“But you!” he mourned.
She lifted the cant dog from the floor of the jumper. “I shall keep on toward the drive—somehow—some way. This will protect me; I’m sure of it.”
He puckered his face and shook his head and expressed his fears and his doubts.
“Then I’m showing more faith than you in what this stands for,” she said, rebukingly. “I believe in it. I trust to it. Haven’t you the same kind of loyalty where my grandfather is concerned—after all your years with him?”
She had appealed to zealous, unquestioning devotion, and it replied to her. “I reckon you’re right. It wouldn’t be showing proper respect if I didn’t meet you halfway in the thing.” He reached out his hand and patted the staff. “I’m only a poor old bent stick beside that one. I even let the horses run away. Yes, they have run away—and now it’s all the long miles to the drive! How’ll ye ever get there, Miss Lida?”
“By starting!” she returned, crisply, with something of Flagg’s manner.
“There are tote teams going north. Anybody’ll be glad to give you a lift. There are bateaus above here, ferrying supplies up the broad water, and you may see a canoeman——” He was wistfully grabbing at hopes.
“I’m not afraid,” she assured him bravely.
He helped her with advice while he busied himself by hooking the handle of her bag over the staff; she carried it across her shoulder and had something cheerful to say about poverty making light luggage.
In that fashion she fared toward the north, after she had forced a pledge from the old man that he would keep her secret until her work was done; she was guilelessly unaware that Flagg’s perspicacity had penetrated her secret.