“What an extraordinary story!” exclaimed Grace, who was sitting up on the couch this morning, well backed up with pillows, but looking much more like herself. “I wonder the men have not tried to get their sledge again, for I suppose the contents must have been valuable.”
“Very valuable,” replied Dan. “Why, there was enough cutlery and clocks, watches and that sort of thing to have stocked two or three shops, and the marvel is where they could have got it from. It is supposed to have been stolen, and the police were on the trail after it, because their suspicions had been aroused. They have got it now at the Rownton Police Barracks, and are waiting for someone to come forward and claim it; and they are also waiting for Bradgate to be well enough to tell them what he knows, and if he should happen to peg out without getting better, they will have to go without knowing, I guess.”
“Oh, I do hope he will get better, for I did like his face so much,” said Grace, and then she asked Dan Semple about his mother, and charged him with a message for Eunice, while Bertha listened to young Fricker, who was telling her about his home in Halifax, and how he downright ached sometimes for a sight of the dear old folks down east, and a sniff of the wind from the sea or a fierce Atlantic gale.
“Why, I am from Nova Scotia too, and I am just horribly homesick for the dear old place sometimes!” said Bertha, with kindling interest in the red-haired boy, who had such pleasant manners and seemed so eager for friendship.
“Well, Fricker, my boy, I guess we must get, or the old man will think that we have started on a holiday tour,” said Dan, reluctantly preparing to depart.
“May I come again, Miss Doyne, and talk about Nova Scotia?” asked Fricker eagerly, as Bertha came to the door to see them off.
“Of course you may come,” she said, laughing at him in a cheerful elder-sisterly fashion. “Do you think that we have such an endless rush of visitors out here that we are simply sick of seeing fresh people?”
“No, I don’t, but I do think that you are awfully brave to stick through a winter in such a place. Why, it would be more lively in prison!” exclaimed the boy from Nova Scotia.
CHAPTER XXIV
A Revelation for Bertha
The weeks of winter dragged on; January wore itself out in fierce storms. February was a month of keen frost and bright sunshine, which reduced Bertha to the infliction of wearing coloured spectacles to keep from going blind, and then March came in with lengthening days and stormy winds which howled across the wastes, but bore on their gusty breath a welcome hint of the coming spring.