So Agnes could take her time about approaching the campfire. She was sure that was what it must be. The smoke arose from beyond a great heap of railroad ties, and now, when her pulses stopped beating so in her ears, she distinguished voices.
Well! human beings were at hand. She could not help feeling suspicious of them; yet their nearness had driven off the strange and terrible beast that had so frightened her.
After a minute or two the Corner House girl crept forward. Some of her usual courage returned to her. Her heart beat high and her color rose. She bit her lower lip with her pretty, even teeth, as she always did when she labored under suppressed excitement, and tiptoed to the end of the piled up ties.
The voices were louder here—more easily distinguished. There were two of them—a young voice and an old voice. And in a moment she discovered something that pleased and relieved her. The young voice was a girl’s voice—Agnes was quite positive of that.
She thought at once: “No harm can come to me if there is a girl here. But who can she be, camping out in the snowy woods?”
In another moment she would have stepped around the corner of the pile of ties and revealed herself to the strangers had not something that was said reached her ears—and that something was bound to arrest Agnes Kenway’s attention.
“A book full of money.”
The young voice said this, and then the other spoke, it seemed, doubtingly.
Again came the girl’s voice with passionate earnestness:
“I tell you I saw it! I know ’twas money.”