught me to read the German newspapers that Jacob Klein has,—I haven’t called him Father since I found he wasn’t my father. Then I found an old German Bible that I supposed was my great-grandmother’s, from the date in it; but it was Jacob’s grandmother’s, of course. There is better German in that, and it has been a help,—to stand things, I mean.” Greta’s eyes filled with tears, but she dashed them away, saying, “I’m sorry to complain this way to you. Please do not tell any one.” “I can’t promise that,” smiled Molly, “but if you feel the same way after I tell you a few things,—all right. But don’t you remember anything that happened before this time that you were sick?” “I know that I have been at school somewhere, and that I have seen people like you somewhere and of course I am feeling pretty sure that there is something queer about all this. Why should I know these things if I had always been with these people? Yet it has been pretty well told me all about my mother’s people and how my aunt Gretchen always thought so much of me before she died and how
- 38. my grandmother said I would make a good little worker and would help my mother.” Greta stopped with a whimsical smile. “I have, all right,” she added, “but I have had a chance to talk English every summer with the people that come to the cottages at the other end of the lake, and this summer a lady gave me a lovely book, all about girls like you.” “Thank you for telling us about yourself, Greta. Now let me tell you what I heard this woman that you have been living with say.” “‘This woman that you have been living with’?” thought Greta. “What does this girl mean?” “She did not say much, and in the simplest German, but she said enough to make me listen to the rest,” continued Molly, going on to describe the scene, telling how the girls happened to stop at the place. “Yes, that was Mother,” said Greta in reply to Molly’s question, after a detailed description of the woman whom she had seen. “Well,” said Molly, “I saw a large stone by some bushes. There was a sort of tangle in that corner of the yard, near a pasture fence.” Greta nodded. She knew. “There was an old lilac bush and a syringa bush in my way, but I peeped around them to see who was crying and if anybody needed help. But here this woman was lying, almost on her face, her hands clutching the grass between some little bushes that were planted in a row, Greta. Then it was that I noticed the big stone in the corner and a row of small stones that started from it as if someone had been going to make a flower bed, you know. These all must be to mark the place, Greta. “She was sort of moaning, in German, ‘my Greta, my Greta, my little Greta,’ and then she began to talk to her, just as I was going to slip away, not to intrude; and she wasn’t hurt, I could see. But she went on, ‘Your father never meant to kill you when he hit you that time, and I couldn’t see him hung, could I? So here you are without
- 39. a stone with your name on it and not a prayer said over you when we hid you here!’ She burst out sobbing loudly then, but by that time I thought I ought to hear if she said anything more, and presently she was asking, ‘Wasn’t it better for no one to know, when the little girl came and could take your place, and her people were all dead in the storm?’” Here Jean slipped an arm around Greta, who was leaning toward Molly, listening tensely. “Oh,—then the real Greta is buried there, and I am the little girl!” “Yes,—the ‘kleines Mädchen.’ When I got home last night, Greta, I wrote down every German expression that I could remember, so I could swear to it if necessary. And I lay awake thinking it out nearly half the night. There wasn’t anything else, except that she kept sobbing and repeating the little expressions she had used, Greta’s name, and asking if she blamed her mother. Did you ever think that you might have been kidnapped?” “Yes. I made a wonderful story about myself and then I saw how silly it was. I even belonged to the German or English nobility, though as I couldn’t speak good German the first wasn’t likely. But it must be true that my people are dead in a storm, for anything that my mother said in that way would have to be true. Oh, to think of it! I knew I was different and didn’t belong! I’d rather be all alone than to be the daughter of that man—and poor Mother! She isn’t very bright, girls, just stupid about some things, and loves that dreadful man! What can I do? Oh, thank you, Miss Molly, for caring to tell me about it. It is a wonderful thing for me that you girls came here this summer!” But Greta put her head in her hands, and Jean patted her shoulder. “We’ll have to think it out,” said Jean. “I told Molly that if it happened in an accident, maybe the poor woman wasn’t so bad to want to save her husband. But what was worst was about you, especially since you looked unhappy and tired out. Oh, yes, Molly,
- 40. you forgot to tell Greta one thing, how she said she wasn’t making the girl that took the real Greta’s place have a happy time and was making her work for Greta’s little brother and sister. She has some crazy idea like that!” “As long as that grave is there, it could be proved that I am not Greta, I suppose. At least, they’d have to explain it.” “But perhaps they could take,—take it all away, if they had any hint that you knew,” said Molly. “That is so. I will have to go back and wait. I always wondered why Mother had started a flower-bed and those rose-bushes there, but I never dared ask. I have a memory of a storm in the woods, or it seemed like that.” As Greta spoke, a blinding flash of lightning was followed by a terrific crash of thunder. “My sakes!” exclaimed Jean. “Let’s get inside. Oh, I hope that the girls are almost back!” The three of them had been too much interested in the story which Molly was relating to notice how black the sky had become. Nan rushed to the door to call them, but saw that it was unnecessary. The bolt of lightning so near had been sufficient warning. Greta went to work with them to close all the windows and door and drag the cots in from the sleeping porch. The room presented a disheveled appearance by the time they were through, but they were concerned only with the storm. Jean jumped with the next crash, but Greta, used to taking care of frightened little children in storms, smiled at her and took her hand, “What did you say your motto is?” she asked. “Thanks, Greta. I’ll remember, but I’m terribly uneasy about the girls. If they had taken the boat, they could get away from the trees.” “But look at the lake, Miss Jean.”
