She had scarce made the discovery when she saw a figure in the doorway, that, after standing a moment as if to reconnoitre and listen, stole out into the porch, and then, stealthily descending the steps, glided crouchingly towards the cover of the orchard. Only for a moment was it under the moonlight; but the young girl had no difficulty in recognising the form of her father!
Something in his hands glistened in the moonlight. It appeared to be a gun.
Pierre’s attention is called to it by a significant pressure on his arm. Pierre also saw the flitting figure and knew whose it was.
The weasel, as Alf Brandon termed him, had not been asleep!
And just like a weasel he had acted; in sight only for six seconds, as he shot across the open space between the porch and the peach trees.
Once among these, he was invisible to the only eyes that had seen him, those of his daughter and Pierre Robideau.
But both expected soon to see him again. He had not gone into the orchard for nothing, and his cat-like movements told that he had suspicion of something astir under the cottonwood, and was stealing round by the creek to approach it unobserved.
Whether he yet saw the excavators could not be known, but he must have heard the clinking of their tools as he stood in the doorway.
Not one of them either heard or saw him, as, without pausing, they continued their work, Brandon having once again counselled them to silence.
“Darned if ’taint the bottom! I told you so,” said Bill Buck, striking his spade point against the ground under his feet. “Thar’s been neyther pick nor spade into this not since the days of old Noah, I reckon. There! try for yourself, Alf Brandon!”