“Oh, if you take them for examples, it may be true that there is an excuse for you to criticise, yet we’re all one out here, and you’ll be counted in with Humphrey Muirhead and Jimmy O’Neill yourself one of these days,” she told him, teasingly. She was happy now that she had succeeded in her errand, and could afford to joke.
CHAPTER XIX
DR. FLINT
It was a few days later that Dr. Flint appeared again. In the meantime Agnes had been aware of a midnight expedition, in which Jimmy O’Neill had taken part, and from which he had returned the next morning in as bad a humor as Jimmy could be in. Agnes heard his answer to a whisper from Polly, “Cleared out,” he said, and the girl knew to whom he referred.
After breakfast, Dr. Flint came riding up. He and Jimmy had a conference down at the blacksmith shop, and after leaving his horse there the doctor made his way up to the house where Agnes met him.
“Well, Miss Agnes, I think you’ll be moving across the river before long,” was the doctor’s greeting.
A smile flashed across Agnes’s face. The doctor laughed. “Oh, you little marplot,” he said, lowering his voice, “it was you who spoiled our little game, I know, though nobody but myself suspects. Our bird has flown, and I think I could put my finger on the one who gave the warning. I think we have to thank Miss Agnes Kennedy for a part in that transaction. Didn’t you tell?”
“Suppose I did; it was a better way to get rid of him than the other, though but for knowing your intention I suppose he would have still held out.”
“Well, he’s off for good and all. He must have skurried things together in a hasty fashion, for the house is cleared of anything valuable, and there’s not a head of live stock left on the place. He’d no right to the cattle; but he’d not stand at that, and I suppose would have taken the house if he could have carried it; it is a wonder he didn’t set fire to it.”
“I suppose he thought if he did that it would bring discovery upon him, and prevent his getting away as secretly as he wished.”