| [1] | A “back stick” is a fair-sized log of hard wood which is slow in burning. It is lit in the stove of a Canadian house at bedtime, and smoulders through the night, so that in the morning a fire may easily enough be kindled from it. |
CHAPTER VII
Searching
Days passed. The police came and went. Indeed, they might be said to haunt Ripple at this time. The dog grew so used to strange faces and visitors at all hours that it took no notice of them at all. It was tired, too. Morning, noon, and night Pam was searching for some trace of the old man whom she had come so far to live with, and yet had never seen; and where she went the dog went too. It was a dead body she was looking for now, and she had tramped the fields until she knew the land literally foot by foot. Then she penetrated into the forest, going very warily at first, for she had all a city girl’s dread of the unknown, and who could tell what terrors might lurk unseen beneath the brambles and the undergrowth?
She did not find anything. Sometimes the dog would stop suddenly, and lifting its head, would howl in a manner calculated to make the warm blood in her veins turn cold, for she believed herself on the brink of a find; but always there was nothing.
While Pam was away searching, Sophy sat in the house and sewed. She was to be married in the spring, as her father had said, and she had her own ideas as to the amount of plenishing it was proper to take with her to her husband. At home she was harassed and hurried between her duty and her inclination. Here there was no duty to harass her, and she felt as if she was having the best holiday she had known for years. Every morning after the “chores” were done she and Pam cleaned a room; when that was finished, Sophy sat down to her sewing, and Pam started out to search. The house was beginning to look different already, and it had lost the odour of exceeding fustiness which had struck them both on the night of the surprise party.
Then the inevitable happened, and Pam lost her way in the forest one day. She walked on and on, realizing that she was getting more hopelessly bewildered every minute. Suddenly she remembered the dog, and catching the creature round the neck, she told it all about her difficulty, winding up by telling it in the most forcible language she possessed to take her home.
“Woof! woof! woo-o-o-h!” The dog flung up its head and howled in such a fearfully dismal fashion that Pam gave an involuntary cry.
“You must not make such an awful row, I simply cannot bear it!” she exclaimed, seizing the creature round the neck and giving it a great hug. “We are in trouble, both of us, but you must learn to keep yours to yourself a bit, my friend; this sort of thing is past bearing. Now, take me home, dear, and make haste about it, or Sophy will certainly have a fit.”