Who was It?
Neither Pam nor Sophy had realized how far away they had wandered, when they followed that faint cry for help. Indeed, just at the first Pam could not think where they were, or which direction they ought to take to find the house. The night was clouding over, the fine brilliance was gone, and a chill wind moaned through the leafless trees.
The dog had not come back. Pam had whistled and called until she was tired. Then she turned to help Sophy back, blaming herself bitterly because she had followed that will-o’-the-wisp call for help, which had given them such a fruitless chase.
“Ah!” The ejaculation was forced from Sophy as her foot slipped on an upstanding root, and she went down with a crash.
“You poor thing! Oh, you poor thing!” cried Pam, who was more remorseful than before.
“It was fearfully clumsy of me, and now I have hurt my foot. Pam, whatever shall we do?” There was tragic dismay in Sophy’s tone, and it found its echo in the heart of Pam, in whose ears the howling of the wolves seemed to be still sounding.
“I will get you home somehow, if I have to carry you on my back,” she cried valiantly. It seemed to be half the battle to be brave outwardly, and indeed the sound of her own voice speaking cheerfully took away a lot of her secret fear.
“I am quite sure that you cannot carry me, for I am as big as you, and heavier,” said Sophy, and Pam knew this was true, for they had weighed each other only two days before, when they were using the big scales that were in the barn. “Perhaps I could hop on one foot like a robin if you held me up.”
“I will hold you,” replied Pam. “Come along, it is much too chilly to linger out here. I don’t want to be obliged to render first aid for frost-bite. It will be quite as much as I can do to doctor your hurt foot. I think it is going to snow again. Ah, that was a flake I felt on my face! Sophy, we must make haste, no matter how it hurts you, dear! I can’t find my way in the falling snow, it bewilders me so dreadfully, and to lose our way means that we must perish miserably almost within sight of home.”
“Clutch me tightly, and don’t take any notice if I groan,” muttered Sophy, who was standing on one foot now, and steeling her courage to endure. “I am not made of heroic stuff, but we have to get home, as you say, no matter at what cost!”
A short distance was traversed: to Sophy it seemed like miles. She had uttered no sound of pain, but what it cost her to put her hurt foot to the ground no one but herself could know. But it was death to linger, and pain did not count when compared with the greater terrors of the forest at night. Then Pam called out in glad relief that she could see the house, Sophy gathered up her courage to endure a little longer, and they pressed forward at the best pace they could make.
“There is a light in our room; did we leave one there?” asked Pam in a bewildered tone as she half-led, half-carried Sophy the remaining distance to the door.
“I am sure that I did not, for I went into the room in the dark; at least, there was no light except the glimmer from the stove.”
“Then Grandfather has come home,” announced Pam. “Unless, indeed, the stove has somehow contrived to set the place on fire.”
“Go and see, go and see!” cried Sophy, wrenching herself free from Pam’s supporting grip, and pushing her forward. “Don’t trouble about me, I can manage. Hurry, Pam, hurry, or the house may be burned down, and think how helpless we are!”
“I am not helpless, and I don’t think it is fire, it doesn’t flicker. Most likely it is Grandfather. Oh, I do hope that he will be nice to us!” Pam darted ahead as she spoke, and opening the door burst with impetuous haste into the living-room. This appeared to be exactly as they had left, it. The lamp was standing on the table, the stove was sending out a cheerful glow, and the place was as cosy and comfortable as any home could be. One rapid glance round Pam gave, then pushed open the door into the best sitting-room. All was dark here, but she knew her way too well to stumble over the furniture, and crossing the floor with a brisk, determined tread, she pushed open the door of the inner room, which they had been using as a bedroom.
The place was not on fire. Her first glance told her that. Her second revealed the fact that no one was there; then all at once she realized that someone had been there, someone who had lighted the lamp which stood on the table by the window, and who had then been at the desk in the corner and had wrenched open the lid.
A little inarticulate cry escaped her. She seemed to understand what had happened so well. Her grandfather had doubtless been frightened from his work in the lumber camp when he was recognized, and he had made his way home, hard-pressed perhaps for money. But finding his home occupied, and being afraid to make himself known to his granddaughter, who was of course a stranger to him, he had hovered about the place, and had beguiled them from the house, luring them away from the place on a false trail. Then he must have hurried home, and, entering the house, have gone straight to the desk in his own room, and pulled it open by force. Great force he must have used, for it was a strong old desk, of the home-made variety, and it would need a powerful wrench to get it open.
A hasty inspection showed her that the money was gone, not only the amount which she had found there when she had opened the desk with her own key, but also the twenty dollars which Mrs. Buckle had given her as a loan, and had refused to take back.
