“Suppose he never does come back?” Pam shuddered violently, and then hid her face in her hands, feeling that the trouble was really more than she could bear.
“He will surely come back unless something has happened to him,” said Sophy soothingly; then she bent over Pam’s bowed head and comforted her as best she could. She succeeded so well that presently Pam suffered herself to be persuaded into lying down. She promptly fell asleep then, and lay wrapped in profound slumber while the hours of the hot, sunny noon came and passed. Sophy slept too, but fitfully; there was a sense of responsibility on her that kept her wakeful and alert. The house door was open, and the big dog slumbered on the threshold. The creature seemed to share Sophy’s wakefulness, for it kept lifting an uneasy head. Once or twice it growled, although apparently there was nothing anywhere near to growl at, except the chipmunks darting to and fro, busy in the collection of their winter store of nuts.
Then far away along the trail from the westward came the faint beat of a horse’s hoofs. Immediately the dog rose to its feet and stood growling, while Sophy, who had been drifting into deeper slumber, also rose and rubbed her eyes to get the sleepiness out of them.
“Pam,” she called softly, “Pam, dear, there is someone coming; you had better wake up.”
But Pam was so sound asleep that it was hard work to rouse her. The horseman was very near, indeed, before she had come to a real understanding of what Sophy was saying. Then she stood for some seconds swaying to and fro, more asleep than awake.
“There is water in the out-kitchen. Run, dip your face in the bucket, you will feel better then!” urged Sophy, and Pam moved slowly away, found the bucket of water and a coarse towel, dipped her face, and, rubbing it vigorously, at once began to feel better. “Why, it is Father!” Sophy fairly shouted with delight as a grey-haired man mounted on a powerful black horse rode into view and lifted his whip in salutation. He rode up to the doorstep, slid from his horse, and Sophy rushed into his arms.
“The police told me that I should find you here, so I rode round this way,” said Dr. Grierson, as he held his daughter with one hand and lifted his hat to Pam with the other. “Is this Miss Walsh, of whom I have been hearing? I am very pleased to meet you, but I am real sorry that you should have been pitchforked, as it were, into such a peck of trouble, my dear. I have heard of your mother very often. Quite the belle of these parts she was, I should imagine, but more than a bit headstrong. Do you take after her?”
“I don’t know,” answered Pam, a little dubiously, for she thought the Doctor was making fun of her. “I am not so wise as my mother, and I am always getting into muddles.”
“So did she, according to all accounts, so doubtless you are a chip off the old block,” he said with a laugh; then he asked if Wrack Peveril had come back.
“No; we have seen nothing of him,” Pam replied; and Sophy immediately asked how Sam Buckle was.
“He is very bad indeed.” The Doctor’s tone was curt, a sure sign, as Sophy knew, that there was not much hope. The Doctor simply hated having his patients die, and he always behaved as if it were a personal affront when they showed signs of slipping out of life.
“Has he said anything about—about who hurt him?” asked Pam. She was determined to know all there was to be known, and she feared they would hide things from her unless she asked right out.
“He has not said much of anything that we can understand except to mutter over and over again that ‘it is his right, it is his right’,” said the Doctor; and Pam suddenly felt a great sinking of heart, for why should the injured man say words like those unless he were living over again the quarrel with his neighbour?
“He is such a fearfully disagreeable man!” exclaimed Sophy, as if she read the thought in the heart of Pam, and would give her comfort if she could. “I never knew anyone yet who really liked Mr. Buckle; even his own wife admits that he is a dreadfully hard man to live with. Father, you will never get your money for attending him; he will say that he did not call you himself, and so there is no obligation to pay you. That was how he served you the time the tree fell on him and nearly killed him; don’t you remember it?”
“Some people are made that way,” said the Doctor. “But I guess that I shall be no poorer in the long run for doing my duty by my fellow creatures. Would you two like Don to come and stay the night here with you? It is a lonesome place for two girls.”
“We shall not mind, I think,” put in Sophy hastily. She was thinking of her mother, and how Mrs. Grierson hated to be left at home at night with the younger children only.
“Oh, no, we shall not mind!” cried Pam, who understood perfectly the reason why Sophy did not want Don to come. She, for her own part, was anxious to get used to being alone at Ripple. If her grandfather failed to come back, she would have to do as best she could until her family came out from England to live with her, so it was just as well to get used to things. “We have the dog, and there are two guns in the sitting-room; that is one each, and I don’t think we need more than that.”
“If you take my advice you will leave the guns severely alone,” broke in the Doctor hastily. “There is nothing so dangerous as fire-arms in the hands of people who know nothing about them. We don’t want any more tragedies in the neighbourhood just now.”
“Keep your mind easy, Dad,” said Sophy with a laugh. “The guns are here right enough, but so far as I have been able to find there is not a dust of powder or any shot on the place.”
“Hush, don’t talk of it!” cried Pam, holding up her finger in warning. “All the time no one knows that we have no ammunition the guns will serve their purpose. If we pointed the things full at any intruder he would be properly scared, of course, and we should be in no danger, so it would be quite right.”
“You will do!” said the Doctor heartily, patting Pam on the shoulder as if she were a little schoolgirl. “Now I must go, but I will look along to-morrow and let you know how Sam Buckle is getting on. Have you got enough clothes, Sophy, or would you like Don to bring some over for you this evening?”
“I have nothing but what I have on, and this is my best frock,” she answered in a rueful tone, for her best frocks had to last a long time, and this was only about the third time of wearing that one. “I would spend the time I am here in helping Pam to clean this house down—very needful work, too—but what can one do in a best frock?”
“I will ask your mother to put some things in a bag for you, then Don shall ride over with them,” said the Doctor, who was in a hurry to mount and ride away, for he was needed in another direction.
“Sophy, I am haunted by the thought that poor Grandfather may have met with an accident somewhere out in the woods or the fields,” said Pam when the last echoes of the Doctor’s horse had died away. “Could we not go and look to see if we can find him?”
“We might, but it would be awkward if he came back while we were away,” answered Sophy.
“We will leave a paper here on the table to say that we have gone to look for him, and we can shut the dog indoors to take care of the place.” Pam had rummaged a pencil and a piece of paper from her bag, and writing her message, she left it lying in a prominent place on the table, with a blue mug standing on the edge of the paper to keep it from being blown away by any draught from the door. The dog was coaxed in and left to guard the place, and then the two set forth on their quest.
Sophy had never been at Ripple before. Pam also was a stranger in a sense, and yet she knew so much more of the place from hearsay as to seem quite at home.
“We will go right round the cleared land first,” she said to Sophy, who had naturally fallen into the second place and was following Pam’s lead.
“There does not seem to be much cleared land,” Sophy remarked, gazing round at the crowding forest trees. Here and there a little field had been made, but even in these great stumps were