“WHAT IS THAT?” WHISPERED SOPHY SHARPLY,
AND PAM’S HEART GAVE A SUDDEN LEAP

A

Canadian Farm Mystery

Or, Pam the Pioneer

BY

BESSIE MARCHANT

Author of “The Unknown Island”

“Joyce Harrington’s Trust”

“A Girl and a Caravan”

“Molly Angel’s Adventures”

&c. &c.

Illustrated by Cyrus Cuneo

BLACKIE & SON LIMITED

LONDON AND GLASGOW

Zenith Library

BOYS

In the Great White Land. Gordon Stables.

The Disputed V.C. Frederick P. Gibbon.

The First Mate. Harry Collingwood.

The Boy Castaways. H. Taprell Dorling.

“Quills.” Walter C. Rhoades.

GIRLS

A Canadian Farm Mystery. Bessie Marchant.

The Youngest Sister. Bessie Marchant.

A Princess of Servia. Bessie Marchant.

A True Cornish Maid. G. Norway.

Meriel’s Career. Mary B. Whiting.

Printed in Great Britain by Blackie & Son, Ltd., Glasgow

Contents

[I.] Her Great Idea

[II.] Business Enterprise

[III.] The Surprise Party

[IV.] What They Found

[V.] The Next Day

[VI.] Where has He Gone?

[VII.] Searching

[VIII.] The First Snow

[IX.] Making the Best of It

[X.] Someone’s Desperate Plight

[XI.] Who was It?

[XII.] Sugaring

[XIII.] Just a Doubt!

[XIV.] From an Unexpected Quarter

[XV.] Pam’s Big Adventure

[XVI.] Why did He Go?

[XVII.] What Reggie Suspects

[XVIII.] Met on the Trail

[XIX.] The Stranger’s Errand

[XX.] Wedding Plans

[XXI.] How it was Done

[XXII.] Good News

[XXIII.] The Mystery Cleared

[XXIV.] The End

Illustrations

[I. ]“What is that?” whispered Sophy sharply,

and Pam’s heart gave a sudden leap

[II. ]The dog and the unknown fury were rolling

over in the deadliest of combats

[III. ]Pam was dragged up and tugged here and

pulled there

A Canadian Farm Mystery

Or, Pam the Pioneer

CHAPTER I

Her Great Idea

“Jack, Jack, I have had a truly wonderful inspiration!” cried Pam as she came dashing down the stairs like a whirlwind.

Unfortunately Barbara, the little maid-of-all-work, was at that moment toiling upwards with the soup tureen and a pile of plates on a tray. She was near the top, too, and very much out of breath. She had no strength to stand against the violent impact, but went down before it, being brought up in a heap at the turn of the stairs while tray, tureen, and plates went careering to the bottom, accompanied by a stream of soup.

“Now you’ve done it!” exclaimed Jack, with an ominous growl in his voice, as, leaning on his stick, he came limping from the kitchen to survey the ruins.

“Oh, haven’t I just!” cried Pam in heartfelt contrition. Then she gasped: “Whatever will Mother say?”

The afflicted Barbara, who still lay at the bend of the stairway where she had fallen, burst into noisy crying at this. She had been dismissed from her last place for ravages among the crockery, and if she had to leave the house of Mrs. Walsh for a similar cause, where would her character be?

“Dry up!” burst out Jack impatiently. “We have too much moisture here already by the look of it.” As he spoke he hopped aside to let a rivulet of soup go past him. Such good soup it had been too! The savoury odours steamed up under his nose, and as he was desperately hungry the waste was all the more exasperating.

Just at this moment the green baize door at the top of the stairs opened smartly, and Greg called down: “Jack, Mother says don’t let Barbara bring up the soup for another ten minutes, because Colonel Seaford has ’phoned to say that he can’t be here till then.”

“What luck!” exclaimed Pam. “Come along, Barbara, we can make a fresh lot of soup in ten minutes, and we will serve it in a salad bowl and porridge plates. Dear me, nothing is ever so bad that it might not be worse!”

“You can’t make soup out of nothing, and there is not a teacupful of stock in the house,” growled Jack.

“Wait and see!” laughed Pam, as she lightly sprang over the ruins at the bottom of the stairs, dodged brown rivulets of soup that meandered along the floor, and darted in at the kitchen door. “Come along, Barbara! England expects, &c.”

“If you had done your duty and looked where you were going, the soup would not have been spilled,” growled Jack, but Pam was too busy to heed him.

Seizing the empty soup saucepan, she half-filled it with hot water from the boiler and set it over the fire. Then she darted to the table, where she stood busily stirring, mixing, and pounding, calling all the time for a succession of things which Barbara was quick to supply. “There, that will do, I think,” she exclaimed in great satisfaction. “Corn flour, tomato powder, salt, pepper—a good lot of that⁠—⁠Worcester sauce, burnt sugar, and a dash of shrimp sauce just by way of piquancy. Very nice to look at, and interesting to taste; not very nourishing, perhaps, but that will not matter for once.”

The hot water was poured on the concoction, the stuff was returned to the saucepan and brought to the boil; then, the ten minutes being up, Pam carried the emergency soup to the dining-room herself, while Barbara collected the fragments of broken earthenware and swabbed up the river of soup with a grubby mop.

“Well, you take the cake, and no mistake about it, in rising to the occasion!” admitted Jack with grudging admiration, as he limped about the kitchen, getting ready for the fish course, and seeing that other things were keeping in a state of readiness.

Pam’s merry laugh rang out. “It is a mercy I can do so much, for it is my fate to be always creating situations that call for dispatch and skill in the managing.”

Jack looked at her in silent wonder. Somehow he always was wondering at Pam. It was barely more than half an hour by the clock since she had been drowned in tears because of that curt letter from Lady Dalby, who had written to say that as she could not have Miss Walsh when she needed her so much, she had secured another governess. Pam’s salary had not been much, but in poverty like theirs every little counts. There was the doctor’s bill for Muriel’s illness, with all the other bills which had sprung from the same source, while winter was coming on. But it was of no use to “grouse” over things, it did not make them the least bit better. So he left off speculating about Pam, and ordered Barbara round in fine style for the next twenty minutes, and the courses of the dinner went up one by one until it was all over.

When coffee had been taken to the drawing-room, Greg and Sid cleared the dinner-table, and then came down to their supper in the breakfast-room, which opened out of the kitchen. Pam, who had rushed upstairs to see if Muriel was comfortably asleep, came hurrying back to help in washing up the silver and glass.

Then, “What is your great idea?” asked Jack, who was seated on a high stool at the table, and was rapidly polishing the spoons and forks which Pam had washed.

She glanced round, saw that the door of the scullery, where Barbara was washing plates and dishes, was a little way open, and darting across the room closed it softly.

“Jack!” she cried, with positive rapture in her tone, as she plunged her hands into the soapy water again, “Jack, I am going to ask Mother to let me go to Grandfather!”

“You can’t go alone⁠—⁠you are only a girl!” he exclaimed, dropping a handful of spoons with a clatter because he was so amazed at the daring and audacity of Pam’s great idea.

She laughed softly; it always amused her to hear Jack talk in this fashion. She was four years older than he was, and although she lacked his steadiness and balance, she knew that she was vastly ahead of him when it came to dealing with an emergency. “You are a dear, Jack, but you have your limitations. You are quite early Victorian in your ideas of what girls should or should not do. But you have got to widen your outlook a bit before Mother comes down from the drawing-room, because you must back me up in this. We can always influence Mother when we stand solid, and my great idea is for the general good.”