Pam leaned against the rifled desk with a queer mixture of relief and repulsion in her heart. She was thankful that the old man had not stayed to be sheltered and hidden by her. It was humiliating beyond words to have someone belonging to her who was in the unfortunate case of being wanted by the police. It would have been horrid for Sophy to have been mixed up even indirectly with a matter of this sort, seeing that Sophy was going to be married to a member of the mounted police force. The repulsion was because, try hard as she might, Pam could not fight down a bitter dislike for the man who would beat another man, however much in the wrong, as poor Sam Buckle had been beaten. It was horrible, it was brutish, and she was ashamed of being descended from an individual with such a cruel and callous nature.
Then she remembered Sophy. Leaving the room as she had found it—open desk, the lamp burning, and everything—she hurried back through the best sitting-room, to find when she reached the living-room that Sophy had crept into the house, and shutting the door, had sunk down on the nearest bench, too exhausted to go any farther.
“The place is not on fire!” shouted Pam in a cheery tone. “So there is no danger of our having to take refuge for the night with the cow and the pigs, or, worse still, of our having to convey ourselves as far as Mrs. Buckle’s for a night’s lodging. But someone has been here while we were hunting for the supposed person in trouble in the forest, and before I attend to that foot of yours, I am going round the house, just to make sure that the someone has really taken himself off again.”
“You must not go alone, I will come with you,” said Sophy, making a valiant attempt to bear yet more suffering without crying out.
“Indeed you will do no such thing!” Pam cried with decision. “If you are equal to any more exertion, just creep a little nearer to the stove, and get a good warm, while I go my rounds. Oh, I am not afraid; I shall take the poker—it is light and handy, and I could make very good use of it if need arose.”
“I do not doubt it!” murmured Sophy in honest admiration; then clinging to the furniture she crept slowly to the low seat by the stove which Pam had made from the half of an old apple barrel, and sinking on to it, she thankfully gave up her Spartan pose, and did not even try to feel brave any longer.
Pam went back to the bedroom for the other lamp, and made an exhaustive inspection of the room. It would have been difficult for a cat to have remained hidden in places where she searched for a full-grown man, but, as she told herself in a vigorous undertone, in such a case it did not do to take any risks, and she meant to be quite sure that they were alone before she went to sleep. The bedroom inspected, she opened the window, and getting hold of the heavy wooden shutter she dragged it across the window, and slipped the bolt into the socket. They were now as secure as bolts and bars could make them. Carrying the lamp with her, she then inspected the sitting-room, and passed out to the living-room, where Sophy crouched by the stove.
“Pam, the dog has come home, it is scratching at the door.” Sophy’s voice had a distinct sound of tears in it, but this Pam wisely ignored for the present, being much too busy to have time for consolation just then.
“I will let the silly beast in, and I very much hope that it found itself out of the running when it came to chasing wolves. It is valiant enough to attack anything, but it has no sense at all in regard to being beaten,” she remarked, as she crossed the floor, and slipping back the bolt let the dog into the house. The animal jumped about her in an ecstasy of joyfulness at being indoors again. Then it sniffed curiously about, and finally went to the door of the sitting-room and whined to be let in.
“Ah, the wise beast!” cried Pam, with a catch in her breath. “Do you see, it knows that its old master has been here—evidently it thinks he is here still! No, my dear dog, you are not going into that room, and equally you are not going out into the night again. You are going to stay here with Sophy while I go to examine the upper story of this desirable and beautiful residence.”
“Oh, Pam, how frivolous you sound!” cried Sophy in a rather shocked tone. “To hear you, no one would dream of what we had gone through to-night. Oh, I never saw anything more horrible than the wolves chasing that poor moose; I cannot even imagine anything worse, can you?”
“Yes,”—Pam’s face paled a little as she turned to go upstairs—“I can imagine how very much worse it would have been if those wolves had been chasing us. I feel that we were horribly impulsive and indiscreet to go out as we did, and it is a fine thing for us that nothing worse was the result.”
The dog followed her up the stairs, and sniffed round the rooms in an inquiring fashion. Once it lifted its head as if about to howl, but happening to see the movement, Pam gripped the creature by its collar, shaking it vigorously.
“No, you don’t, not if I know it!” she said sharply. “That poor girl downstairs has had enough to bear by way of nervous strain to-night, without any uproar from you to add to her burden.”
“You are sure that it was your grandfather who came to-night?” Sophy asked later, when her ankle had been bathed and bandaged, and she was lying at peace in bed.