- 41. “Just Jean and Molly and Nan, Greta,” said Jean, as she looked out at an angry lake, whipped by a wind. The trees were bending now before a great wind. Whirls of leaves and broken branches began to fly. Then Nan cried, “Here they come,” and ran to open the door for the fleeing girls, who ran through a blinding downpour and against a strong wind. “It’s a regular whirlwind, and I hear a terrible roaring, girls,” said Grace, out of breath. “Is everything closed tight?” Nan, Jean and Molly were using their combined strength to shut the door after the dripping girls had come in, but Greta answered. “We shut up everything, Miss French.” There was nothing to do but to wait results. By this time they all knew that a storm of more than usual intensity was upon them. “‘Sans peur,’ girls,” Grace reminded them, her chin raised and her eyes looking out upon the whirling scene outside. “I’m glad that we reached shelter and are together.” “I’m scared,” said Phoebe, “and I don’t care who knows it!” She was standing by Leigh Dudley, who had drawn a chair into the middle of the room and had sunk into it as quite exhausted after their mad rush through the woods. Leigh reached up with a smile and drew Phoebe down into her lap. “Sit down Phoebe-bird. It doesn’t do any good to be scared, but I’m not feeling any too safe myself.” The two girls cuddled together and shut their eyes, but Jean and Greta stood together, looking out, and Greta whispered, “The good God can save us if it is best.” Not in vain had Greta read that German Bible. Crash went a tree, just hitting the sleeping porch, and the little house shook. But the worst of the storm had passed them by in a few minutes from the time they heard the roaring sound, so rapidly was the work of destruction done. It was wind rather than lightning
- 42. which had been the greatest menace. Pouring rain continued for some time,—and then the sun came out! “Now is the time to be thankful, girls,” said Grace, “but I hope that the boys are all right. If I’m not mistaken, some cyclone went by us and we’ll hear of damage done by it.” Uneasily, the girls went about opening windows, looking out to see what damage had been done to the sleeping porch, or going out into their cleared dooryard to see if their prettiest trees had suffered. Branches lay on the ground, whipped from the trees. It was a small elm that had hit the porch. “Girls, if that tree hadn’t been actually lifted by the wind, I don’t believe it could have reached us,” said Jean. “My father said that they particularly tried to see that no tree could hit us if a storm felled it, no big one, I mean. We have shade enough as it is.” The girls stood looking about. “I’m glad that the boys built their shack in a pretty well cleared place, too,” said Nan, who could scarcely help worrying about Jimmy. Greta was thinking of home and the children. They were often rude to her, in the atmosphere of scolding and criticism which made Greta’s life wretched. But they also depended upon her for a great deal and occasionally, when away from their mother’s disapproval, showed her a little affection, especially the youngest child. Still excited by the character of the storm, the girls ran around in the wet woods near by. They found the tree which had been struck by lightning before Nan, Jean and Greta had gone into the house and they were startled to find how near it had been. But when they looked across the lake, beyond the camp’s small bay and where the woods stretched toward Greta’s home, they saw the most damage. Trees lay prostrate near the shore. Branches and drift tossed upon the still active waves. “I must hurry home at once,” said Greta. “The storm has gone that way.”
