“No, sah. We is de onliest ones to home, jes now. Come in, sah. Mistuh Dinwiddie, he’s in de Norf somewheres—I dunno whar—and de missus she’s in de Souf somewheres—I can’t jes’ tell you where, and we is de onliest ones yere; dat’s a fact.”
“But Uncle Henery said that Mrs. Dinwiddie was at home,” said Nick, entering the house.
“Huh! You mustn’t mind what dat lyin’ nigger done tell you, sah. He’s suttinly de biggest liah dis side uh de Rappahannock, dat’s what he is. Now, sah, you jes’ make yo’self comftil till I rustles yo’ somethin’ to eat.”
Before the detective could say another word she had taken herself off, leaving him alone in the room into which he had been ushered, where a single kerosene lamp, heavily shaded, burned upon a centre table.
“So,” he mused to himself, “Juno is at home; and Juno is not at home. Well, we will see about that, presently.”
CHAPTER XVII.
JUNO.
The house remained silent while Nick Carter waited.
Indeed there was barely a sound to be heard at all, even from without, so remote was the place, for Kingsgift, comprising more than eight hundred acres of land, much of it forest, was bounded on three sides by water, and on the fourth by a narrow neck of land only, so that the nearest neighbor, save for the negro tenants, lived several miles distant.