“Yes, about as sure as if I had seen him.” Try as she would, Pam could not keep the scorn from her voice. “He must have come indoors and gone straight to his room, where he wrenched open the desk and took the money we had been keeping there for him.”
“If it had been your grandfather would he not have had a key to the desk?” Sophy stirred a little restlessly as she spoke; it was very disturbing to have a thing of this kind happen, and she thought she would be afraid to be left alone in the house after this, and, as a rule, she was left alone so much.
“He had a key, I suppose, seeing that the desk was locked, but he might have lost it, or he might have left it somewhere else with his baggage, if he had any baggage. A hundred things might have happened to make it necessary for him to break open his own desk in his own house like an ordinary thief. But, Sophy, we have got to keep the affair to ourselves; no one must know about his coming, do you understand?”
“Not even Father?” demanded Sophy, lifting her head from the pillow to stare at Pam, who was undressing, and rather spinning the business out because the stove was burning so well, and there was such a sense of restful leisure in her heart.
“Not even Dr. Grierson.” Pam was very emphatic. “You see, he might drop a chance word or hint of what had happened, without in the least meaning to injure Grandfather, of course, and then the police might get hold of it and follow up the clue. I should imagine it is not so easy to cover one’s tracks in winter as it is in summer; and, Sophy, I believe that I should die with shame if the poor old man were taken and made to stand his trial!”
“Poor Pam!” murmured Sophy in the deepest, truest sympathy; but Pam wriggled her shoulders impatiently by way of expressing her distaste for pity.
“Proud Pam would be nearer the mark,” she said. “I am quite sure that at the bottom it is my private and personal pride which makes me suffer so badly at the mere thought of Grandfather being taken. I never saw him, of course, and I never received any kindness direct from him. Even the money which paid my passage was sent for Jack. The way my mother has talked of him has not made it easy to feel any strong love for him. Yet I would do anything, and suffer almost anything, rather than give the slightest clue to those whose business it is to find him.”
“Then people must not know that we went out to find him to-night,” said Sophy. She blinked sleepily at the lamp, and was conscious of a rather acute disappointment. It would have made her feel almost like a heroine if she could have talked of that escapade of theirs. She knew very well that she was not made of heroic stuff, and it would have given her a very solid satisfaction to have been able to speak of the wild chase they had witnessed, when the pack of wolves dashed past them at the heels of the moose.
“No, indeed!” Pam was more emphatic than ever. “It was a mad thing to rush out of the house in the night like that. I did not realize what fearful risks we might be running until I saw that poor hunted moose. I did not know moose ever came so near to houses before; I thought they kept entirely to the wild lands.”
“They do usually, but pressed by winter and deep snow they will come right into settled places,” replied Sophy, who was plainly getting drowsy. “I have known them come round the houses at The Corner, and they have even helped themselves to Father’s haystacks when the weather has been very severe.”
“I cannot think what men are made of. I should hate to go moose-hunting!” cried Pam with a shiver.
“Wait until you have tasted moose-meat,” murmured Sophy, and then she drifted into dreamland before she could say any more.
Pam was very wide awake, and she sat for a long time crouched over the stove, her eyes fixed on the glowing embers and her thoughts very busy with the future. She would have to work hard to get some more money ready for her grandfather by the time he should need it. How long would the lot he had taken to-night last him? She had no first-hand knowledge of his habits to guide her. When he had been at home he had been apparently something of a miser, unless, indeed, he had been very, very poor. Of course, he might make that money go for a long time. But she would never feel safe, and she must have some more for him if he needed it. Of course there was the money for the black spruce, but she could not touch that; it was lodged in the bank in trust for her grandfather if he should want it for his trial, and to ask for a portion of it might bring suspicion upon him.
The hopelessness of it all weighed upon her as she sat brooding by the fire. Her grandfather might even choose to sell the house and land, when she would be stranded in a strange country, with only her own exertions and the kindness of friends to help her. She had left home with a brave determination to win a place for her brothers in this land of promise. She had cheerfully faced the hardest and most laborious work, just because she was holding their inheritance for them, but to-night the question in her mind was as to whether she was really doing anything for her family at all. Ripple belonged to her grandfather, and he was plainly alive and in hiding, so that he was still master, even though he might not be able to show his face in his home; and the rosy future she had planned for the boys and Muriel was dependent on what he might choose to do with his own.
A man in hiding would not be able to make a good bargain if he tried to sell his property, so she told herself, and from her mother’s description of her grandfather she could not imagine the old man being willing to let the place go at less than its market value. He would be more likely to give her discretionary powers to do her best with the place, and hand over some portion of the profits as he might need them. She wondered when he would come again, and if she would see him next time. It was a pity that she could not live at Ripple alone, then he would not be afraid to venture. She herself had perfect trust in the fidelity of Sophy, but unless she could see her grandfather and talk to him, she could not make him understand this.
