The tenderness of her compassionate tone but hardened the other's purpose.
"Huh! If he were my own son, even, I would have the law on him to the fullest extremity!" he answered, harshly; and Eunice shivered, remembering, as he seemed to have forgotten, that poor son of his who had gone astray and might be roaming the world then, as was this unknown who had so stirred the lawyer's wrath.
Baffled yet persistent, as he helped her alight at her own threshold, the Squire put one more sudden question:
"But, after all, there was something—something—found in your woods that day, wasn't there?"
It was not even in Eunice's patience to endure thus much. Caught unawares, she burst out, indignantly:
"Yes, there was something found, but it does not concern anybody to know what. Thank you for your courtesy, and—good evening."
The lawyer drove homeward satisfied. She had admitted "the find." He would now proceed to unearth it. Incidentally, he would unearth the tramp, but that was, in his estimation, a secondary matter.
Eunice reëntered her home, glad to be there, but as Susanna saw at first greeting, "all stirred up and upsot." She would not allow herself to talk till she had recovered her composure. She even promptly, though affectionately, dismissed Katharine to her bed, reminding her that the morrow brought school again and she must be awake early.
The little girl was disappointed. She had longed for a long, cosy talk with her guardian over so many, many things. Not least of all concerning the brilliant scheme which had occurred to her and Monty that day on the hay. Nor did it please her any too well to lie and listen to the voices of Eunice and Susanna, murmuring on and on indefinitely, in the sitting-room below. Commonly the housekeeper went early to sleep on Sunday nights, for it was her habit to rise before daybreak and set about her Monday washing. To-night the great clock struck eleven, actually eleven, before this conference broke up; only to be resumed at intervals during the next morning, whenever the pair were alone.