- 43. “I’ll go with you,” declared Jean, thinking of the motto, for the thought of going frightened her and she would have preferred to know what had happened to Jimmy Standish, her friend, Billy Baxter and the rest of the boys. But she and Molly and Nan had gotten Greta into coming for breakfast. If the family were unharmed by the storm and Greta had a scolding or worse, she would stand by her. “I’ll go, too,” said Molly; but Grace heard them. “Wait, girls,” said Grace. “I think that I hear the boys calling.” The girls listened. “Wah-hoo-oo-oo-oo-oo!” came the long-drawn call. “Oo-ey, oo-ey, oo-ey,” answered Grace, all smiles, for that was Jimmy. In a few minutes several boys came crashing through the bushes and brush, not caring how the wet drops sprinkled them right and left. “Everybody all right?” asked Jimmy, who was in the lead, Billy Baxter right behind him. His quick eyes took in Grace and Nan first and traveled over the rest with some relief. “Yes,” answered Grace. “No one was out in the storm and the little cabin stood; but some of us got inside just in time. I should have had more sense than to go off for a hike and breakfast when it felt like a storm, even if we did not notice any signs when we left so early. I’ve been wondering about you.” “All of us have,” Jean added, “and Greta is worrying about her folks across the lake. This is Greta Klein. Greta, this is Nan’s brother, Jimmy. He’s in charge at the boys’ camp, just as Grace French is here.” “I was certainly thankful to hear you call, Jimmy,” said Grace, while Greta and Jimmy acknowledged the introduction after a
- 44. fashion, for matters were on an informal footing. Jean had merely announced facts. “We would have been around when it first began to look like a bad storm, but we were off, too, out of sight, on the other shore of the peninsula to begin with, then ’way around in the woods. Like you, we started early and there is a little fisherman’s shack there. We made it to our camp, though, but we had to stay till she blew over then. As soon as we could, we ran out where we could see your roof and it was still on. So we hoped that you were all right. Gee- whilikins, didn’t it get dark?” “Jimmy brought ‘first aid’ and everything,” said Dan Pierce. “Would Greta like to have us go around with her?” “That is a fine idea, Dan,” said Grace, and Billy wished that he had thought of it. “I thought of going around with Greta, as soon as we knew about your camp. I was sure that you would get some sort of a message through pretty soon, unless you were all blown away. Suppose you three boys come with Greta and me, and maybe Molly, and Jean. They spoke of going. Do you think that you could stand it, girls, if anything has happened there?” This question was spoken in a lower tone, for the benefit of Jean and Molly only. “‘Sans peur,’ Grace,” said Jean stoutly. “Get Molly to tell you all about everything while we go.” “Couldn’t we go in the boats now?” asked Molly, but caught herself short. “Oh, girls, we never thought to look and see if the boats are there yet!” They were not, as the assembled company soon found out when they ran around to the lake side of the cottage. There was no sign either of Greta’s boat or theirs. “Our canoes were high and dry and under shelter,” said Jimmy, “but the row-boats and the little motor are goners as far as we know.”
- 45. “Some of them may turn up,” hopefully inserted Billy. “Let’s go, Jimmy.” “All right, kid, when the girls are ready. By the way, Grace, tell them all to look out for trees or branches that might be ready to fall. We’ll have to go on the edge of the woods and through it in some places, isn’t that so, Greta?” “Yes, sir.” Senior Jimmy smiled at the “sir,” then happened to think. Yes, he was out of school, and he’d be in the office with his father till he earned enough money, in a year or so, to start to college. Say, he was grown up, after all. “Greta,” asked Molly, soon after they started through the woods, “how old were you when you were ‘sick’?” “It was four years ago, and Mother says that I am sixteen.” “You don’t look any older than I do, and I’m fifteen. Well, yes, you do look older in one way, but then you’ve done so much hard work, I guess.” The going was difficult. They scarcely stopped to examine the curious freaks of the storm in the woods. Afterward they learned that there was a comparatively small area damaged by the “twister,” though the storm was general. Jimmy said that he thought the twister must have stooped and risen again, in an erratic fashion, to fell some trees, take off the tops of others and cut almost a path before it in places. It was some time before they came into sight of the Klein house. There it stood, as ramshackle as ever and with the additional loss of the roof over Greta’s attic. As they reached the road which ran between the woods and the place, Greta ran, the rest following as rapidly as they could.