“If only Jack were here what a comfort it would be just now!” Pam murmured the words to herself, then yawned and rose from her seat. It was very late, nearly midnight, and there was much wood-sawing waiting for her to-morrow.
She would write and tell her mother as much as it seemed wise, and, after all, it would not be long to wait now until Jack came. Pam laughed softly to herself at the difference Jack would find in her. Oh, she knew that she had changed; the old carelessness was gone, she was more heedful of consequences than before. She had learned a lot of self-reliance too. Of course she still made blunders, some of them rather ghastly ones too; but then, as she argued, Rome was not built in a day, and she could not expect to learn wisdom all at once, so it was of no use being dismal when she made mistakes.
She crept into bed beside Sophy and quickly fell asleep. Outside the house a wild snowstorm was raging, the wind howled round the lone abode, and presently Pam began to dream that the old man, her grandfather, had come back, and was reproaching her for letting his money be stolen.
“But you came and stole it yourself!” she exclaimed in surprise, and then was awakened by the sound of her own voice. The lamp which she had left burning was going out for want of oil, and the dog was scratching at the door, sure sign that morning had come.
Sugaring
Spring was coming with swift and certain steps. A breath of life was sweeping through the forest, and there was a stir and a movement which quickened the pulses of the forest-dwellers. The snow lay deep on hill and valley, and the cold was more intense than ever, but the days were lengthening, and the sun had more heat in it when it shone at midday.
Pam was casting about for some way to earn money, or at least to save money, for in that isolated region saving often stood for earning, and to go without a thing, or without many things, was equal to a rise in income. It was the store bill which was bothering her now. The deposit at the store was nearly at an end, and in a few weeks she would have to choose between paying ready money and submitting to being charged the credit price for all goods, and that was so high that she hated the thought of it.
It was true she was a Londoner by birth and upbringing, but she was descended from generations of forest-dwellers, and the lore of the woods was somehow bred in the bone. Other people could make a living in the forest, and she would do it too, or perish in the attempt.
“Sophy, did you ever go sugaring?” she asked one evening when she had come in rather late to supper, and was pulling off her heavy boots, groaning a little because she was so stiff and sore from long hours of splitting and sawing firewood.
Sophy was frying flapjacks for supper, and she had to turn one very carefully before she answered.
“Yes,” she said, “I have been several times, but I always fail to see where the fun comes in.”
“Mother used to love sugaring,” Pam remarked in a thoughtful tone as she attacked her second boot.
“I dare say she did.” Sophy turned her flapjack out on to the dish, where it fell with a sputtering hiss. She put another chunk of lard in the pan, and set it on the stove to get hot. “There are sugaring parties most years, and people seem to think it is great fun; but we are not all made alike, and I never can see much pleasure in getting my clothes all messed up, catching bad colds, and working until every bone in my body aches, just for amusement.”
“My dear, to hear you talk anyone would think that you were qualifying for speedy development into a suburban old maid of the most conventional sort,” laughed Pam. “Instead of which, you are making your trousseau for marriage with a man in the most adventurous profession that can be found. Now, I would enjoy a sugaring party more than anything else; really for the fun of it, I mean. But there is solid gain too, is there not? It is the profit side of the question that appeals to me at the present. Do you think I could get up a party?”
“I don’t doubt it,” Sophy gurgled with amused laughter. “Don would give anything for a chance to come, and so, of course, would Nathan Gittins, though I expect they would quarrel a bit over the best mode of procedure. Don can never forget that he has been to college and has been trained in the most expert and scientific fashion, while Nathan is quite sure that weight of years and experience should take the first place. The two Hubbards would like to come too, also young Will Palmer from over the Ridge, and, oh—half a dozen more perhaps.”
“But they are all young men, or at least unmarried men; I could not go sugaring with them. Sophy, I think you are horrid!” cried Pam, but the laughter in her voice took the edge from her speech, and Sophy was laughing also.
Over supper they sketched out a plan of campaign. The maples on the Ripple land had not been tapped for several years, and should yield a fine lot of syrup. It was the boiling that would be the trouble; experience was necessary here, and although Pam would have preferred what she called a hen-party for her sugaring, it was plain the business could not be carried to a successful finish without masculine aid.
