A Canadian Farm Mystery; Or, Pam the Pioneer

by Bessie Marchant

“I happened to know your grandfather,” said the lawyer, “and anything less likely for him to do I cannot conceive. No, Miss Walsh, if ever the story of that night is known, you will find that it was not your grandfather, coming, as you pathetically put it, to take his own money, but a miserable scamp of a thief, who, not content with robbing a lone house at night, made his wrong-doing into black crime by exposing two girls to risks of the gravest kind. It is deeds of this sort which call for summary justice, only the trouble is the wily rogues are hard to catch.”

“At least the justice of heaven overtook this one,” said the Doctor as a murmur of anger went through the crowd, and Pam realized with a thrill how kindly was the feeling for her and Sophy. She had to listen meekly enough to the lecture which the lawyer read her on her wrong-headedness in trying to keep what she thought was the visit of her grandfather from the police, but in her heart she knew that in similar circumstances she would do the same again.

The verdict of the inquiry was that a man had been found dead in the forest, but that there was not sufficient evidence to show whether he had died first and his body had then been eaten by wolves, or whether he had fallen a victim to the hungry creatures when he was making his way from Ripple. There was no evidence to show who he was; from the size of the bones it might have been Wrack Peveril, but equally it might not. One thing only was certain⁠—⁠that it must have been the man who entered the house at Ripple in the absence of Pam and Sophy, for both Pam and Mrs. Buckle testified to this. Mrs. Buckle had marked the paper money with a little cross on the flourishes of one capital letter, which she pointed out, while Pam testified to the stout little wallet being the one in which she had stored the twenty dollars. One thing was very puzzling to her, and that was the fact that the canvas bag only contained seven dollars in cash, whereas it should have had fourteen dollars, this being the amount of the money she had found in her grandfather’s desk, and left there against the time of his necessity.

“You are quite sure about this amount?” the lawyer asked her. And Pam was quite sure. Conjecture was busy then, but it amounted to no more than conjecture, and the affair had to be left shrouded in mystery.

The remains were buried in a nameless grave. The lawyer would not permit it to be assumed that the bones were those of Wrack Peveril, while the strictest search revealed nothing by which an identity could be set up. The torn clothing, such as remained, was what anyone might have worn, the boots had no name on them, and there was nothing else to go by.

Pam came out of the wagon-house at the close of the inquiry feeling as if she would like to run away and never show her face in the neighbourhood again. She was acutely miserable, and it did not tend to raise her spirits when a small boy, lean and ragged, who hung on the outskirts of the crowd, deliberately stuck his tongue out at her. She flushed scarlet at the insult and turned away so sharply that she punted into Sophy, who was walking on the other side of her, and who immediately wanted to know what was the matter that she was so red in the face, because she had been so pale before.

Pam would not tell her. She would not even inquire the name of the ragged boy. It was such an emphasis of what she had been feeling, just as if her secret thoughts had been put into speech, and shouted out so that all might hear. Surely never before had a girl so hard a thing to bear! The very pity of these kindly folk did but add to her suffering. She thought of her mother, and it was only the urgent necessity for safe-guarding the interests of the dear home people that enabled her to bear the ordeal with patience.

In her own mind Pam was absolutely certain that the poor remains found in the forest were those of her grandfather. She found it best to keep silent about her belief, however. The neighbours were indignant that that idea should gain a moment’s credence. They held it an insult to his memory that such a thing should be believed of him as that he should enter his own house like a burglar and steal his own money! Yet everyone believed he had beaten Sam Buckle so sorely that the man had died from his wounds! Pam would have laughed at the absurdity of their standpoints, if she had not been so sore at heart about it all. If only the remains had had anything upon them to prove her right, most of her troubles would have been over; she could have written to her mother to say that her grandfather was dead, and then Mrs. Walsh would have disposed of the boarding-house, and would have come out to Ripple with the other children. It was Pam’s comfort that Jack was coming. Perhaps when he arrived, and heard all that there was to be told, he would be able to persuade her mother that it was best to come.

The maple trees on Ripple had not been tapped for so long that the yield was quite wonderful. Pam found herself in the position of being able to sell a couple of hundredweights of sugar, as well as having enough for home consumption for a long time to come. She reckoned that her trees had averaged twenty pounds weight of sugar each. Of course higher averages had been made; some people talked of having had trees which yielded thirty pounds each. But, as Galena said, you would not find more than one tree in a few hundreds do as much as that; the average of twenty pounds was very high, and it would not be safe to tap those trees again next spring, as it would probably kill them.

By the time the sugaring was safely over, the snow had melted sufficiently for the plough to get to work. Neither Pam nor her next neighbour, Mrs. Buckle, had horses for ploughing. Mrs. Buckle did certainly possess an ancient nag, knock-kneed and a roarer, which drew her to meetings on Sundays, but the creature was not capable of very much in the way of exertion, so the ploughing on both farms had to be done by outside labour. Nathan Gittins having undertaken the work, in addition to his own fields, his plough was going every day and all day. Then the wind veered round to the cold quarter, there was another blizzard, and they were back in winter again, to the secret disgust of Pam, who had seen enough of snow to last her for that season.