I made a great effort. "If you mean with Dan," I said, "they are. He is much pleasanter. I think he has gotten over the trouble about the house, though sometimes I have wondered whether he might not have it when I am gone."
"No," father replied, almost with set teeth. "You need not go for that. I'm not sure but it would be better for you to deed it back to me. Still if things go on, well——"
He hobbled to the closet and brought me some wine. That refreshed me. Then he opened the package, made out some bills, straightened his accounts when it was supper-time.
John came over in the evening, and father would keep him all night. I felt quite as well as usual. When I went upstairs I laid the soiled things away, hung up his trousers, but his vest fell to the floor, and his knife and pencil rolled out with a bit of paper. I put the two back, crumpled up the paper, then bethought myself it might be a memorandum of something and spread it out, took it over to the candle. It was a pencil scrawl.
"You will find me at Weesaukie's lodge at twilight." It was not Dan's writing.
There was no name. He had taken Duke and gone in the buggy. Was he to have a companion? It turned me sick and cold again. Polly's glittering, mocking eyes and her insolent tones with their half veiled gayety swept over me. Was it—would it be Polly? Oh, no, no, Dan could not do such a thing as that!
For all Polly's brave show of mourning it was whispered that her married life had not been altogether serene, and that she made little ado about the loss of her grandeur.
All night something haunted me, a kind of impersonal agency, treacherous, trying to lure me somewhere in darkness and vagueness, while I had to make a great effort to hold back. And then I was wandering over wild, dreary prairie land, at last coming out to a strange black, silent lake. What splashed into it? The cry woke me, and my heart beat with a great terror.
"John," I said to the young cousin, "I want you to go down to the Morrison house this noon and take a note, but do not give it to any one except Polly. If she isn't home, and she may not be, you say it is all right, and be sure to bring the note back to me. Don't leave your name or anything. Come back to-night."