“I will go over to-morrow and ask Galena what she thinks about it,” said Pam with decision; and when supper was done she went round the house, and even hunted through the cellar, to see how many pans and buckets were available for use in holding syrup. There was a tremendous lot of rubbish of one sort and another stored in the cellar under the house at Ripple. Pam had never seemed to have the time to turn the place out and sort things up, but after she had been poking round that evening she made up her mind she would have to do it before the sugaring took place, so that she might get some clear idea as to her storage capacity.
Galena Gittins welcomed Pam’s great idea with acclamation.
“You are really wonderful for a city girl, and an English city girl too!” she exclaimed. “You think and plan as if you had been reared in the backwoods.”
“It is in my bones,” replied Pam. “Sometimes I feel as if all the other part of my life had been a dream, and only this is real. Although I was brought up in the city, I have never really belonged to it; consciously or unconsciously, it is the country I have been pining for, and my mother has always hated London so much that it is not wonderful we, her children, have hated it too. Then you think we can go sugaring?”
“Why, yes, of course; it is a fine idea!” Galena’s tone was hearty, for the work promised a frolic, which appealed to the frivolous part of her. It would also be a paying piece of work, and that appealed to the prudent side of her character, so no wonder she approved!
Together they arranged details—the time, the company to be invited, and the terms on which they should be asked to come. Sugaring was usually paid for in kind, Galena told Pam—that is, every member of the sugaring party had a percentage of the sugar that was obtained.
“The trees are all fairly near to your house, so we can go and come in a day. One of the men had better camp at the ground, but there will be no need for the women to do it, and that will save any amount of trouble.” Galena’s tone was brisk and business-like. She and her brother were two of the very few people who made farming in those parts downright profitable, as Pam knew, and that was why, in all matters pertaining to outdoors, she came to sit at the feet of Galena.
“Camping would be more fun,” said Pam, whose tone was actually wistful. She would have dearly loved to camp out by the trees which were to be forced to yield their sweetness. It would be an experience indeed to have a tent on the snow, to sit at the tent door to warm by a fire of logs, and then to dream through the solemn midnight hours, while the wind moaned through the leafless branches of the trees and the stir of the rising sap sent new life among the whispering twigs. But she had plenty of common sense, and it was easy to see how dangerous it would be for anyone who had been sleeping all the winter in a banked house, with a fire in the bedroom, to go camping in the forest before the snow was entirely gone. This was a case where sentiment had to be flung overboard, and common sense had to dictate the mode of daily life. So far, Pam had not ailed the whole winter through, she had not even had a bad cold. But spring was the testing time, and it would never do, from the point of view of economy, for her to be ill now that work was about to increase on her hands.
Nathan Gittins readily promised to lend a hand with the boiling, but he advised her to ask Don Grierson to take the management of the affair.
“The lad has got book-learning to help out experience, and it is when the two go together that the best results are obtained,” said Nathan in his deep voice. Then he went on to say: “If he is bossing the show I shan’t feel so tied and responsible. I’m willing enough to give labour, but I don’t want the burden of thinking and planning the whole business.”
After this there was nothing for it but that Pam should ask Don if he would take the lead in the sugaring, and in truth Don was very willing to accept the responsibility. He had been busy enough all the winter lumbering the black larch on his own land, for he had taken a farm near to The Corner which had dropped out of cultivation for nearly ten years, and it would require a tremendous lot of hard work and a considerable amount of money to make it a paying venture. But just for a few weeks, until the snows were melted, work was easy with him, and sugaring would be something of a holiday.
He came over one damp afternoon to go the round of the trees with Pam. The forest was full of the music of tinkling streams and falling water. Pam had rubbers over her boots, or she would have been foot-wet before she had gone ten steps, for it was like wading in a pond.
Taking the narrow trail, where now they had to walk high on the ridge of the drifted snow, they came out on to the old tote road; and following it for nearly half a mile, they descended a steep dip and plunged into a forest of maples.
“Are all these sugar maples?” demanded Pam. There was an inflection of awe in her voice, for it seemed to her that if all the trees she could see yielded maple sugar she would be in process of becoming a millionaire, or rather her grandfather would be, seeing that the property belonged to him and not to her.
“No, there is a lot of red maple here,” replied Don, whose gaze was searching the bare trunks with the eye of an expert.
“How can you tell them apart?” she asked, then sighed a little, because the more she knew of forest lore the more she found there was to learn.
“By formation largely,” he said, pointing out to her this and that difference in shape. “But if I were seriously at a loss there is one infallible test. Just drop a little sulphate of iron on to the wood, and if it is sugar maple it turns a greenish hue, but if it is red maple it goes a deep blue colour. But that would be quite an extreme test; it is easy enough to tell them apart as a rule.”
