“Well, Shark,” he said quietly, “we feared you might have met an accident of some sort, and if you had, we wanted to help you.”
“Course you would!” cried the Shark, at once mollified. “And we did have an accident—little one, that is. Geeminy! if you’d seen us go kerflop through the floor! Patch of boards just rotted out, and we had the luck to strike it.”
Sam’s eyes ranged the room. “Old-timer, this house,” he remarked.
“It’s very old,” Varley put in. “We’ve tried to look it over, but it was too dark to see much. Still, we could make out that evidently nobody has lived here for years.”
Lon, too, had been making observations. “Boys,” he said, “if I ain’t way off the track, this is jest the plummest oldest house anywhere in these parts. It’ll be the old Dominie Pike place, or I’m a hornpout!”
“The Dominie Pike place?” Orkney echoed.
“Yep. His house Mis’ Grant was tellin’ us about—the last one he built.”
Orkney moved away from the fire. Very slowly he made a circuit of the room, inspecting it with manifest interest, so far as the uncertain light permitted.
Sam went to the window. The rain was still falling heavily; water surrounded the house, but the rapidity of the current appeared to have lessened. As well as he could determine, the top of the foundation was just above water.
Meanwhile Lon was adding to the fire. He caught the eye of Sam, as the latter turned back from the window, and winked meaningly.