“For instance?” Jack had retrieved the fallen spoons, and was polishing vigorously. Pam had a good many great ideas of one sort and another, but he had a cautious streak, and was not going to back her up in any wild scheme just because she wanted him to do so.

“Grandfather told Mother to send one of us out to him, and he promised to pay a salary. He said one of the children, but he did not mention whether it was a boy or a girl that he would prefer.” Pam put out her facts with a calm decision, and Jack nodded approvingly. “Very well, you can’t go. It will be another month before you can walk without a stick, and when you can, there is your work at Gay & Grainger’s waiting for you, while until you go back they are paying you——”

“A mere pittance⁠—⁠half a crown a week, accident insurance!” he groaned. “If only I had been over sixteen I could have had the proper State Insurance. It is a rotten shame, and the grossest injustice!”

“Be quiet, and let me talk!” Pam lifted an impatient hand to stay the tide of his eloquence, sprinkling him with soapy water in the process. “You have this pittance, and work waiting for you, but I have nothing. You also are twice the help to Mother that I am. Don’t interrupt! Compliments are not necessary at this juncture; we are out for facts without trimmings, and don’t you forget it. Suppose that you had gone out to Grandfather this month. Mother says the winters in New Brunswick are dreadfully cold. Being a boy, you would naturally have had to work out of doors, and if there is no woman in the house, you would have had little comfort when you came in. Now, if I go, the dear little old man can hardly send me out into the forest chopping trees down when the temperature is miles below zero, but I can make him so comfortable in the house that by the spring he will be wanting the lot of us.”

“Query as to that.” Jack shook his head, and reached for the plate basket to put away his spoons.

“Oh, but he will. I shall lay myself out to win his heart; then when he has got so fond of me that he simply can’t bear me out of his sight, I shall turn home-sick. I shall refuse my food, and tell him that I am pining for my family, that I can bear the cruel separation no longer. He will soften towards Mother then, and write her an imperative letter to sell up and come out to him without a moment’s unnecessary delay. Oh, I can manage him, I have no doubt of it at all!”

“I don’t think that I have either, if you go straight at it,” admitted Jack, who spoke from experience, knowing himself to be weak as water in the hands of Pam when she had really made up her mind to influence him. “The question in my mind is whether Mother and he will hit it off comfortably when they live together. She is mistress here, and does as she likes; but it would not be happy for her if the old man took to ordering her round as I do Barbara.”

“Indeed, no; but I tell you he can be managed, he must be managed for his own good,” she said earnestly. “If he is very happy and comfortable, he will not want to be tiresome. Think how good it will be for Muriel to have a country life for the next few years. Think, too, what it will do for the boys. Greg is growing much too fast. He ought to have quiet evenings, and to be in bed by eight o’clock, instead of which he and Sid are working hard until after nine on most evenings, waiting at table and clearing away, qualifying for posts as footmen and butlers, but missing all the free and easy life of boyhood that they ought to have.”

Jack drew a long breath which ended in a whistle.

“My word, if you talk to the old man like that, he will be sending for us all by the next boat! I will back you up for all I am worth, see if I don’t. Three cheers for Pam the Pioneer, the intrepid and the brave! Of all the great ideas you ever had, this is the greatest!”

Pam flushed with pleasure. Jack had the balance and steadiness which she lacked; he was apt to sit in judgment on her, and that sort of thing is rather unbearable as a rule. Her mother was always holding Jack before her eyes as a model to be studied and copied, which, of course, was more unbearable still; so that the present moment was sweet indeed, compensating for many a bad quarter of an hour which had come before.

“I must hurry up to Muriel now,” she said, ten minutes later, when they had discussed the scheme in all its bearings. “Be sure you stick by me, Jack, when it comes to the arguments, for you know I do not shine there.”

“Oh, I’ll stick by you, never fear,” he answered in a cheery tone. “I would do a good deal to see a way out of this boarding-house business. This stewing and grilling down here every night, to give those people upstairs a chance to overfeed themselves, gets on my nerves. The folks who are so keen on big dinners at eight o’clock at night ought to have to cook for themselves; then they would soon be cured of the habit.”

“I daresay they would, but think what a crowd of people would suffer from loss of income.” Pam laughed as she gave him a bear-like hug by way of showing her gratitude. “Think, too, what a slump there would be in the medical business, for Dr. Scott said yesterday that it was the people who ate too much who provided the doctors with a living.”

But Jack only grunted by way of answer, and then, taking his stick, limped out to the scullery to see if Barbara had fastened up for the night.

CHAPTER II

Business Enterprise

Galena Gittins had her hair screwed up tightly in curling-pins. Reggie Furness was late in coming to do “chores” that morning, and so he had crept in by way of the milk-room door with as little ostentation as possible. He had found by experience that it was not wise to attract attention to himself when he was behind time. Directly he noticed the curling-pins his courage revived. The fair Galena was never hard to live with when there was a festivity to the fore.

She was dashing round at such a rate that she even failed to notice his silent entrance. He picked up the milk-buckets and scurried away to the barn, well pleased at his escape, but actively curious as to the sort of frolic to which Galena was bound that day.

“There’s no one dead, so it can’t be a funeral,” he muttered, as he tied the white cow’s leg to a post to prevent her kicking while he milked. “It isn’t a wedding either, or else I should have been bound to hear about it. Her aunt has gone to Fredericton, so she ain’t going there.”

He was so absorbed in his meditations that he did not notice that the rope had come unfastened, until the cow by an adroit movement knocked him sprawling. He was used to her pranks by this time, and he contrived to keep the bucket from being kicked over, so his own upset did not count; and as he always pretended to himself that the white cow was a playful creature, instead of, as was actually the case, a bad-tempered animal, his feelings were not ruffled by his being rolled over and having his head thumped against a post.

When he carried the milk-buckets in to the little chamber that was scooped out from the side of the hill, he heard signs of unusual bustle in the kitchen, and poking his head cautiously round the post of the door, he was amazed to see a big baking in progress.

“Is that you, Reggie Furness?” called the voice of Miss Galena, who was darting here and there, apparently trying to do three things at once. “Step lively, will you, and help me here. I want eggs whisked, and currants washed, sugar rolled, and a dozen things done all nearly at once. You can’t have a sitting-down breakfast this morning. But none of us have had that. You will have to be content to feed as you run about.”

“I don’t care how I have my breakfast as long as I do have one,” said Reggie, who had got hold of the whisker, and was turning it at a great rate, while the eggs churned into yellow foam under his active exertions.

Galena laughed at the broadness of the hint, but she had not had six brothers without knowing that boys were the hungriest creatures under the sun; so she brought him a great wedge of pumpkin pie, just to keep him from starving, and promised him some hot cookies as soon as they were out of the oven. The pie was fragrant with spice and black with currants. Reggie was in clover for once in his life. Breakfast, which was part of his wage, consisted in a usual way of buckwheat or oatmeal porridge drowned out with skim milk. There was no porridge pot visible this morning, so plainly there was something very unusual on hand.

