“I will let the silly beast in, and I very much hope that it found itself out of the running when it came to chasing wolves. It is valiant enough to attack anything, but it has no sense at all in regard to being beaten,” she remarked, as she crossed the floor, and slipping back the bolt let the dog into the house. The animal jumped about her in an ecstasy of joyfulness at being indoors again. Then it sniffed curiously about, and finally went to the door of the sitting-room and whined to be let in.
“Ah, the wise beast!” cried Pam, with a catch in her breath. “Do you see, it knows that its old master has been here—evidently it thinks he is here still! No, my dear dog, you are not going into that room, and equally you are not going out into the night again. You are going to stay here with Sophy while I go to examine the upper story of this desirable and beautiful residence.”
“Oh, Pam, how frivolous you sound!” cried Sophy in a rather shocked tone. “To hear you, no one would dream of what we had gone through to-night. Oh, I never saw anything more horrible than the wolves chasing that poor moose; I cannot even imagine anything worse, can you?”
“Yes,”—Pam’s face paled a little as she turned to go upstairs—“I can imagine how very much worse it would have been if those wolves had been chasing us. I feel that we were horribly impulsive and indiscreet to go out as we did, and it is a fine thing for us that nothing worse was the result.”
The dog followed her up the stairs, and sniffed round the rooms in an inquiring fashion. Once it lifted its head as if about to howl, but happening to see the movement, Pam gripped the creature by its collar, shaking it vigorously.
“No, you don’t, not if I know it!” she said sharply. “That poor girl downstairs has had enough to bear by way of nervous strain to-night, without any uproar from you to add to her burden.”
“You are sure that it was your grandfather who came to-night?” Sophy asked later, when her ankle had been bathed and bandaged, and she was lying at peace in bed.
“Yes, about as sure as if I had seen him.” Try as she would, Pam could not keep the scorn from her voice. “He must have come indoors and gone straight to his room, where he wrenched open the desk and took the money we had been keeping there for him.”
“If it had been your grandfather would he not have had a key to the desk?” Sophy stirred a little restlessly as she spoke; it was very disturbing to have a thing of this kind happen, and she thought she would be afraid to be left alone in the house after this, and, as a rule, she was left alone so much.
“He had a key, I suppose, seeing that the desk was locked, but he might have lost it, or he might have left it somewhere else with his baggage, if he had any baggage. A hundred things might have happened to make it necessary for him to break open his own desk in his own house like an ordinary thief. But, Sophy, we have got to keep the affair to ourselves; no one must know about his coming, do you understand?”