"Where am I?" I asked.
"Where? why, at Pennington, your home."
"Yes; and the Tresidders?"
A cloud came over her face. "Richard Tresidder's mother is dead," she said. "That night when you were shot there was a great commotion. She had what the folks call a seizure, and she never spoke again. In her hand she held a pistol, but it is not believed that she shot you. My father thinks it was Nick, and that she pulled the pistol from him. She only lived a few hours, and was buried three days later."
I heaved a sigh of relief. Thank God I had been saved from this. All the same, I felt sad that my little maid suffered it all.
"And Nick?" I asked presently.
"He left Pennington that night. No one knows where he is now, except his father."
"And he?"
"My father knows where he is. I do not."
"And so I am at Pennington all alone?"