“Please, are you going to be married to-day?” he asked, his eyes fairly bulging with curiosity. The ham boiler was on the stove, and it was beginning to bubble, while delicious odours filled the kitchen and made their way out through the open door. His question was only a wild hazard. He had never heard that Miss Galena had any views with regard to matrimony, but he guessed that in any case it would please her to be asked, and so he would be the more likely to find out what he wanted to know so badly. He was through with the whisking by now, and Miss Galena had set him rolling sugar. He would not have taken any, of course, being irreproachably honest so far as he understood what honesty meant; but he saw no harm in continually licking his fingers as he drew the sugar in a lump for the rolling-pin. It was good! He would have enjoyed rolling sugar all day long.

Galena burst into a great laugh of derision, but she was not ill-pleased at the suggestion.

“Dear me, no; I am not going to be married yet, though you never can tell what may happen.” She lifted her head and tried to look sprightly, but she was so worn with hard work and much dyspepsia that the attempt was rather a failure.

Reggie looked disappointed. If the festivity were not a wedding or a funeral, he did not see what it could be. No church functions were in progress this month, for the parson was away on holiday, and it would not have been considered in good taste to have a church frolic in his absence.

Galena’s eyes sparkled. She was aching for someone to talk things over with. The men were always in a hurry when they came in from the field, and there was not another woman within half a mile of the place. She hesitated, and was lost.

“We are going to have a great frolic to-night; it was only decided late last night, that is why I am so driven with cooking this morning. We are going to have a big surprise party at old Wrack Peveril’s; you know where he lives⁠—⁠over the Ridge at Ripple. They say he is a most fearfully disagreeable old man. He lives quite alone, and has done so for more years than you have been alive. I have heard he made a vow that no woman should enter his house, on account of his only daughter having run away from him to get married. Don’t you expect it will make him sit up when all the lot of us go walking in?”

“Suppose he won’t let you inside the door?” Reggie stared at her with bulging eyes. He was thinking of what had happened at his own poor home two winters before, when he and Mose had gone to bed, and had been hounded out of it by a surprise party that threatened to pull the shingles off the roof if they were not admitted. Mose had been furious at the invasion, for the cupboard was empty, and the stark poverty of the home had been all laid bare to the laughing, careless crowd who had taken the place by storm.

“Suppose he can’t keep us out!” she mocked. “I just love surprise parties when there is a spice of mischief in them. When we go to parson’s and take more food than we could eat in a month, and leave it all behind for him and Mrs. White, it is most as tame as going to church on Sunday, or having a missionary meeting and giving money to convert the heathen; but when we go to surprise someone who does not want to see us, why, that is where the fun begins.”

Reggie nodded in token of understanding, but he was spared the necessity of reply by the entrance of Nathan Gittins, the eldest brother of Galena, who ran the farm and the saw-mill, all the four brothers in between having left New Brunswick for the Far West when they came to man’s estate.

All the way to school that morning Reggie fumed over the injustice to old Wrack Peveril in forcing a surprise party, mostly of women, upon him when he had said that no woman should enter his house.

Reggie had not had much to do with women since his mother died. He had been only a shaver of five years old then, and he had been “dragged up” ever since by his step-brother, Mose Paget, who owned a long strip of rather unfertile land running parallel with the creek, but separated from the water by Sam Buckle’s quarter-section of water frontage. All through morning school Reggie debated the matter with so much absorption that he had no attention to give to mischief, and in consequence earned the good-conduct mark, to his great amazement.

Directly school was out he set off to climb the Ridge, not going by the ordinary trail that led past Ripple, but taking a bee-line through the woods and up over the gap where the forest fire had been two years before. He had serious business on hand, while his conscience troubled him a little, because he was going to betray the confidence of Galena. He had made up his mind to warn Wrack of what was impending, so that the old man should have a chance of doing as he liked about being at home when the visitors came.

The day was very hot although it was October. The maples on the Ridge were aflame with their autumn splendours, and the scarlet of the oaks at Cumberland Crossing was a sight to see. But Reggie had scant attention for the beauties of nature, for he was in a hurry. Make the best speed he could, it would still be almost impossible for him to get back to the schoolhouse before afternoon school began, and if he had no satisfactory excuse for being late he would have the cane. To be late at morning school was a forgivable offence, because of the long distances the scholars had to come and the heaviness of the morning “chores” at most of the homes; but there was no excuse for being late in the afternoon, because no one went home then, and it did not take long to eat the noon-piece each scholar brought in his or her school bag.

From the top of the Ridge to Ripple was easy going, downhill all the way. Reggie crashed through the undergrowth at a great rate. He had no watch, and could only guess at the time. Every minute gained would make one stroke of the cane the less, for the rule was one stroke for every minute late, so it was necessary to use dispatch.

When he emerged at the clearing in front of the house he saw the old man doing something to a gun, in front of the chiphouse door. Quickening his pace, Reggie was making straight towards him, but before he could clamber through the hole in the garden fence a quavering shout reached him.

“Now, then, stay where you are, boy! If you come a step nearer I will set the dog at you.” Wrack’s aspect was so threatening that Reggie decided it to be the best part of valour to stay where he was, especially as a powerful dog which had been lying on the ground rose at this moment and growled in a menacing fashion.

“I’ve come to tell you something that you will be glad to know,” called Reggie.

“Tell it, then, and be off. I don’t want a lot of loafers on these premises,” growled the old man. And enraged though he was, Reggie’s face twitched in a grin of amusement. One small and perspiring boy who had run all the way from the schoolhouse could hardly be described as a lot of loafers.

“Gittins’s folks and a lot of women are going to have a surprise party here to-night. They are going to bring supper, and dance to an accordion afterwards,” called out Reggie in clear tones which carried amazingly in the hot, still air. If he had been able to whisper the information it would not have seemed so bad, but to be obliged to shout out what in honour he ought to have kept silent about made him so angry that he hated the old man he had come so far to serve.

Wrack gave a scornful, cackling laugh, and the dog growled in sympathy.

“If the surprise party come here it is likely they may find themselves a bit surprised,” the old man called back, then went on cleaning his gun as if no one were there.

“Ain’t you going to give me nothing for coming all this way to tell you?” demanded Reggie in a shrill tone of indignation. It was past believing that this disagreeable old man should actually refuse to reward him for all his trouble.

“I’ll give you the stick if you don’t clear out of this sharp,” the old man retorted with a snarl, and he looked as if he meant it.

Reggie was insistent, and inclined to clamour for what he deemed his rights, so he burst into noisy abuse after the manner of his kind.

“Think I’m going to put up with that sort of treatment, do you? A regular old skin-flint you are, and no mistake. I hope the surprise party will come, scores of ’em, and I hope they will dance and dance till your carpets are in rags, and they have worn holes in your floors.”

“Here, dog, after him!” exclaimed the old man, swinging his hand with an air of exasperation in Reggie’s direction. But Reggie was not going to stay on the chance of a mauling. The dog was a big animal, and he was only rather a small boy; so he fled away with the speed of a hunted fox, and the dog, having pursued him to the end of the cleared ground, gave up the chase, returning towards the house at a languid trot, as if the exertion was too much on such a hot day.

There was no slackening of Reggie’s speed until he was well on his way; then, as the ascent of the Ridge grew steeper, he dropped into a walk. There was black hate in his heart for the old man who had treated him so badly, and he was meditating all manner of wildly impossible schemes for getting the better of him as he toiled over the Ridge, then broke into a trot again where the ground sloped to the schoolhouse.

He would be late, he was sure of it, and he would have the cane. He had broken a confidence reposed in him, and he had gained nothing by it. No wonder he was furious. As he turned to enter the school door he shook his fist in impotent rage at the wooded ridge he had just crossed.

