She had felt no interest in it before, and no desire to pry into business which did not concern her. Now, however, all this was altered, and she deemed it her right to know what the letter contained.
Like the slip of paper in the box, it was curt and threatening, with no beginning in the usual way, but signed at the bottom with a great flourish.
“If I receive no money from you within a week, I will send some one to look you up. If you do not pay then, well, I will let the police know, and then you will soon see the inside of a prison, which may bring you to your senses and make you keep up your payments better.
“R. D. Brunsen.”
Nell gasped in her astonishment, for the man who had arrived at the Lone House yesterday in such a condition of exhaustion, had told her that his name was Bronson, Dick Bronson.
Was it possible that he had come to spy on her grandfather? Of course the story that he was travelling through the great forest on a pleasure jaunt might have been a fiction, only, somehow, her late visitor had struck her as being truthful and honest in his statements, and it was very disappointing to find herself mistaken in him. The names Bronson and Brunsen were so much alike that they might be the same, the difference lying only in pronunciation, for Mr. Bronson had only told her his name, he had not spelled it for her.
A long time she stood pondering over the matter, but quite unable to arrive at any definite conclusion concerning it. Then, warned by the slanting rays of the sun, she set to work preparing supper, in readiness for her grandfather’s return.
The letter she put in a prominent position on the supper-table. He would be sure to ask her where she had found it, then she would tell him all about it, and ask him why he had tampered with her property, which was contained in the box.
The sunset faded out in splendours of crimson and gold; then a cold wind stole across the ridge, rustling the millions of crisping leaves on the great forest trees, and night came brooding down.
Never during the years of her life at the Lone House had Nell felt so solitary as on this night. Hitherto, when her grandfather had remained away, she had had Pip for companionship and defence. But now the dog was breathing its last, no longer able to recognize her when she stooped to pat it, or to wag its tail in response to her voice.