It was the next day, and the girls were in the saddle, as usual. They had visited the new gold diggings and found everybody excited and optimistic, though no gold had been uncovered as yet. And now they were trotting slowly along the open road, their thoughts busy with the startling happenings of the day before.
"It's a wonder he doesn't go crazy," shuddered Mollie, taking up the thread where Amy had dropped it. "I know I would. What was it he said about being 'ghost-ridden?'"
"I don't believe he is ghost-ridden at all, except by his imagination," said Betty positively. "I think if he had taken the trouble to look at the newspapers before he decided that he was a hunted man he might have saved himself a lot of trouble and unhappiness."
"Goodness, how do you get that way, Betty?" Grace said irritably. "The man ought to be the best judge of whether he killed anybody or not."
"Well," said the Little Captain stubbornly, "it seems to me it would have had to be a pretty heavy bottle with a pretty strong arm behind it to kill a man with one blow. And a scalp wound bleeds horribly, you know."
The girls looked a little thoughtful, and for the first time since Betty had advanced her theory they began to think that there might possibly be something in it after all.
"That's right," said Amy, and then went on to relate an experience she had had when skylarking with Sarah Stonington.
"She had hold of that heavy rocking chair we have in the library," Amy said. "She was trying to pull it away from me, and I was hanging on to it for dear life.
"Then suddenly I let go, and Aunt Sarah—she's pretty heavy, you know—lost her balance as the chair swung forward, and fell over backward, striking her head on the sharp edge of the piano."
"Goodness, you must have been scared," commented Mollie.