CHAPTER III

The Surprise Party

Pam stepped off the boat at Hunt’s Crossing. There was a curious sense of unreality all about her. She felt as if she were walking in her sleep, and she half-expected to wake presently and find herself back in the top bedroom of the boarding-house in London, which she had shared with her mother and Muriel.

The forest had been pushed back a little at Hunt’s Crossing. There were three wooden houses and several barns grouped near the river, but they all had a ragged, unfinished look which jarred on Pam, and forced her to the realization of being in a strange land. If she had been merely dreaming these things would not have troubled her.

There was no one to meet her; she had not expected there would be. Her mother, once she had agreed to Pam’s plan, had told her all about the road from Hunt’s Crossing to Ripple. The trail wound sharply round past Bond’s store, which was the Post Office, curved round the angle of the hill, and then stretched in a straight line for three miles and a half to Ripple. There were cross trails here and there, but there was no mistaking the way. Pam even felt as if she had been here before when she saw the cluster of houses near to the river, the tumbledown barns, and the various trails that converged at the crossing.

She went into the store and arranged for her heavy baggage to be kept there until she could send or come for it; then, carrying her bag, her umbrella, and a waterproof, she set her face to the trail.

Curious glances followed her as she left the little cluster of houses. It was so rarely that a stranger of the softer sex left the river boats at this point. Men there were in plenty who came and went, intent on selling something, or looking for something to buy. But a well-dressed girl, who arranged for her baggage to be left at the store and then went marching along the forest trails as if she had lived there all her life, was, indeed, something to speculate over. Life moved fairly easily with the people at Hunt’s Crossing, so they were able to lean over their front fences and continue their speculations without any serious upset to the day’s work.

It was late in the afternoon, and the October sunshine had a mellow tinge, as if the reflected glories of the crimson and gold of the oaks and maples had somehow coloured the glow of the sunshine to a warmer tint. Pam kept bursting into “Oh’s” and “Ah’s” of pleasure as she trod the trail with a sprightly step, and gazed on all the wealth of colour with which the forest was painted on that sunny autumn afternoon. Accustomed as her eyes had been to the soft neutral tints of London, and fresh as she was from a week of gazing on the grey Atlantic, all this flaming beauty of the woodland affected her senses, making her giddy.

For a mile or more she went ahead at a brisk pace, but her bag was heavy, her coat was hot, and presently, sitting down for a brief rest, she found herself so comfortable that she fell asleep. It was a foolish thing to do, of course, but who can expect fully-fledged wisdom and hoary-haired discretion in a girl of twenty? Pam awoke with a start after a delicious dream of her grandfather’s warm welcome at the end of the journey; she thought he was telling her with tears in his tired old eyes that he was sure she would be the joy of his life and the solace of his lonely days, but that he would know no real happiness until her mother and the other children came to live with him also.

The glory had faded from the forest, and a cool wind stirred among the rustling leaves. The sun had dropped out of sight, and with a sharp exclamation of dismay Pam rose to her feet to continue her journey. How idiotic she had been to fall asleep in this fashion when she should have been marching straight on! By the way, in which direction did she require to go? Straight on⁠—⁠but now she was not sure which direction was straight on, or which led back to Hunt’s Crossing. If by ill luck she took the wrong way darkness would overtake her, and she would have to ask for a night’s lodging at one of the three houses there. Even if she went forward on the right road she would still have difficulty in reaching Ripple by the time it grew dark, for now she was finding one foot very sore where her boot had rubbed it. She limped along the trail for a few hundred yards, gazing to right and left in a perfect fever of anxiety. There was forest on either side. Cedar, birch, beech, oak, and ash jostled each other, or stood singly or in groups, with wide stretches of lesser growth. It looked so exactly like the way she had been traversing before she went to sleep that after ten minutes or so Pam became convinced that she had turned round and was going back by the way she had come.

“Oh, I am in a hopeless muddle!” she murmured in a rueful tone, and turning back on her tracks she limped along as fast as she could go. Darkness dropped so suddenly on the forest that she was not prepared for its coming, and panic seized her in its grip. She could have screamed from sheer terror; but it was of no use to scream if there was no one to hear.

Suddenly a sound struck her ear⁠—⁠a sound of singing⁠—⁠voices in unison. Whatever could it be? Pam stood motionless in the middle of the trail, straining her ears to listen, while her heart beat so loudly that it seemed to stop her from catching the words that were sung. It was an old negro melody, and presently the words came to her through the clear air of the evening with quite startling distinctness:

Mother, rock me in the cradle all the day.

You may lay me down to sleep, my mother dear,

But rock me in the cradle all the day.

Pam had never heard anything like it before. The haunting sweetness of the melody, joined to the words, made her so fearfully home-sick that she had the greatest difficulty to keep from crying like a baby. But the singers were coming nearer, and her position of being lost on a straight trail was quite sufficiently ridiculous without her making herself look more absurd by being found in tears; so she stiffened her back and clenched her fists tightly.

Suddenly the singers changed their tune and broke into a rollicking, lilting melody:

I’m so glad the angels brought the tidings down,

I’m hunting for a home.

You’ll not get lost in the wilderness,

Hunting for a home.

Pam could hear the measured trot of horses now. The party were coming nearer and nearer. There were the voices of girls mingling with the deeper tones of men, and a sudden wave of confidence surged into her heart, for she knew that she would not be afraid to trust these people.

“Stop, will you please stop, I have lost my way!” Her voice sounded strange and shrill in her own ears as she ran out to the middle of the trail and held up her arms to stop the first wagon. By this time she had gathered that there were two wagons, and that they were very near together. The rising moon sent a pale shaft of light down among the forest trees, falling on Pam, lighting her face with an unearthly brilliance, and turning her fair hair into a mass of gleaming gold. The horses were startled by the sudden apparition in the track. They stopped short, tried to rear, and veering round would have bolted but for the firm hand on the lines and the reassuring shouts of the driver in their ears.

“Whoa, there! Steady, Tom and Firefly! What possesses you to cut capers like unbroken colts every time you meet a lady on the trail?”

“A lady, is it? I declare I thought it was a ghost!” cried another voice. “What eyes you have, Don! You are a perfect bat to see like that in the dark!”

The singing came to an abrupt end, and a perfect babel of questions broke out from both wagons.

The driver of the first, a young man with broad shoulders and a determined manner, jumped down from the high seat and, approaching Pam, who had retreated to the side of the trail through fear of being run over, asked her politely:

“What can we do for you? Have you lost your way?”

“Yes,” admitted Pam, and now she was tingling all over with mortification. “I am going to Ripple, and I am not sure that I am on the right trail.”

“You are going away from Ripple at this moment, as straight away from it as possible,” said the young man. Then he asked the question which Pam had expected would come. “Where have you come from? Excuse my curiosity, but this trail only leads to Ripple, you see, so it is passing wonderful that you failed to find it.”

The stupidity of the situation struck Pam then. Oh, what an idiot she had been! How these people would laugh at her! But it could not be helped, and so she began by laughing at herself.

“Would you believe it? I was going to Ripple from Hunt’s Crossing, but the afternoon was hot and I sat down to rest, then went so fast asleep that when I woke I did not know which was forward and which was back to the river. I went as I thought forward, then it looked so much like the trail I had been following before I sat down that I turned round and took the other way; then it got dark, and I was just beginning to be frightened nearly out of my senses when along you came, and the sound of your singing brought my courage back.”