“They look dreadfully alike to me,” she said ruefully; then burst out, “Oh, how I wish Jack were here! How he would enjoy all the fun of the sugaring!”
“Can’t he get here in time?” Don was counting and measuring, and so he asked his question in an abstracted fashion. Of course it would be to Pam’s advantage to have her brother to help, for it would mean one share of sugar saved, seeing that every worker from outside would take from her profits.
“Mother said the end of the month, and I did not like to press her to send him sooner, because he is earning a really good salary for a boy of his age. Messrs. Gay & Grainger have been very good to him, and they do not like losing him. Then, of course, Mother has got to find the money for his fare. It has made me feel so bad that I could not help her with that, but I dared not take Grandfather’s money in case it might be wanted before I could make it up again.”
“Do you still think he will come back or be found by the police?” Don looked at her in amazement. He knew nothing of that night’s experience when Sophy and Pam had been lured from the house by that false cry for help, for Sophy had kept the secret most loyally.
Pam winced. She always did wince at any mention of the police in connection with her grandfather, for she was very proud, and the shame of it all scorched her very soul. It was quite bad enough to be poor, but happily there was no shame in that when the poverty could not be helped.
“Of course I think he will come back when he feels inclined,” she answered, and in spite of herself a note of offence, crept into her tone. “Then when he does come back the police will have to do their duty, and that is why the money must be kept for his defence.”
“It is hard on your mother, though.” Don was still keenly surveying the trees, and so his eyes were away from the face of his companion, where the red blood was mounting in a burning blush of shame, right to the roots of her hair. “Mrs. Walsh has had no help from you all the winter, and now she will have to lose your brother’s help, too.”
“It is not quite so bad as it might be.” Pam was smiling a little ruefully at the remembrance of what she was and comparing it with what she had been forced by circumstances to become. “I was out of a situation when I came here, and as Grandfather sent the money for my fare, I did not cost Mother anything, and she has not had to keep me all the winter. Then I was not much good at home; I always seemed to do the wrong things. I upset the boarders by laughing at them. I could not get as much work out of the servants as Jack could, and I was always breaking things, or tearing things, or doing things wrong.”
“Did you change your nature on the voyage?” asked Don, turning to look at her in amazement, for she had struck him as about the most capable and clever girl it had ever been his lot to meet, and he valued her accordingly.
Pam laughed merrily; she was not even embarrassed by the very evident admiration in her companion’s face. He was so plainly unconscious of it that it would be in the worst possible taste to notice or appear to resent it.
“I don’t think I changed my nature, only that my peculiar gifts have now found a more suitable setting,” she answered indifferently, then asked a question about the sugaring which diverted the talk from personalities and kept it in a strictly business groove.
Don was great on sugaring, and after some deliberation he declared that the boiling would be best done at the house. It would add to the labour a good deal to have to carry the syrup so far, but there was so much less risk of spoiling the colour by any over-boiling, the fire could be kept steadier, and the work could be done in a more satisfactory manner.
Then came busy days of trough-making. This was all done at Ripple—indeed, most of it was done by Pam after Don had made a few as patterns; for Dr. Grierson was spilled from his sledge just at that time, and was so much hurt that he could not go to his patients except when Don went with him, to lift him in and out of the sledge and help him to the bedsides of those who needed him badly. It was the sickness-time; the fierce cold was relaxing its grip on the land, and everyone was feeling the change. Nathan Gittins, who had said that he would come and help to make the troughs, was ill in bed with influenza, and Galena was tied hand and foot with the work of the house and the farm, to say nothing of the nursing. Indeed, Nathan was so ill for three days that Mrs. Buckle went over to the Gittins farm to help Galena, who was nearly worn out. Then he began to improve, and got better almost as fast as he had got ill.
Then the sugaring began. The trees selected were carefully numbered, an incision was made in the bark, and the little troughs made by Pam were fixed under the openings to catch the oozing syrup. When the troughs were full they were emptied into a cooking pot, which two of the sugar workers carried the round of the trees; then the pot was brought to the house, and the work of boiling and skimming began. But the accidents, the frights, and the surprises were so numerous that Pam began to wonder whether after all her sugaring venture would pay its expenses. The snow was melting fast, and the sun was so hot at midday that the bears, which had been sleeping for most of the winter snugly tucked into some cranny of the hillside, or in hollow trees, came out of their long slumber and cast about for food to satisfy them after their long fast. As a matter of course they found the troughs under the tapped trees, and equally as a matter of course they helped themselves to the syrup, knocked the troughs down, so that the escaping syrup was wasted, and generally upset things. After this a very close watch had to be kept, and although it was impossible to keep the bears from stealing the syrup, it was possible to prevent the waste by fixing the troughs anew, or by replacing them, when they were damaged, with fresh ones.
