Ann Canham seated herself respectfully on the edge of a remote chair. And Nora, who liked gossiping above every earthly thing, began to talk of Jim Sanders's illness.
"He has dreadful bouts, poor fellow!" observed Ann Canham.
"But six times out of seven he brings them on through his own fault," tartly returned Nora. "Many and many a time I have told him he'd do for himself, and now I think he has done it. This bout, it strikes me, is his last."
"Is he so ill as that?" exclaimed Ann Canham. And George looked up from his exercise-book in surprise.
"I don't know that he is," said Nora; "but——"
Nora broke suddenly off, dropped her work, and bent her head towards Ann Canham.
"We have had a strange thing happen here," she continued, her voice falling to a whisper; "and if it's not a warning of death, never believe me again. This morning——George, did you hear the dog in the night?"
"No," answered George.
"Boys sleep soundly," she remarked to Ann Canham. "You might drive a coach-and-six through their room, and not wake them. His room's at the back, too. Last night the dog got round to the front of the house, and there he was, all night long, sighing and moaning like a human creature. You couldn't call it a howl; there was too much pain in it. He was at it all night long; I couldn't sleep for it. The missis says she couldn't sleep for it. Well, this morning I was up first, the master next, Molly next; but the master went out by the back-way and saw nothing. By-and-by I spied something out of this window on the garden path, as if some one had been digging there; so out I went. It was for all the world like a grave!—a great hole, with the earth thrown up on either side of it. That dog had done it in the night!"
Ann Canham, possibly feeling uncomfortably aloof from the company when graves became the topic, drew her chair nearer the table. George sat, his pen arrested; his large wide-open eyes turned on Nora—not with fear, but merriment.