“Poor little girl!” The young man spoke as if she were about ten years old, and Pam coloured hotly with indignation because he had so little discernment.

“I am old enough to take care of myself,” she retorted, with quite crushing dignity.

“I do not doubt it.” He was frankly laughing at her now, but his manner was so kind that she did not care. Then the people in the second wagon shouted to know when the first lot were going to get a move on, and the young man said hurriedly: “We are going to Ripple; won’t you get up in our wagon and come with us? That is my sister Sophy on the front seat⁠—⁠Sophy Grierson. I am Don Grierson.”

A tremendous load was lifted from the heart of Pam. She would not have to walk the dark forest trail alone.

“Thank you, I shall be glad to ride,” she answered, keeping her voice steady with an effort.

“Up you get, then. Move along a bit farther, will you, Sophy? There will be room for this young lady between us if I sit a bit on the side. Ah, steady there! Where have you been raised? It looks as if you don’t know how to board a wagon.” The young man caught Pam in his arms as she stumbled in climbing, and his quickness saved her from a nasty fall.

“I can board a motor bus when it is moving, but this is different,” she said with a gasp when she was fairly settled between Sophy and Don, and the horses had started forward again. “I come from London, and I have never been in the country except for a holiday.”

“And then to set out to walk a forest trail for the first time alone, and to go to sleep on the way! What next, I wonder?” Don flourished his whip in the air to express all the things he could not put into language, but the horses took it as a hint to go faster, and they tore along at such a pace that Pam was breathless and giddy from being shaken and bumped.

“Old Wrack Peveril will sit up when we come walking in upon him, I guess,” said a girl with a loud voice who was sitting at the rear of the wagon.

“He will sit up still more when he sees the supper we have brought him,” replied Galena Gittins, who was sitting just behind Pam. “Folks say the old man never has a decent meal, because he is too mean to spend money on proper food, the wretched old skin-a-flint!”

Pam wrenched herself round with a violence which all but upset Sophy Grierson, who was rather cramped for room.

“It is not fair to talk like that before me,” she said explosively. “Mr. Wrack Peveril is my grandfather, and I have come all the way from England to live with him. I don’t believe he is so mean, but I am afraid that he is poor, and he sent the money to pay my passage, so perhaps he has not been able to buy things for himself.”

“Are you Nancy Peveril’s girl?” cried a stout woman who sat on the seat with Galena Gittins, and as she asked the question she leaned forward and gripped the shoulder of Pam in the friendliest fashion imaginable.

“I am Pamela Walsh, and my mother was Nancy Peveril before she married my father,” replied Pam with great dignity, and then her shoulder was gripped more heartily than before by the excitable stout woman.

“Dear, dear, how time flies! I declare it makes me feel quite old to think of Nancy having a grown-up daughter. My dear, we are ever so glad to see you; but I don’t think your mother should have let you come all this way alone to live with an old man like Wrack Peveril, who won’t have a woman inside his doors.”

“He won’t be able to help himself to-night!” chuckled the girl with the loud voice.

Pam caught her breath in a gasp of dismay. Her mother had written to Ripple to say that Pam was coming instead of Jack, but there had been no time for an answer to that letter. It was the very first time since she had left England that a doubt of her welcome assailed her. Now she was suddenly afraid, and she cowered closer against Sophy Grierson, while she wondered what sort of a greeting she would get when Ripple was reached.

“We are going to have a surprise party at your grandfather’s house to-night,” said Galena Gittins, leaning forward and speaking over the shoulder of Pam in a very friendly fashion. “We’ve got a jolly good supper here in the wagons with us, and there is another wagon coming from over the Ridge. That lot will bring a fiddle and a melodeon with them, so we shall have some music, and be able to dance all night. I just love surprise parties, don’t you?”

“I have never been to one,” answered Pam. After a brief hesitation she asked: “Will Grandfather like a lot of folks coming along unexpected like this? And to stay all night, too?”

“I guess he won’t!” broke in the stout woman with a jolly, rollicking laugh. “But, my dear, it is the good of the many that we have to study in this part of the world; and what would become of the young people if there was no fun going at all? For myself, I’d nearly as soon stay at home o’ nights now as go racketing round and losing my night’s rest. But well I know it is good for the boys and girls to have someone to mother them a bit at their play, so I don’t shy at a frolic, even though it takes me a week to get over it.”

“The folks don’t have to suffer when we go round surprising them, Miss Walsh,” said Don, who had not spoken for some time save to shout at the horses, the trail at this part being very difficult and dark; tall trees stood in serried ranks on either side of the way, and the moonlight had no chance at all. “We always take about twice as many provisions as we can possibly eat; and if we upset a house a bit, we always put everything straight before we leave. You should see how glad they are to have us at some places.”

“I don’t care for a surprise party where the folks like to have us. I would rather go where we were not wanted,” broke in the girl with the loud voice, whom the others called Sissy. “What fun we did have that time we surprised Mose Paget, and he would not get up to let us in until we threatened to break the door down! Do you remember that night, Galena? You had that pink blouse on, and Mose was most insulting in what he said about the way you had dressed up.”

“That is Ripple, Miss Walsh.” The quiet voice of Don broke in upon Sissy’s loud-toned reminiscences, and Pam gave a start of surprise as the dim outlines of a big timber house came into view. It stood in a clearing with a background of lofty trees, and the light of the rising moon fell full upon the long brown front.

“It looks so different from what I expected, and yet I have known it all my life,” said Pam eagerly, and she leaned forward to get a better view. Then she cried out sharply: “But there is no one at home, and it looks like a dead house. Don’t you think so?”

CHAPTER IV

What They Found

Don drew his horses up with a jerk and sprang to the ground.

“The other lot from over the Ridge have not got here yet, so we are first,” he remarked cheerfully, and then he held out his arms to Pam, so that she might descend with safety. But she drew back with a sudden shyness.

“You go first, please, and show me the way,” she said to Sophy, who laughed, and then dropped into the strong arms of her brother, which was certainly the easiest mode of descent.

“Come, Miss Walsh, I promise not to drop you, and I don’t expect that you are heavier than Sophy.” Don had turned to the wagon again, and now Pam had no excuse for holding back; so, dropping as she had seen Sophy do, she was speedily standing on the ground by her side and looking at the blank windows of the house that was to be her home. She could not repress a shiver as she thought how angry her grandfather would probably be when he found the sort of company in which she had arrived.

“Let us go and knock at the door while the others are unloading,” suggested Sophy, who seemed to understand Pam’s secret fear, and was anxious to reassure her.

Pam moved forward on unsteady feet. There was a queer sensation all about her that she was walking in a dream; nothing seemed real, least of all the girl with the kindly face and the quiet voice who stood at her side, gently encouraging and wholly sympathetic. The outlines of the house were vaguely familiar. Mrs. Walsh had talked so often to her children of her childhood’s home that Pam would never feel strange at Ripple; she had known it at second-hand for so long.

“I wish you would knock,” she said in a low voice, shrinking back behind Sophy as they stood before the heavy door. They were quite alone now, for all the others were busy about the wagons, taking out the supper baskets, and talking excitedly about something that was missing.

“What are you afraid of?” asked Sophy, when she had beat upon the door with her fists and they stood waiting for it to be opened.

Pam shivered, for she was genuinely scared. In the background a dog was barking in angry protest, but the house itself was absolutely deserted, to all appearance. She did not answer Sophy, but remembering that she was in a manner at home, whilst these others were only outsiders, she laid her hand on the door and tried to open it. Of course it was fast, and after a little more time spent in knocking at the door she turned to Sophy, asking: “What will you do? There does not seem to be anyone at home.”