The boiling was an anxious business, too, but here Pam proved her mettle. It took her some days to discover just how big to make her fire, and just how fast it was safe to let the syrup boil without its boiling over; but when once she had succeeded in mastering these details, she was able to run the boiling business single-handed whilst the others of the party were away collecting syrup. Sophy’s time was fairly well filled in catering for such a big party, and the fun at meal-times was fast and furious. Luckily the weather was fine, and so the work went on with dispatch. The house was redolent of the smell of boiling syrup, and when Sophy complained that it made her feel sick, Pam pointed out to her how much worse it would be if the stuff were allowed to boil over on the stove and the odour of burning were added to the smell of the syrup.
At last the long hours of bending over the boiling syrup began to affect Pam; she had a fearful headache, then came nausea and sickness. Galena was forced to take the place of boiler, while Pam went out to the woods to help in the collecting. Don wanted her to come with him. It was necessary for them to work in pairs, and Pam looked so shockingly bad from her bilious fit that she was really an object of pity. But Pam had a perverse fit and would not go. She told Don that he must go with Nathan and work as fast as possible, while she strolled along behind with little Amanda Higgins, whom Mrs. Buckle had generously spared for a day’s outing in the forest. Don was reluctant to leave her; he said that Amanda could go with Nathan, and they two would go together, when he would see that she did not have to work hard, nor yet to walk farther than she felt fit for. But Pam was bent on having her own way, and, like most perverse people, she had to suffer in consequence.
Amanda was a feckless girl, whose idea of sugaring was to run here and there looking in sheltered places, and on the sunny sides of the banks, to see if the colt’s-foot was coming into blossom. She left Pam to do the work of emptying the troughs and refixing them, and she was a proud and happy girl when she announced with a shout of jubilation that she had found the first flower. Pam dropped her trough in a hurry then, and let the exuding sap drip to waste while she ran to look at the tiny yellow blossom, which was indeed the harbinger of the hosts of flowers that were waiting to carpet the waste places with beauty.
“It is too early for flower-hunting yet,” said Pam, mindful of her duty, as she picked up the trough which she had flung down in such a hurry and went off to fix it to the tree. “Come and help me, Amanda, and then next week, when this sugar business is all out of the way, I will ask Mrs. Buckle to spare you, and we will have a long afternoon in the forest hunting for flowers. They will all be new to me, but I expect you know all about them, and which come first?”
“I should just think I do!” cried Amanda, who was skipping and prancing like a young lamb, and was almost as irresponsible. She started to run down a little bank that was clear of snow, and to jump the hollow at the bottom, where the drift still lay in unsullied whiteness on the top of last year’s leaves; but she caught her foot in an upstanding root, tried to save herself, failed, then went sprawling into the drift, clutching wildly for something by which to save herself, and screaming at the top of her voice.
Pam put the pot of syrup carefully on the ground and went to the help of Amanda. Privately she was sharply regretting the fit of perversity which had made her refuse to go with Don, for if Amanda had been with Nathan Gittins, he would have taken good care that she did not get up to pranks of this sort, which not merely wasted time, but endangered her limbs likewise. There was so much sickness about at this time that it was of all things foolish to run risks which might be avoided.
“Catch hold of my hand and I will pull you out!” cried Pam, and holding to the stem of a slender young birch with one hand, she reached out the other to assist Amanda from the hollow, which was a deep one.
“Oh! Oh! Oh!” Amanda’s voice rose in a crescendo of shrieks as she squirmed round and round in an agitated endeavour to get on her feet, and she was in such a hurry that it took about twice as long to scramble up as it would have done if she had gone to work in a cooler fashion. “Ah! Oh! Ah! There is a dead man here down under me, and I am frightened out of my life!”
“Catch hold of me, I will pull you out; but do not trample about in that fashion, it is horrible!” Pam’s voice was sharp with authority now. It was dreadful that Amanda should be trampling on what had once been a human being, and the child seemed too demoralized by her fear to do the sensible thing, and get out of the hole as quickly as possible. She was shrieking and crying, but Pam did not once check the noise, for it seemed to her it was the best way of letting the others know that something serious was the matter.
There was an answering shout from the distance, but the two men did not arrive before Pam had managed to grip Amanda and land her on the bank. She was shivering and crying at such a rate that she was wholly incoherent, and it was Pam who had to tell the two men the cause of the trouble. But she kept her back turned upon the hollow, so desperately afraid was she of seeing something of what had scared Amanda so badly.
