Here Agnes suffered the very worst scare of the whole adventure. Something cold and wet was thrust against her hand!
She almost screamed aloud. She would have screamed, only the fright of it made her lose her voice. She swung there, clinging to the doorknob, about to fall fainting to the floor, when a bulky object pushed by her and she heard Tom Jonah’s whine.
“Oh! You dear, old, foolish, mean, silly thing!” gasped Agnes. “How you scared me. I’ll never forgive you, Tom Jonah! But I’m so glad it’s only you.”
This she whispered, while she hugged the shaggy dog. Tom Jonah had evidently found it too cold for comfort outside the house, and hearing her at the door had come to beg entrance for the night.
She let him into the kitchen and then, as she went back to the door, she was suddenly smitten with this thought:
“If that boy went out of that door, Tom Jonah must have known him!”
The old dog had known him so well that he made no objection to his being about the old Corner House. There was but one boy in the world whom Tom Jonah would allow to do such a thing. That was Neale O’Neil.
The thought gave Agnes Kenway a feeling of dire dismay. She could not understand it. She could not believe it.
Yet she was sure the boy had gone out by this door. But how he had first got into the house was a mystery beyond her divination.
At once she shot the bolt again. Once out, the youthful marauder, whoever he was, should stay out, as far as this particular means of entrance was concerned.