“You are right; I should prefer to be back in the woods rather than near the shore. It will give me exercise to take a run to the ocean every day. But I want to thank you for allowing me to camp in your woods. I shall help protect it, I assure you.”
“I believe that you will, and we may need you, indeed. There is no reason why you should not stay as long as you like.”
Evan Tudor was surprised and delighted at this quick decision and told Dalton that he should have no reason to regret it, while Beth, seeing that her share in the affair was over, excused herself and went back to camp, though not before she had invited Mr. Tudor to be their guest at supper. “Perhaps I will send the girls to call you after a while,” she said. “I suppose that you will show him to some place not too far from the spring, Dal?”
“Yes, Beth.”
While Dalton and Mr. Tudor went back along the poorly defined bridle path to the road, which came from the village to the wood, then took a great curve to avoid it, Dalton explained that there would be some noise for several days while the men were putting up the log cabin, but that there was a good place for a camp of which he was thinking. “You will be surrounded by woods, though the spot is comparatively open, and if it is not too far from the spring you may like it. The little stream from our lake takes a turn there, and there are rocks on which your fires will be safe. Indeed, you might use that water safely, for the lake is never polluted in any way. It is little more than a big pool, fed by springs and a tiny brook above.”
“That sounds fine, but are you not building near your ‘lake’?”
“Not too close, though we are nearer the spring than we are at our camp. Beth hated to leave the vicinity of the sea. But now she sees that it will be better to be closer to the water supply.”
Mr. Tudor asked a number of questions and seemed to be interested in the way to reach Steeple Rocks from the woods. He inquired, too, about who were spending the summer there, in such a way that Dalton wondered if he had heard of the Ives before.
Not knowing of any reason why he should not be communicative to this sincere appearing young man, Dalton mentioned Peggy, her mother and step-father, the Count, the foreign governess and the guests. He even told him of Mr. Ives’ request that they should leave. “I tell you this, Mr. Tudor, because you, too, may not be wanted here. I’d keep an eye out. Have you any way of defending yourself? By the way, though, we’d rather not have any hunting done here.”
“I have no interest in hunting—animals, or small game of any sort,” and Evan Tudor laughed. “But I am armed, after a fashion.” Evan Tudor knew only too well that he would not be wanted, but he hoped to carry out the idea of a harmless writer on a vacation and to conceal his real purpose in coming. It was true enough that he was a writer, also that he needed a vacation. “Is there anyone besides Mr. Ives who feels inhospitable?” he asked.