The mare was warm, the perspiration and the flecks of foam still upon her. Bob held up his lantern. The bridle was fastened to a plaited thong of her mane.
And the plait was the same peculiar one which my father had remarked in the whip lash in the mail cart, the morning of the loss of poor Harry Foster!
*****
By a sort of instinct Bob opened the stable door, and, just as if nothing had happened, the mare moved to her place. He was going to take off the saddle and undo the reins, but I stopped him. There was a great fear at my heart, for which after all there did not seem to be any very definite cause.
Father might have gone up to his room without awaking anybody. The great door of the yard was locked. Some one, therefore, must have unlocked it, let in Dapple, and relocked it. Who but my father could have done this? At worst he had met with some accident, and was even then dressing a wound or reposing himself.
That is what we said, the one to the other. But I am quite sure that neither of us believed it, even as the words were leaving our mouths.
Then we heard something that made us both jump—the voice of my mother. She was speaking down from her window. I could see the white frill of her cap.
"Father," she called out in a voice in which she never spoke to me. "Is that you?"
Then in quite another tone, "Who has left the stable door open?"
"Me, mistress—and Joe!" said Bob.