“A deer, I guess,” she answered cheerfully, “or some other wild thing—nothing to hurt us, I’m sure. I cannot see why our people ever went away from here. Grandfather Baring was a man of standing—why, this must have been the finest place for miles around! Wait till we have a new portico and a little paint on the woodwork and some shrubbery! I should think mother would have been continually homesick.”
“Did she ever say she was?”
“No. When I asked her she used to tell me what she remembered hearing people say about the battle. She was not a talkative person. But all these years the taxes have been paid and there wasn’t even always a renter.”
“Do you think she believed we should ever come back? Do you—” Herbert interrupted himself. “There is some one looking at us now!”
“Where?”
“There’s a man at the edge of the woods with a big dog and a gun!”
Elizabeth turned her head. The moon had risen and its rays shone on a long object of bright steel. This object was not pointed in the direction of the two on the doorstep; it slanted backward from the shoulder which supported it, but it was none the less menacing.
Elizabeth sprang up, a short, somewhat stocky, swiftly moving figure.
“Well, neighbor!” she said loudly. “How are you this evening?”
The man drew back into the shadows, but he was not to be allowed to slink away. Elizabeth went closer to him.