Miss Dangler smiled for the first time. “I reckon ye’re right,” she said.
On the day of the great adventure in the snowstorm, Joe had promised to marry Robert Vane in two weeks’ time.
Joe lived at the McPhees now, with her Grandfather Hinch; and Vane, still the occupant of the state chamber of Moosehead House, spent charmed hours of every day and evening with her. She had dropped the last shred of doubt of his sincerity during the last few hours of their battle toward Larry Dent’s sheltering roof. They argued sometimes as to which had saved the other’s life that day, only to agree that neither could have won through alive without the heroic devotion of the other. The days and nights slipped along like enchantment toward the great day. Vane lived in a world as new as dawn to him, a world which he had sometimes in the past vaguely suspected and vaguely longed for, a world unlike anything he had ever known.
One midnight, having returned from the McPhees’ at ten o’clock and yarned with Jard for an hour and then smoked alone by his fire for another hour, Vane was startled from his reveries by the slow and silent opening of his door. He got lightly to his feet. A man entered, and cautiously shut the door. It was an old man, bent a trifle at knees and neck, broad-shouldered and white-bearded, wearing an old felt hat pulled low over the forehead. He was a stranger to Vane. He laid a finger on his lip and advanced.
“What do you want?” asked Vane. “And who are you?”
“Not so loud!” cautioned the other in a horse whisper. “I ain’t come for any harm—but there’s no call to wake up Liza Hassock. ’Scuse me if I set down. I’m Luke Dangler.”
Vane pointed him to a chair, and resumed his own seat.
“I thought you were in jail in Fredericton,” he said, in guarded tones.
“So I was, but I got out an’ run for it. I been home to Goose Crick. Now look-a-here, mister, was one of my horses what you come onto this country after? Tell me that now, straight!”
“I came to try to buy a horse of that strain you breed.”