“Well, I wouldn’t want to make a guess. This here man workin’ in the kitchen tells me that there wasn’t a foot mark in the snow at all when he got up and went out of the back door here the fust time this morning. And, of course, there wasn’t no footprints at the front of the house, was there?”
“Oh, no! Not until after breakfast time.”
“Uh-huh! Well, after this John had tramped back an’ forth to the woodshed and the like half a dozen times, anybody could have gone out of here without their footprints being noticed. Ain’t that a fac’?”
He said this to himself more than to Neale, who had become vastly interested in the subject. He eagerly watched the old man’s weather-beaten face.
Suddenly the woodsman raised his head and looked at Neale thoughtfully. He asked a question that seemed to have nothing at all to do with the subject in hand.
“What kind of a dog is this here Tom Jonah?” Ike demanded. “Ain’t he got no nose?”
[CHAPTER XVIII—FIGURING IT OUT]
Of course Ike M’Graw could see for himself very easily that Tom Jonah had a nose. It was pointed just then at the fox pelt in the old woodsman’s hands, and was wrinkled as the dog sniffed at the skin.
So Neale O’Neil knew that the man meant something a little different from what he said. He, in fact, wanted to know if Tom Jonah was keen on the scent, and Neale answered him to that end.
“We think he’s got a pretty good nose, Mr. M’Graw, for a Newfoundland. Of course, Tom Jonah is not a hunting dog. If he runs a rabbit he runs him by sight, not by scent. But give him something that one of the children wears, and he’ll hunt that child out, as sure as sure! They play hide and seek with him just as though he were one of themselves—only Tom Jonah is always ‘it.’”