"When?" echoed Mr. Curwen, with a smile. "Why, the morning you left us. You were right in your surmise, and I take it very kindly that you delayed so long as to scribble your gratitude, though that delay was an added danger."
"Oh, I was right?" said I, though still not very clear as to what it was that I had surmised correctly; and again Miss Curwen nodded.
"Yes!" said he, "but, indeed, it was early for travellers. But we were waiting for you at the breakfast-table when we first heard the sheriff's horses. I was not sure that you would hear them at the back of the house."
"But one of the windows looked down the road," said I, understanding why he had seen no discourtesy in my precipitate departure. I could not in any case give the real reason which had prompted me to that, and since here was one offered to me, why, I thought it best to fall in with it—"the window about which I hunted so long for the owl," I added, turning to Miss Curwen, For her manner of a minute ago warned me that she put no great faith in her father's explanation of my conduct, and I was desirous to test the point.
"You hunted vainly," said she, "because the owl flitted one night," and so left me in doubt.
"That is true," continued Mr. Curwen to me. "I did not think of the window, and indeed was somewhat puzzled by the quickness of your escape. For I sent Mary Tyson to warn you the while I barricaded the door and held a parley with the sheriff from the window. She came back to tell me you were gone."
"Would she had come back quicker!" exclaimed Dorothy with a shudder.
"Why?" I cried at the sight of her distress. "Was there—was there—any hurt done? Oh no, not to you. I could never forgive myself."
"No, not to us," replied Mr. Curwen. "Dorothy takes the matter too much to heart. Had she fired of a purpose she would have been right, or very little to blame. For I am old-fashioned enough to consider a guest sacred as an altar-vessel. But since she fired by mistake——"
"Miss Curwen fired!" I said.