“I declare! it might have been,” Mrs. Cupp said, with some relief. “Of course,” she added, with sudden suspicion, “you girls didn’t have anybody on watch outside?”
“No. We were too scatterbrained for that,” laughed Laura.
“And we did not think our light could be seen through any crack,” added Nan.
“It couldn’t,” Mrs. Cupp said promptly.
“How—how did you know we were here, then?” blurted out Bess.
“Ahem! I knew. That is sufficient,” said Mrs. Cupp, more in her usual tone.
Then it was true. Nan knew that somebody had played traitor. Mrs. Cupp had been told of the party in the haunted boathouse by some jealous girl, or she would never have come back to the Hall from the village by the shore road. It was a roundabout way, and lonely.
“The road was very dark,” explained the still excited matron. “When I came to the big boulder just the other side of the boat landing, something sprang out of the bushes and chased me. It was black, and looked like a man or boy, only it was on four legs—or its hands and knees.”
“Maybe it was a dog,” said Bess, doubtfully.
“‘The black dog Remorse,’ no less!” whispered Laura to Nan. “It was the ‘black dog’ of Mrs. Cupp’s conscience, I guess.”