His reply was noncommittal.
"I just wanted you to know you could count on me——" he said soberly. "I think you've had trouble enough."
"But I'm not afraid of Jack Bray," she said with a shrug, "even if Aunt Tillie is. He can't do anything to me. He can't make me go to New York if I don't want to."
She had clenched her brown fists in her excitement and Peter laughed.
"I think I'd be a little sorry for anybody who tried to make you do anything you didn't want to do," he said.
She frowned. "Why, if I thought that bandy-legged, lantern-jawed, old buzzard was comin' around here frightenin' Aunt Tillie, I'd—I'd——"
"What would you do?"
"Never you mind what I'd do. But I'm not afraid of Jack Bray," she finished confidently.
The terrors that had been built up around the house of McGuire, the mystery surrounding the awe-inspiring prowler, the night vigils, the secrecy—all seemed to fade into a piece of hobbledehoy buffoonery at Beth's contemptuous description of her recreant relative. And he smiled at her amusedly.
"But what would you say," he asked seriously, "if I told you that last night Mr. McGuire saw the same person your Aunt Tillie did, and that he was terrified—almost to the verge of collapse?"