“And she’s dead by this time,” gasped Miss Timmens, in a faint voice, its sharpness gone clean out of it. “I’m thinking of the poor widowed mother.”
Mrs. Coney (often an invalid) said she could do no good by staying longer, and wanted to be in bed. Old Coney said he was not going in yet; so Tom took her over. It might have been ten minutes after this—but I was not taking any particular account of the time—that I saw Tom Coney put his head in at the parlour-door, and beckon Tod out. I went also.
“Look here,” said Coney to us. “After I left mother indoors, I thought I’d search a bit about the back-ground here: and I fancy I can see the marks of a child’s footsteps in the snow.”
“No!” cried Tod, rushing out at the back-door and crossing the premises to the field.
Yes, it was so. Just for a little way along the path leading to Crabb Ravine the snow was much trodden and scattered by the footsteps of a man, both to and fro. Presently some little footsteps, evidently of a child, seemed to diverge from this path and go onwards in rather a slanting direction through the deeper snow, as if their owner had lost the direct way. When we had tracked these steps half-way across the field. Tod brought himself to a halt.
“I’m sure they are Nettie’s,” he said. “They look like hers. Whose else should they be? She may have fallen down the Ravine. One of you had better go back and bring a blanket—and tell them to get hot water ready.”
Eager to be of use, Tom Coney and I ran back together. Tod continued his tracking. Presently the little steps diverged towards the path, as if they had suddenly discovered their wanderings from it; and then they seemed to be lost in those other and larger footsteps which had kept steadily to the path.
“I wonder,” thought Tod, halting as he lost the clue, “whether Mackintosh’s big ghost could have been this poor little white-robed child? What an idiotic coward the fellow is! These are his footmarks. A slashing pace he must have travelled at, to fling the snow up in this manner!”
At that moment, as Tod stood facing the Ravine, a light, looking like the flame of a candle, small and clear and bright as that of a glow-worm, appeared on the opposite bank, and seemed to dodge about the snow-clad brushwood around the trunks of the wintry trees. What was this light?—whence did it proceed?—what caused it? It seemed we were never tired of putting these useless questions to ourselves. Tod did not know; never had known. He thought of Mack’s fright and of the ghost, as he stood watching it, now disappearing in some particular spot, now coming again at ever so many yards’ distance. But ghosts had no charms for Tod: by which I mean no alarms: and he went forward again, trying to find another trace of the little footsteps.
“I don’t see what should bring Nettie out here, though,” ran his thoughts. “Hope she has not pitched head foremost down the Ravine! Confound the poltroon!—kicking up the snow like this!”