“They trusted me ter hold ’em safe,” she declared in a grief-stricken tone. “I’d kept all the gunners from harmin’ ’em—an’ now they’ve done been betrayed—an’ murdered.”
“I’m sorry,” declared Spurrier humbly. “I didn’t know they were pets. They behaved very much like wild birds.”
The dog rose from his cowering position and came over to shelter himself behind Spurrier, who just then heard the underbrush stir at his back and wheeled to 78 find himself facing an elderly man with a ruggedly chiseled face and a mane of gray hair. It was a face that one could not see without feeling a spirit force behind it, and when the man spoke his sonorous voice, too, carried a quality of impressiveness.
“He didn’t have no way of knowin’, Glory,” he said placatingly to the girl. “Bob Whites are mostly wild, you know.” Then turning back to the man again he courteously explained: “She fed this gang through last winter when the snows were heavy. They’d come up to the door yard an’ peck ’round with the chickens. She’s gifted with the knack of gentlin’ wild things.” He paused, then added with a grim touch of irony. “It’s a lesson that it would have profited me to learn—but I never could master it. You’re a furriner hereabouts, ain’t you?”
“My name is John Spurrier,” said the stranger. “I was looking for Dyke Cappeze.”
“I’m Dyke Cappeze,” said the elderly man, “an’ this is my daughter, Glory. Come inside. Yore welcome needs some mendin’, I reckon.”
CHAPTER VII
As John Spurrier followed his host between rhododendron thickets that rose above their heads, he found himself wondering what had become of the girl, but when they drew near to an old house whose stamp of orderly neatness proclaimed its contrast to the scattering hovels of widely separated neighbors, he caught a flash of blue gingham by the open door and realized that the Valkyrie had taken a short cut.