“The men will find a way to get in, they always do,” replied Sophy laughing softly. Then she called to her brother: “Don, come here. There seems to be no one at home. How will you get in?”

“I will go and see if I can find a way. Don’t let the others start beating the door in until I have tried what I can do,” he said with a backward wag of his head in the direction of the noisy group by the wagon, who were still wrangling over the problem of a missing basket. Then came quite a long wait, or so it seemed to Pam, who was trying to form little sentences of explanation so that she might appease her grandfather if he should suddenly arrive upon the scene to demand the reason of her arrival with such a turbulent company.

“Here comes Don!” cried Sophy, as a step sounded inside the house, and there was a noise of a bolt being dragged back. “How did you get in?” she asked, as the heavy door came open, and Don with a lantern in his hand appeared on the threshold.

“The old fellow went away in a hurry, and forgot to shut the pantry window,” said Don, laughing as he stood back to let the others enter the house. Then he held the lantern high above his head to show them the way.

Pam went in first. A sudden sense of proprietorship had come to her; it was as if this were her own house and all that turbulent company outside were her guests. They might not be quite all that she would wish them to be, but she would make the best of them. There was a lamp standing on a small table near the stove, and she turned at once to light it.

“Don’t you think we ought to go over the house to see if he is at home?” she asked. “He might be ill, you see. I am sure we ought to do that first, before the others come in.”

“So am I,” Sophy agreed quickly. “Don, do you light the fire in the stove while we are gone; there are kindlings lying in that corner. Come along, Miss Walsh; the others will be here directly, so we must make haste!”

Sophy had taken the lantern from Don, and she handed it to Pam, instinctively taking her place in the rear, for this girl who was a stranger in a strange country moved with the assured air of one who was at home.

Pam held the lantern high, looking about her with absorbed interest. This was the living-room, and the outer door opened right into it, and that door in the corner would lead into the kitchen. She knew it well, for her mother had shown Jack how to draw a plan of the house. The door on the other side led to a sitting-room, the best room, which was only used on state occasions; a dreary place, so her mother had said. Beyond it was the bedroom where her grandfather slept, the very room in which her mother had been born. That was where she expected to find her grandfather if he was in the house. The best room had an unwholesome smell, as of a place never used and never aired. There was no carpet on the floor, but there was a couch, a cabinet, some chairs, and a table. Even in walking across the room with the lantern in her hand, Pam noticed that the stove was red with rust, and she wondered if there had been a fire there in all the years since her mother had run away from home to get married.

At the inner door she paused and knocked; then, as there was no reply, and the door stood ajar, she pushed it open and went in. It was a wide chamber, like the others, and being a corner room it had windows on two sides. It was even more airless and stuffy than the sitting-room. A heap of rugs and a mattress on the bed were a sign that someone slept there, while there was a heap of ashes before the stove which showed that, early in the autumn as it was, the old man had begun having a fire at nights. He was not there. Pam made quite sure of that, even pausing to lift the heap of tumbled rugs on the bed as if she expected to find him tucked away underneath. Sophy came to help her, and they peered under the bed, and in the old press which stood in the corner.

“He is not here, we must go upstairs,” said Pam, who was breathing hard, as if she had been running.

“Is there any upstairs to the house?” asked the other. She had not observed the outlines of the house particularly when they arrived, and it was the first time she had ever been to Ripple.

“Yes, there are three rooms,” Pam replied, and turning, she led the way back across the dreary sitting-room, and out to the living-room, where by this time Don had a fire roaring in the stove. Galena Gittins, the woman named Sissy, and one or two others were busy bringing in the supper baskets, but she took no notice of them. Crossing the floor, she went out by the door on the other side of the stove to the wide kitchen, or out-place, whence a narrow wooden stair led to the three bedrooms in the roof. These also were wide chambers, but only one of them had any furniture. This had been her mother’s old bedroom, as Pam recognized at the very first glance. There was a big press of red pine, which smelled like cedar, and was just as good at keeping away moths. There was the little bed with the carved head-board, the work of her great-grandfather, and the table that her great-uncle Zach had carved. There were even some old garments hanging on pegs behind the door, and she wondered if they had hung there ever since her mother went away. What a Rip-van-Winkle kind of business it was! Perhaps the room had hardly been entered for twenty years; it smelled stuffy enough.

“There is no one here,” said Sophy softly. She stood just behind Pam and looked about her in wonder. She did not understand how it was that this stranger from across the sea was so at home in this deserted house.

“No, he is not here,” said Pam. “He is not in the house, unless he is in the cellar. We ought to look there at once, before that lot downstairs start making a noise. Oh, pardon me, I forgot they are your friends, and of course they mean well.”

Sophy made a wry face, for the unconscious reproach in the voice of Pam made her wince.

“Yes, they⁠—⁠we mean all right,” she answered. She hesitated a moment, and then burst out: “It would have been rather horrid for you if you had come straight here, and found no one at all.”

“Indeed it would, and I am properly grateful down underneath,” replied Pam, and then she led the way towards the cellar, while Sophy followed behind. The cellar stretched right under the whole length of the house, as is common in New Brunswick, the severity of the winters making it essential to have a good storage that frost cannot touch.

But downstairs the merry crowd had been augmented by the other wagonload of people from over the Ridge; these were all presented to Pam in due course, and she found herself thrust, whether she would or no, into the position of hostess. It was in her to rise to the occasion, and she did it right royally, only there was all the time that feeling in her heart that she must search in the cellar before she allowed herself to be drawn into any merry-making. She slipped away with Sophy while the others were all busy trying to make the supper-table bigger by the addition of boards laid across the backs of chairs, and holding her lantern high above her head, she went carefully down the ladder-like stairs, while Sophy came close behind.

“Take care, there should be a very bad place about half-way down,” said Pam, who was breathing in little gasps again, for she was tremendously excited. “Ah, here it is! Mother has told me that she sprained her ankle over that step at three different times. Don’t you wonder what some people are made of, to leave necessary things neglected for so long?”

Sophy stumbled, nearly fell, and recovered herself with an effort; and steadying herself with a hand on Pam’s shoulder she answered with a laugh:

“Wait until you have lived at Ripple for a year before you pass judgment. Our summers are a fierce rush to do the things that must be done, and in the winter we are more or less torpid.”

“I shall not be torpid,” cried Pam in merry defiance. Then she paused and cried out in rapturous delight, as, reaching the bottom step, she came in sight of shelves piled with apples⁠—⁠bushels and bushels of them, some quite enormous in size, some so rosy and tempting to look at that she wanted to stretch out her hand and start eating then and there. Others were green and hard, as if they would not be mellow enough to eat for months to come. “What can my grandfather do with so much fruit?” she asked in surprise, as the flashing light of her lantern showed shelf after shelf piled with apples, while of pumpkins, squashes, and the harder sort of melons there was a goodly array.

“One needs a good lot of provisions to face a winter that is seven months long,” replied Sophy, who was also peering about with great interest, for she was of a housewifely turn. “But really, for an old man living alone, your grandfather has stored a considerable lot of apples. I suppose he has not lifted his potatoes yet, or we should smell them.”

“The potatoes always went into the inner cellar, so Mother said. Here they are, and what a lot! I shall live on roasted apples and potatoes this winter, I think. They will be easy to cook, and that will give me time for other things. Do you think I ought to take some of these apples up for the surprise party, or would Grandfather object to my making free with his property?”

