Ruth and Marjorie both seemed a trifle disappointed until the latter thought suddenly of snakes, and a shudder passed through her.
“Any snakes?” she asked.
“Oh, mostly black snakes and water snakes. Do you mind ’em?”
“I loathe them!” exclaimed Ruth. “All girls do. But isn’t there anything really dangerous along this creek?” she continued. “Besides that one swift place in the water, I mean.”
“Jest one thing, and that only scares some folks. It’s a quare woman, what lives all alone in a farm-house by herself.”
“Oh, and is she really crazy—stark mad?”
“Some says she’s jest sort o’ idiotic; wouldn’t hurt nobody—but never was all there. They say she had a husband once, but he’s dead now.”
The old man shook his head doubtfully, to betray the fact that he did not know whether the report were true or not. Marjorie, who had become tired of this conversation, begged to borrow a paddle to try a canoe, but upon refusal—“according to me orders,” Michael said—she strolled off in the direction from which she had come, to look for the others. But Ruth continued the topic which was to her highly interesting.
“What kind of house does the woman live in, and what does she look like?”
The old boatman described an ordinary farmhouse, on the edge of the creek, some distance down stream. “You’ll know it,” he added; “it’s opposite to an old mill—the only big mill you’ll see on the trip.”