A Canadian Farm Mystery; Or, Pam the Pioneer. Bessie Marchant

become of her? Will she have to turn round and go back to England?” Sophy was firing out a stream of questions, for she was tremendously excited. Nothing like this had ever come her way before, and she was a little thrown off her balance by it.

      “I can’t go back to England, I have not money enough, and Mother cannot afford to send me any either,” said Pam, recovering herself a little. Then drawing away from Sophy she stood erect, though she was still white and trembling. “I shall stay here and make the best of it!” she declared.

      “That is right!” The Doctor’s voice had such a ring of approval in it that Pam began at once to feel better. “Nothing is proved against Mr. Peveril, of course,” the Doctor went on. “He might not even have been suspected of having hurt Sam Buckle but for his unaccountable absence. As it is, people are disposed to think the very worst of him, and yet he may be as innocent as you or I.”

      “I believe he is. I cannot think that he would hurt anyone,” murmured Pam, and the Doctor shook his head, but whether in agreement or dissent did not appear.

      “Will Pam have to live on here alone? Will she have to run the farm?” demanded Sophy in a blaze of excitement. She was wondering whatever the city girl would do alone in the wilderness with winter coming on.

      For a moment the Doctor looked from one girl to the other as if he was making up his mind, and then he spoke with brisk decision.

      “No, she certainly cannot live alone; it is not to be thought of. You will have to stay with her until some of her own people can come out to her, or until she can find someone she likes better⁠—⁠that is, always supposing her grandfather makes no sign.”

      “I shall love to have Sophy with me, but I am afraid it is more than I have any right to expect,” said Pam, striving to speak steadily. “I am such an absolute stranger, and she has been so good to me.”

      “We have to be good to each other out here in the backwoods, or we should certainly get left every time there is trouble,” the Doctor replied. He went on in a lighter tone: “You need not worry overmuch about keeping Sophy. She is going to be married in the spring, and she has mountains of sewing to do. At home she will never get time for it; here she may.”

      “Oh, and she never told me!” cried Pam, looking with new interest at Sophy, whose face was covered with blushes, and a sight to see.

      “Did she not? I thought girls always told such things,” said Doctor Grierson with a glance of pride at his eldest daughter. Sophy had always been his right hand ever since she had been old enough to do anything at all. It was a piece of real self-sacrifice to spare her to stay with Pam at Ripple, but the plight of the stranger girl was so serious that he did not hesitate for a moment as to where his duty lay. He rode away in a great hurry as usual, and when he had gone Pam for a time broke down and cried.

      Sophy, with rare wisdom, crept away and left her alone to have her cry out. A moaning wind swept through the trees and sighed away in the distance. Pam sobbed on until she had no more tears to shed, then she gathered her courage to face what lay before her. She realized that she was up against the hardest thing she had ever faced in her life; and she was going to meet it boldly if she could. Her courage might feel like water, but other people must not know it. For the sake of her grandfather, who had so mysteriously disappeared, she must stay on at Ripple and do her best. The thought of running a farm tickled her so much that her tears were dry, and she was laughing when Sophy crept back to see how it was with her.

      “Well, you are a queer girl!” she exclaimed, and her opinion of Pam went up by leaps and bounds.

[1]	A “back stick” is a fair-sized log of hard wood which is slow in burning. It is lit in the stove of a Canadian house at bedtime, and smoulders through the night, so that in the morning a fire may easily enough be kindled from it.