- 46. The yard was strewn with rubbish and a few excited chickens ran about as Greta appeared; but she dashed into the house, calling to see where her mother and the children were. There was no response. Greta looked anxious, as she came from the rear of the house to say that no one was downstairs. Jimmy insisted on accompanying Greta upstairs to see if they could be there, hurt, perhaps, when the roof went off. They found the attic pretty well demolished and the ceiling had fallen in the bedroom below; but there were no signs of any one having been there when it happened. “We’ll look to see if the horse and the old wagon are here,” said Greta, running down the stairs and outdoors. “Maybe they started away before the storm began. Mother was very anxious last night and seemed to think that—her husband—was in trouble.” There lay the explanation of the absence. Neither horse nor wagon were to be found. The dogs were gone. The lone cow in the pasture was unhurt. “She probably wakened up early,” said Greta, “and just went to the village to see what had become of him. Thank you all for coming with me. I’ll just wait here and straighten up the best I can till they come. It was a good thing they went, unless they might have gotten caught in the storm.” “I don’t think we should leave you here alone, Greta, to find out later what did happen. Billy and I can walk across to the village and find out if they are in any trouble. Where would she be likely to go?” “There is one woman there that Mother stops to see when she goes to town. If there were any trouble about—him—she would ask Mrs.—well, let me write the name for you. It’s a long German name. I hate to have you take all that trouble, and the long walk after all your hiking, too. I just don’t know what to do this time.” “We’re going, Greta. It is the only thing to do.” “I’ll make some coffee for you first.”
- 47. “No, we had breakfast and we’ll get something in town. Honest, we’ll do it.” The discussion came to an end suddenly, for the attention of everyone was diverted by the appearance of a light buggy and a toiling horse that was splashing through mud and water on the dirt road. The man who was driving was leaning out to look at the damage of the storm and viewing with surprise the number of people in the front yard. “Hello,” he called, “is Greta Klein there?” Greta came running forward to meet the man who drove up, turned his wheel and clambered heavily out of the buggy. Jean happened to stand nearest and heard the most of the low conversation that took place, though she stepped back a little. “I’m sorry to tell you, Greta, that your pa was took sudden last night and your ma was sent fur. She got up an’ took the little ones an’ why she didn’t wake you up I don’t know. Mebbe she isn’t quite right, fur she says that you ain’t her child an’ she’s terrible upset becuz he wuz gone when she got there. The children wuzn’t half dressed an’ she wants their clothes.” “Does she want me to come?” “No, but I would. That woman she stays with says to bring you.” Greta turned to Jean. Her face was white, but her lips were set firmly. “I’ll have to go. Did you hear what happened to Jacob Klein, Jean?” “Yes. Go and get ready and I’ll tell the rest.” Grace, however, stepped up to the messenger and asked what his news was about Mrs. Klein. “We are friends of Greta’s from a couple of camps on the lake. She took breakfast with us this morning and was kept by the storm.”
- 48. “Oh, she did. Well, all I have to say is that it’s a good thing she has friends. If you know anything about Klein you’ll know that what happened was likely to happen to a man with his habits. There was a terrible quarrel where he was drinking and Klein was hurt. That’s all I know except his wife’s ravings. She’s got the hysterics, I think.” “Is she likely to hurt Greta?” “Oh, no. But she seems to have took a dislike to Greta, they say.” “I see.” Grace went into the house to see if she could help Greta in any way. Greta was trying to find the children’s clothes in the midst of the destruction wrought by the fallen ceiling, and hearing Grace’s footsteps, she looked out of the door. “Don’t try to come up, Miss French. I’m finding their clothes and we can clean them up when I get into town.” “Well, I just want to tell you, Greta, to come right to us at the camp if you need a place to go. I don’t quite understand what the man told me but it is clear that things are strange.” “Yes, they are. Ask Molly and Jean and Nan to tell you what they know. And after I help Mother through this, I’ll be glad to come. I want to find a place to work and the girls thought they could help me.” “We all can, Greta. Don’t worry.” It was not long before Greta had been driven away. She had locked the door and taken a bundle of clothing with her. Cheerful waves from the girls saw her off and Jean told her not to forget to come to the camp as soon as she could. There was another long tramp back to camp, for there was no boat to take them over, but Grace invited the boys to stay for as big
- 49. a meal as they could get up on short notice. “Open some cans of beans, Grace,” suggested Jimmy, “and heat ’em up.” “Beans it shall be,” laughed Grace, “but we’ll have some other things, too. Think it up, girls, on the way.” Camp, however, afforded a pleasant surprise. There stood Mr. Standish and Mr. Lockhart in front of the house, drawn there by the sounds of arrival, and while Nan and Fran rushed “madly on,” as Jean said, Mr. Standish came from the house. “Oh, there you are!” she exclaimed in relief. “We just got here and while we saw that the cottage is all right, we were worried to death for fear something had happened to you. Your father and Mr. Lockhart were just starting to the boys’ camp to see if they were all right.” “Here are Jimmy and Billy and Dan to tell you all about the time they had,” said Nan, hugging her mother. “We weren’t very scared, Mother,—‘sans peur,’ you know, but we have a lot to tell you about Greta Klein, a girl that lives near here.” “Got a big description of the storm for the paper, Dad,” Jimmy informed Mr. Standish. “All right. Write it up for me. I heard about the storm up here and we had the edge of it at home. Wires were down, so I thought we’d better drive up. Such roads. We came over the shaky bridge and may have to swim back.” “In that case, I’ll stay with the girls,” suggested Mrs. Standish, laughing. “It was an awful ride, but I was thinking of you and the girls and could not get here fast enough, Jimmy. Where are the rest of the boys?” “Back at camp, I suppose. We came up here to see if the girls had escaped.”
