Dinah shuddered slightly.
“And I don’t want to frighten you, my dear, but I’ve seen that big dark man from the mine come about here sometimes of a night. Why, my dear child, it must have been him who poisoned that poor dog.”
The cold shiver ran through Dinah again, but she made a spasmodic effort to master her feelings.
“Don’t—don’t say that,” she said hoarsely. “Martha, dear, we must bury poor Rollo to-day. Will you help me?”
“Poor fellow! yes. I always hated him, my dear, but I’m very sorry he’s dead. There, we must make the best of it. Come and finish your breakfast, lovey, and then we’ll get a spade, and bury him under one of the trees.”
Dinah went in dreamy and thoughtful, but no breakfast passed her lips; and as, about an hour and a half later, the poor dog was being carried to his last resting-place, there was the sound of hoofs on the bridle-path, and five minutes later she received a telegram for her father, brought over from the town on the other side of the mine.
She hesitated a moment, but the case was so urgent, and she opened the message to read Clive’s reassuring words.
“I knew it,” she cried, as a flood of bright hope sent joy into her heart.
But it was too late to try and overtake the Major, who was miles away in the other direction, and the messenger was dismissed.
“He will know as soon as he reaches town, and telegraph,” thought Dinah, but the day wore away without news, and the night closed in dark and stormy, with the girl’s fancy conjuring up strange sounds about the house of so startling a nature in her nervous state, that at last she could bear them no longer. Again and again she had imagined that faces were peering through the window, and though she drew blind and curtain, there was the fancy still. And in this spirit she at last, about nine o’clock, determined to go and sit with their old servant in the kitchen.