"Why, where is Captain Ingle's ship?" she asked, turning from one to another of her companions.
No one answered.
"I saw it last evening at sunset," she went on. "I am sure of it, for I went down to the wharf with our serving-man to buy grain, and I asked Captain Ingle when he would be off, and he said, 'Not for some time;' and that when he went he would fire a salute of five guns in my honor."
"'Tis like his insolence," muttered Huntoon between his teeth.
"Yes, but how is it that he is gone? Surely, you who are about the village so much must have heard something of the matter."
The mysterious silence continued a moment longer. Then Giles Brent said repressively,—
"Master Ingle sailed last night."
"Oh, so you do know all about it," cried the irrepressible Peggy.
"I know nothing to speak of," answered Brent, in so significant a tone that even Peggy could find courage for no rejoinder, but turned to Huntoon and bade him walk a little faster, or the donkey would tread upon his heels.
Huntoon strode on as perfectly happy as is often given to mortals to be in this sadly mixed world. There is an elation in the solitude of a wilderness at any time, a sense of freedom, of room for soul-expansion, and there is a beauty in a snow-clad forest that summer cannot match. The shadows lay in long blue patches on the snow, the pine trees held a load of white on their wide-spreading branches, each clump of green capped with glittering frost. The gaunt branches of oak and maple etched themselves against the blue of the morning sky. Everything in nature was radiant. Was it likely that the heart of the young man who walked with the rein over his arm was less jubilant than the scene around him?