“You were very late in returning, my son,” said the widow when the others had climbed the ladder to the loft.
“Yes, marm.”
“You did not come right home?”
“No, marm. I stayed to eat with Lot Breckenridge. And then I wanted to hear the men talk.”
“You should have started earlier for home, Enoch,” she said, sternly.
“Well, I’d got here pretty near sunset if it hadn’t been for somethin’ that happened just the other side of the crick,” Enoch declared, forgetting the fact that he had stopped to watch the beavers before ever he saw the campfire in the wood.
“What was it?” she asked.
“There’s somebody over there–a tall man, but I couldn’t see his face—”
“Where?”
“Beyond the crick; ’twarn’t half a mile from where father was killed at the deer-lick. I saw a light in the bushes. It was a campfire an’ I couldn’t go by without seein’ what it was for. So I crept up on it an’ bymeby I saw the man.”