"Oh, but you mustn't do anything of the kind!" Augusta objected warmly. "Why, we'd just feel that we had driven you out of your beautiful camp."
"The camp's here all the year, for anybody. 'Tis a sugar bush, don't you see. Nobody comes here only very late in the fall, to cut wood for the sugar boiling, and then again when the winter's breaking up. But for them two little times, a man might stay here the year round and nobody be a whit the wiser."
Again Wardwell's instinct for news and for mystery was roused. He set himself to watch and to listen.
"Our horse is tired," said Augusta, "and it's night now, so if you really don't mind we'll stay by the lake till tomorrow."
"You may stay on in welcome, the whole year if it suits you. The truth of the whole is, I—"
Evidently he was going to tell something of himself, but in that instant he caught Wardwell watching him and he stopped short.
He hesitated, looking sharply at Wardwell, as though wondering whether he could trust him.
"You may as well stay on," he said finally, with what seemed a sigh of tired, baffled resignation. "For I have to be moving on. The truth is, I—I'm wanted."
The effect of the last two words on the listeners was peculiar.
Wardwell, whose mind had been vaguely working toward some such thought as this announcement implied and who might have been expected to be somewhat prepared for it, started sharply and caught Augusta's arm.