- 50. Further explanations followed. Mrs. Lockhart was found inside, where she had been setting forth fruit and baked things of all sorts, gathered up hastily when they decided to come. Part of it was saved for the Wizards who were at their camp, but the rest, with what the girls had, made a great dinner that was eaten merrily, though Mr. Standish offered a fervent grace of gratitude at its beginning. Jean and Molly gave a partial account of the mystery about Greta. “She isn’t their child at all,” said Jean. “It’s dreadfully sad, of course, but not so bad for Greta as if they were her parents and had been good to her. Greta is a fine girl all right. She’s going to do everything she can for them, I know.” “Perhaps Mother could train her to help us and she could go to school,” said Leigh. “I’m glad that my father and mother are away, not to be worried about the storm.” “Me, too,” said Jean, “but the folks will be back next week, I think.” “We shall take good word to every one at home,” said Mrs. Standish, “and if we can help that poor child get a start, we will. There is something for the S. P.’s to do.”
- 52. CHAPTER XVII THE MYSTERIES DISCLOSED That Jean Gordon would have any personal interest in the mystery connected with Greta was the last thing she would have guessed until Greta came back two weeks later and appeared at the door of “Sans Souci,” as the name over the cottage door now announced. Gently Greta knocked. Hesitantly she came in, when several girls, who were doing the morning work after what was a late breakfast, called a happy, “Come in Greta! Glad you’re back.” Molly ran up and took from Greta’s hand a suitbox which she was carrying, probably her substitute for a grip, Molly thought. Impulsive Jean did more, running up and throwing her arms around Greta. “Why, you look like a twin sister to the S. P.’s now,” she exclaimed. “Who fixed your hair that pretty way? My, I wish I had curly hair!” Greta laughed at this. “I fixed it, as much like yours as I could,” she replied. Grace, who had frowned at Jean’s too frank comments, now joined in the general smiles and added her greeting. “Of course you have come to stay a while with us, Greta?” “Just a few days, Miss French, if you haven’t already found some place for me to start working.” “There will be no hurry, Greta. You need a little vacation. The boys say that some one else is moving into your house.”
- 53. “And we have seen from the lake that the house is being repaired,” Nan added. It took some time for all the explanations. The Klein place had been taken over by the man who had bought the rest of the farm land originally attached to the few acres left. It was rented now. Mrs. Klein and the two children were starting for Idaho, where a sister lived. “I am free,” said Greta, “though it was a hard way for it to happen.” To Molly and Jean alone Greta told the details of her mother’s revelations. “She was hysterical, as I was told, but by the time I got there she was glad to have me take care of the children. I think that she told them I wasn’t her child so that I would have no share in the little bit of property. She was that way. She did not realize that all I wanted was to get away! “Of course, she did not say a word about how her Greta died and I didn’t tell her what Molly heard. There was no use in making her feel worse than she did. She said that the night Greta died there was a dreadful lake storm and more than one boat went down on Lake Michigan. Jacob Klein felt so terrible about losing Greta that he walked and walked and walked through the woods and clear across to Lake Michigan before he knew it. I suppose he did, for it’s only thirty miles or so, and he may have had the horse or a boat at that. He never told her the truth about anything. He wanted to get away, and he could have taken one of the boats and gone out by the river.” “I think that it’s farther than you think, Greta,” said Molly. “Were you ever there?” “No. I wasn’t anywhere! But however that was, he found me out in Lake Michigan, lashed to something and unconscious. Isn’t it queer that none of my dreams or flashes of remembering had a boat in them? But I was afraid of the water at first, till Jacob Klein made
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