Johnny Ludlow, Sixth Series

by Mrs. Henry Wood

I could not see Giles’s drift, or how the one dog could help to conceal the possession of the other.

“Well, sir, I can’t explain it better,” he answered; “I can’t fit the pieces of the puzzle into one another in my mind yet. But I am positive it is so. Dick Standish has made up the farce about Brazer’s dog and got him into his hands to throw dust in our eyes and keep us off the scent of Don.”

I began to see the groom might be right; and that the Standishes, sly and crafty, were keeping Don in hiding.

Mrs. Todhetley had met us with a face of concern. Lena’s throat was becoming very bad indeed, and Mr. Duffham did not like the look of it at all. He had already come twice that day.

“I think, Johnny,” said the mother to me, “that we had better stop Miss Barbary’s coming to-morrow; Mr. Duffham does not know but the malady may be getting infectious. Suppose you go now to the cottage and tell her.”

So I went off to do so, and found her ill. On this same Friday afternoon, having occasion to ask some question of her father, who was in the garden, she found him planting greens on the plot of ground—the grave—under the summer-apple tree. Before she could speak, a shudder of terror seized her; she trembled from head to foot, turned back to the kitchen, and sat down on the nearest chair.

Old Joan pronounced it to be an attack of ague; Miss Katrine, she said, must have taken a chill. Perhaps she had. It was just then that I arrived and found her shivering in the kitchen. Joan ran up to her room in the garret to bring down some powder she kept there, said to be a grand remedy for ague.

It was getting dusk then; the sun had set. To me, Katrine seemed to be shaking with terror, not illness. Mr. Barbary, in full view of the window, was planting the winter greens under the summer-apple tree.

“What is it that you are frightened at?” I said, propping my back against the kitchen mantelpiece.

“I must ask you a question, Johnny Ludlow,” she whispered, panting and shivering. “Was it you who came and stood inside the gate there in the middle of last night?”