Mrs Millett was consoled with the promise that the culprit should soon be caught, and two nights later Peter came in to announce to the doctor that he had been so near catching Bob Dimsted that he had touched him as he chased him down the garden, and that he would have caught him, only that, without a moment’s hesitation, the boy had jumped into the river and swum across, and so escaped to the other side.
“Next time I mean to have him,” said Peter confidently, and this he repeated to Mrs Millett and Maria, being rewarded with a basin of the tea which had just come down from the drawing-room.
It was just two days later that, as Helen sat with her work under the old oak-tree in the garden—an old evergreen oak which gave a pleasant shade—she became aware of a faint rustling sound.
She looked up, but could see nothing, though directly after there was a peculiar noise in the tree, which resembled the chopping of wood.
Still she could see nothing, and she had just resumed her work, thinking the while that Dexter would some day write, and that her father’s correspondence with the Reverend Septimus Mastrum had not been very satisfactory, when there was a slight scratching sound.
She turned quickly and saw that a ragged-looking squirrel had run down the grey trunk of the tree, while, as soon as it saw her, it bounded off, and to her surprise passed through the gateway leading into the yard where the old stable stood.
Helen Grayson hardly knew why she did so, but she rose and followed the squirrel, to find that she was not alone, for Peter the groom was in the yard going on tiptoe toward the open door of the old range of buildings.
He touched his cap on seeing her.
“Squir’l, Miss,” he said. “Just run in here.”
“I saw it just now,” said Helen. “Don’t kill the poor thing.”