“We have brought apples in plenty,” said Sophy. “If you are asked out to a surprise party yourself this fall (autumn), you might bring along some of those yellow ones over there; I don’t think there is another tree of that variety in the district. Mother has sent over here to buy some every winter since I can remember, and ever so many folks have asked to have scions from the tree, but Mr. Peveril would neither give nor sell them.”

“Poor Grandfather; I am afraid he is rather disobliging sometimes!” Pam murmured with wistful regret in her tone.

When they had thoroughly inspected the cellar, as they had done the rest of the house, they went back to the living-room, where the fun was now uproarious. The young men were making coffee, while the girls set the table, and the older women unpacked the food. There were even one or two middle-aged men, but Pam noticed that these withdrew into a corner, where they sat talking, quite heedless of the confusion all around them. They were much too tired to care for anything in the way of festivity which entailed any labour, but a chance to exchange opinions with a neighbour, and to hear a little gossip, was inducement sufficient to bring them long distances, and make them willing to be all night out of bed.

Old Wrack Peveril’s supply of lamps was limited, but the resourceful surprise party had succeeded in getting a fine illumination notwithstanding. A generous supply of pine knots had been brought along in a basket, and these, tossed on the fire a few at a time, lighted the big room with a vivid, flashing glare. There were also several lanterns, and these were hung in the outer kitchen, in the dreary best sitting-room, and even in the old man’s bedroom. This surprise party was not going to do things by halves, and they wanted room in which to spread themselves. A supply of candles eked out the lanterns, but these, being home-made, were not very brilliant, and they guttered fearfully in the liberal draughts.

Pam was not allowed to lift a finger to do anything. She was of the family, they told her, even though she had arrived with the company. Failing her grandfather, she was hostess. Entering into the spirit of the thing, some of the girls rushed out of doors and gathered great boughs of foliage by moonlight; these they wreathed in the back of a ponderous arm-chair, and dragging it to the head of the supper-table, installed Pam there in regal state.

“Oh, I cannot take the head of the table; it is not my house!” she cried. “My grandfather might be angry with me if he came back and found that I was taking his place in such a fashion, and it would be dreadful to start with him in that way.”

“I don’t fancy he will be back before to-morrow,” said Mrs. Morse, the stout woman who had known Pam’s mother. “It is awkward travelling the forest trails at night, and the moon will soon be down. We mostly stay where sundown finds us, and let travelling wait until daylight comes again. That is what your grandfather is going to do, I expect, so you might as well get all the fun you can. We are only young once, and there is no sense in being dismal when you can have the time of your life.”

“If the old man happens along we will square him somehow, Miss Walsh, don’t you be afraid,” put in Don Grierson, who, having undertaken the work of head coffee-maker, was busy at the stove.

Pam yielded then, and really it would have been silly to protest. She was excited, too, and the whole affair had taken on the character of an adventure. She permitted herself to be placed in the great chair, she let the girls take her hat off and twine a wreath of yellow maple leaves for her hair, and she sat at the head of the long table, a veritable queen of the ceremonies. Her face was flushed, her eyes were shining, and she entered into the fun with an abandon that surprised even herself.

The supper was very good, and she was so hungry that she could have devoured almost anything. Never, never had she tasted such chicken pie, or such delicious cake. They had given her an earthenware plate⁠—⁠cracked it is true, and browned with having been put in the oven, but it was a plate⁠—⁠and as there were only about three others this was a distinction indeed. Mrs. Morse, sitting at her side, was placidly eating from an old baking-tin, while Galena Gittins, farther down the table, had a saucepan lid by way of plate. These small drawbacks did but add to the fun, however, and gales of laughter resounded through the wide room, which must have been silent for so many years.

Suddenly Pam felt something pressing against her, and looking down she saw the shaggy head of a big dog pressed against her knee, while two wistful eyes looked into hers, and an eager tail thumped the floor.

“A dog, and such a dear! Where did it come from?” she asked, stooping to pat the shaggy head, and then sharing a liberal bit of pie with the hungry animal.

“It is old Wrack’s dog, and was going to eat us all when we took our horses into the barn; but a mouthful of food soon brought it to a better frame of mind,” said a young man, edging a little nearer for a chance of talking to Pam. She was having a triumph in a small way, and the surprise party were feeling that they themselves had had a very charming surprise at Ripple that night, for it is always the unexpected that appeals to people.

“If it is Grandfather’s dog, then it belongs to me in a way, and we must be friends, of course.” Pam stooped over the animal again, feeding it with morsels from her plate, and doing her very best to win the creature’s liking. Perhaps if the dog loved her, the old man would also find it easy to care for her. That was how she argued the matter to herself, as she sat at the head of the table playing hostess in a house she had never before entered, to a company of people she had never before seen.

“Funny the old man did not take his dog along with him where he has gone. Folks say that he is never seen without the beast,” remarked the young man who had just been talking to Pam, and for want of some one better he addressed his remark to Mrs. Morse.

“The old man knew his own business best, I guess,” rejoined the stout woman tartly. “It is likely he left the critter here to guard the place a bit. But it does seem a bit strange to me that the old fellow should have gone out for the night, and he expecting his granddaughter at any time, as you might say. Now you suppose what the situation would have been for that poor girl, if we had not taken it into our heads to surprise old Wrack to-night! I declare it fairly makes my flesh creep to think about it.”

“Then don’t think about it, Mrs. Morse,” said Pam, who had overheard the remark. “Grandfather would not have meant to treat me badly, I am sure; perhaps he has even gone some part of the way to meet me, and by ill fortune we missed each other.”

The company looked at each other, as much as to say that was about the most unlikely thing to have happened, but no one ventured to say so. There was not one present in the room who would have said or done anything to sadden Pam or put any foreboding as to her future into her heart. When supper was over, the food remaining⁠—⁠a goodly pile⁠—⁠was carefully stacked out of the way, the table was dragged to one side of the room, and then the fun began. One of the party had brought a fiddle, and one had a melodeon, and with these for orchestra, dancing went on with great spirit. Sir Roger de Coverley was first favourite, and they danced it over and over again until they were fairly tired out, and subsided on to chairs and forms to play General Post. This entailed so many forfeits, and so much hilarity in the paying of them, that midnight was long past before anyone even thought of wanting any fresh amusement. Singing was called for then, and chorus after chorus rang round the heavy timbers of the ceiling. Pam noticed that it was all sacred music, chorales, anthems, and sonorous fugues which had been learned at church, and which matched with the sombre grandeur of the leagues on leagues of forest surrounding Ripple on every side.

“Won’t you sing something?” Sophy asked, coming over to Pam, whose face was wearing a rather awed expression.

“I can’t sing⁠—⁠not by myself, I mean. I am not accomplished really, though I can play the piano enough to teach young children,” Pam answered, thinking of the governess life which she had left so far behind.

“Ah, the piano is rather out of it here. The useful instrument is one that can be carried about, like the violin or the melodeon,” Sophy said. She went on to tell Pam that so far as she knew there was only one piano in the township, and that was broken.

“I shall learn to play the jews’ harp; I am sure that I could manage it, for I could perform quite creditably with a comb and a piece of paper.” Pam laughed at her own small wit, then suddenly grew serious, for the night was wearing, and with the first streaks of dawn to light the forest trails these lively people would be gone, and she would be left alone to face whatever might come.

