And on her expressing her surprise and wonder, he began to entertain her with marrow-freezing stories of overwhelmed trains of emigrant wagons and buried villages of settlers among the snow mountains.
This delayed him at the supper table so much longer than usual that he had but little time to take his “constitutional” on the covered front piazza.
So after a turn or two up and down he went into the house and up to the door of the sick-room.
He turned the knob and pushed the door, but found it was locked within.
“What whim is this, I wonder?” he said. “I hope the London doctor will order the beast to an idiot asylum. I suppose they wouldn’t take him in with the apes at the Zoo. Captain! Capt. Montgomery!” he exclaimed, rapping loudly.
Not a sound from within.
Then he went around to the back piazza and looked through the windows.
All as dark as pitch in the room.
“What’s up now, I wonder?” he asked himself, and then went back to the door and tried once more by rapping and calling to bring some response from the room.
But now the noise reached the rector, who was seated at his desk in his study writing his sermon.