“We might, but it would be awkward if he came back while we were away,” answered Sophy.
“We will leave a paper here on the table to say that we have gone to look for him, and we can shut the dog indoors to take care of the place.” Pam had rummaged a pencil and a piece of paper from her bag, and writing her message, she left it lying in a prominent place on the table, with a blue mug standing on the edge of the paper to keep it from being blown away by any draught from the door. The dog was coaxed in and left to guard the place, and then the two set forth on their quest.
Sophy had never been at Ripple before. Pam also was a stranger in a sense, and yet she knew so much more of the place from hearsay as to seem quite at home.
“We will go right round the cleared land first,” she said to Sophy, who had naturally fallen into the second place and was following Pam’s lead.
“There does not seem to be much cleared land,” Sophy remarked, gazing round at the crowding forest trees. Here and there a little field had been made, but even in these great stumps were still standing.
“We will go round all the fields first, and then we will search in the forest.” A little sob came up in Pam’s throat as she added: “I must find him somehow, the poor lonely old man!”
CHAPTER VI
Where has He Gone?
It was quite late in the afternoon when the two girls reached the house again. They were both of them tired out, for the day was fiercely hot. They had come upon no trace of the old man, but of one thing they had made quite certain: he was not lying in a dying or dead condition in any of his fields, which was, as Pam said, a comfort of a sort.