Terry sighed deeply and shifted her books from her right arm to her left. Arden and she trudged silently along up the hill to Bordmust Hall.
The fog of the night before had blown away, and the distant hills shimmered in a soft blue light. The leaves were beginning to fall, and at the steps of Bordmust the head gardener, Anson Yaeger, was raking the lawn with sullen viciousness.
As the girls reached him he stopped moving the rake and looked at them penetratingly. His little beady eyes narrowed into bright slits. Resting part of his weight on the rake he shook a grimy finger at the freshmen.
“You’re two of them girls I seen down in my orchard!” he snarled. “You’ve no right there! Mark my words, no good will come of it! And don’t concern yourselves with what’s none of your business. There’s things going on around here that nobody knows about but me. I wouldn’t like to see you hurt, foolish as you are!”
Terry and Arden stood dumbfounded. Completely taken by surprise, they moved on past the surly gardener and involuntarily looked back at him without attempting to answer him.
The heavy, thickset man in tattered overalls and an old-fashioned, gray coat-sweater looked over his shoulder with wild eyes, as though expecting someone to come along and stop his tirade.
“If I was to tell you all I know,” he went on, “what with alarm bells ringing and all, you’d pack up and take the next train home. Why, last night——”
Terry nudged Arden, murmuring:
“Don’t let’s stand here like a couple of ninnies and let him talk to us this way. Come on! I think he’s a little crazy!”
Arden pulled away from Terry. “But I want to hear what he’s saying.”