“Could you stay with me, just until my grandfather comes back? Would it be asking too much?” There was such a wistful look in the eyes she turned to Sophy as betrayed the heart-shrinking that was behind.

“I think so, but I will ask Don what he thinks. Mother is not very strong, but I know she will do her best to let me help you,” Sophy said. She made her way across to Don, who was just going to start making coffee again: a minute of consultation and she was back by the side of Pam. “Don says he is sure that I ought to stay, and that he will drive over for me this afternoon, unless Father happens to have a round in this direction. Father is the township doctor, you know, so he is all over the place, and we never know where he will have to go next. If I stay here with you we will do the clearing up after the company are gone. That will please them all, because, you see, it is proper for them to do it.”

CHAPTER V

The Next Day

Dawn was only faintly creeping up through the avenues of the forest when the last wagon, filled with tired merrymakers, drove away from Ripple. The silence which dropped when they had gone was so appalling that Pam turned to Sophy with actual consternation in her eyes.

“Is it always as deadly quiet as this?” she asked, and now it was hard work to keep her voice from quavering. She did not realize that she was worn out with all the excitement she had gone through.

“You don’t think of the quiet when you are used to it,” Sophy answered. “At least, I never think about it; but of course our house is not so remote as this. The fact is, you are so tired that you can hardly stand on your two feet. Suppose you lie down for a little rest before your grandfather comes back, and I will do the clearing up.”

“As if I should even dream of letting you work while I take my ease!” cried Pam in a shocked tone. “I am quite sure that you must be as tired as I am, only you are made of better stuff and will not cry out about it. Let us do what is necessary as quickly as we can, then we will just lie down and sleep the worst of it off. I wonder when Grandfather will come back, and what he will say when he finds that I have come?”

“He ought to say how sorry he is that he was not here to give you a welcome,” replied Sophy, as she moved to and fro straightening the furniture, picking up bits of paper, and restoring the room to the condition in which they had found it. The house door stood wide open, and presently they heard the sound of a cow mooing in the barn.

“There are the animals to be fed, and if you are a London girl you will not know much about milking.” Sophy had paused in her work of clearing and was standing still with a frown on her face. She did not know very much about it herself, for in the doctor’s household there were always men or boys to do that sort of work. But she was going to help Pam all she could, and if it entailed milking a cow, well, she did not intend to be beaten at the business. She had seen cows milked often enough, the operation looked fairly easy, and she was not afraid of the animals.

“I know that milk comes from cows⁠—⁠and coconuts, and that is about all,” said Pam, shrugging her shoulders as she realized the extent of her ignorance.

“Come and have your first lesson in milking, then.” Sophy caught up the cleanest bucket she could find, and tied a towel over her best frock. “We may have to feed pigs if there are any in the barn. If I had thought about the live stock I should certainly have asked one of the menfolks to stay and see us through with the morning chores. As it is, we must just do the best we can until your grandfather comes home again.”

“You never know what you can do until you try,” exclaimed Pam, as she, too, tied a towel over her frock in imitation of Sophy. The two stepped out into the keen, crisp air of the morning, and went across grass which sparkled with frost to the barn. They were closely followed by the dog. The creature had apparently decided that Pam was one of the family, and meant to treat her accordingly.

There were pigs and poultry to be fed, there was a cow to be milked and turned into a little paddock, which sloped like a wedge into the forest. There were half a score of sheep in the paddock also, but Sophy said these would not need feeding, as they were quite able to get their own living. When the “chores” were all done Pam went back to the house feeling as if her education had taken great strides since the previous day, and she envied the ease with which Sophy tackled all the mysteries of milking and feeding.

The two were just deciding that, now the “chores” were done, they were free to lie down and take a rest, when from the open door they caught the sounds of horses approaching. A moment later two men in police uniform rode up to the front of the house and dismounted.

“The police!” cried Sophy, and her face went as white as her blouse. “Courage, Pam! I am afraid something must have happened to your grandfather.”

Pam caught her breath in a little sobbing gasp, and clung to Sophy as the men rode up and dismounted before the door of the house.

“Is Mr. Peveril at home?” demanded the elder of the two, and at the question Pam’s courage instantly rose, for of course if the old man had been found injured or dead the police would not ask if he were at home.

Putting Sophy gently in the background Pam came forward, flushing a little as she looked into the strong, weather-beaten face of the policeman. Her voice was quite steady as she answered:

“My grandfather is not at home just now, and we do not know when he will be back, but we are expecting him at any minute.”

“Is Mr. Peveril your grandfather? I did not know he had any relatives,” said the officer, and Pam noticed with exceeding dismay that he looked as if he were sorry for her.

“Mr. Peveril has a daughter, my mother, who lives in England, and I have come from there to live with Grandfather and take care of him,” she said. Now there was defiance in her tone, for she was telling herself that she did not want this man’s pity. Why should people pity her for coming to live with her grandfather? It was horrid! Moreover, it was a slur on his character, and because blood is thicker than water every instinct of affection and defence of which Pam was capable rallied to champion the old man.

The officer nodded. “What time did Mr. Peveril leave here yesterday?” he asked. Then, suddenly recognizing Sophy, who had remained in the background where Pam had thrust her, he said: “Good morning, Miss Grierson; I am afraid we worked the Doctor rather hard last night.”

“Was Father called out last night?” cried Sophy in dismay. “Oh, I am sorry for Mother, for Don and I were both away. I do hate for her to be left alone like that. What time was Father called?”

“Between seven and eight o’clock. He was called to attend Sam Buckle, whose wife had found him lying near the fence that divides his quarter-section from Ripple. He was most fearfully battered, but just alive. I fear there is not much hope of his recovery, he is so badly knocked about.”

“Oh dear, oh dear, how truly dreadful!” gasped Sophy, and Pam, whose senses were by this time quite abnormally acute, noticed that she turned a glance full of pity upon herself.

“What time did Mr. Peveril leave here yesterday?” demanded the officer, turning to Pam once more, and now his voice had a more peremptory ring.

“I do not know; he was not here when we came last night,” she faltered. A chill dismay was creeping over her, and she was wondering why Sophy looked so distressed, and why she had so carefully averted her face.

“What time did you come?” asked the officer sharply.

This time it was Sophy who answered.

“It must have been about half an hour, perhaps three-quarters, after sundown. We came for a surprise party. We were in two wagons coming along the trail when we met Miss Walsh, who in walking here from Hunt’s Crossing had lost her way. We took her into our wagon and brought her along with us. We found the house deserted, and stayed all night enjoying ourselves. When the others went at dawn I remained with Miss Walsh, who is a stranger and a city girl, so she would have been hard put to it alone. That is all we know.”

“Can you remain here with Miss Walsh still, Miss Grierson? I will tell your father you are here.”

“Oh, yes, I will stay, of course. I could not leave Miss Walsh alone at such a time!” exclaimed Sophy, and there was such a thrill in her tone that Pam’s face blanched with a sudden terror. What was the hidden meaning of this compassion, and what had Sam Buckle’s accident to do with her or her grandfather? But she could not ask the officer. Indeed, she had no chance. Staying only to give a few instructions to Sophy, and saying that he would probably look round that way later in the day, the officer rode away accompanied by his companion, and the silence settled down again.

All desire to sleep seemed to have vanished from both girls. Directly they were alone, Pam turned to Sophy.

“Why did that man seem to pity me so much? Why should he come here to know where Grandfather is?” she demanded.