Nathan slid carefully into the hollow, and began scraping away the melting snow with his hands. Then Don crept down also, and Pam hushed Amanda with a gesture of authority, while she still kept her back turned upon the scene.
“We found that, and that,” said the voice of Don at her elbow; “but there is little else save a few bones. It looks as if the poor fellow, whoever he was, had been set upon and eaten by wolves.”
Pam glanced at the objects he was holding out to her, and then gave a startled cry, for the first, a little wallet with leather cover and metal corners, was one of the things taken from her grandfather’s desk that night when she and Sophy had been lured from the house; and the other thing was a stout little canvas bag containing coin.
Just a Doubt!
“It is Grandfather!” cried Pam in a startled tone. She had recognized the things at once, and of course she came to the most obvious conclusion concerning them.
“You can’t be sure, unless you can swear to his having carried the bag and the wallet when he went away from Ripple, and you were not here yourself to know anything about it,” objected Nathan, who prided himself on having a judicial mind, and not accepting anything as fact which had not been proved inside and out.
Pam thrust out her hands with an impatient gesture. She had never felt so much like fainting in her life. She wanted something to cling to, to keep her from falling, but there was nothing except Amanda, who was clinging to her, and crying as if her heart would break.
“You do not know, and I have never dared to speak of it before,” she said, plunging into her story with a desperate haste to get it told, and realizing, now that it was too late, how very much better it would have been if she had never made Sophy keep silence on the subject. “Grandfather came back one night in January, and—and he took the money. Of course, he had a perfect right to what was in his own desk!”
Don stared at Pam in surprise. Why did she fling up her head as if she were defying the whole world in championing the cause of her grandfather?
“The poor old fellow came home, and you never let on to us about it!” exclaimed Nathan in amazed disapproval. “You don’t mean to say you really thought that any one of us would have betrayed him to the police? Why, he might have stayed hidden in our house all the winter, and no one outside the township would have been a bit the wiser. How long did he stay? Was he very much cut up? Dreadful hard on a man of his sort to be forced into wandering!”
“I don’t know; I did not see him,” faltered Pam, who could not repress a shudder as she thought of what Amanda had found in the ditch. Almost unconsciously she moved a step nearer to Don and farther from the hollow.
“If you did not see him, how was it that you knew he had come?” asked Don hurriedly. He had seen the black frown on the face of Nathan, and was dreadfully afraid of what he might say to Pam. Nathan was a Justice of the Peace for the district, but all the same he had his own ideas of how far it was wise to obey the law, which, according to him, had been made for the instruction of fools.
Pam gave a little gasp as if she were choking, and then she went on with the story of that night when she and Sophy had braved the dangers of the forest to find the person who had called for help. She told how they had seen the wolves in pursuit of the moose, and had made their way back to the house, to find that someone had been there who had taken the money from the desk. She explained how she had firmly believed this to be the work of her grandfather, who, pressed by his dire need, had lured them out in order to get in and help himself to his own money.
“But it was not all his own money,” objected Nathan. “You say that twenty dollars of it belonged to Mrs. Buckle, and that was taken too.”
Pam lifted her head, and there was a stormy light in her eyes.
“Why should he not take the money that was in his own desk? As it happened, he had a perfect right to it too, for Mrs. Buckle had given it to me for him, she was so afraid he would be found by the police and punished for what happened to her husband, and she said there had been quite enough suffering and misery already. Are you trying to insinuate that my grandfather was a thief?”
“No, I am not,” said Nathan in his slow and stolid manner; “and if I did think he was, you would be the last person who would hear of it from me. All the same, it was a thief who entered the house that night. It was a thief who knew the neighbourhood pretty well, too. That means we have a thief living amongst us, a pretty low-down sort of a rogue too, seeing that he would lure a couple of defenceless girls out to take the choice of several ways of dying at night in midwinter, the snow deep on the ground, the wolves hunting in packs. I just wish I had caught the wretch red-handed; I would have choked the life out of him then and there!”
“Oh, hush!” cried Pam, aghast at the passion of the quiet man’s tone. “Remember that the thief, whoever he was, is dead.”
“If he is dead, then it certainly was no one from round about here,” said Don. “We have had no one disappear from the neighbourhood this winter.” He had been running over in his mind all the persons of shady character that he knew, but none of them filled this bill.
“I do not think it was a thief,” protested Pam. “I think it was poor Grandfather himself, who came to get the money from his own desk because he was so hard pressed by want. Then when he got clear of the house he must have lost his way in the forest. Where would he have been heading for in this direction?”
Both Don and Nathan knew the forests like a book, but this question of Pam’s seemed to puzzle them very much.
“So far as I can judge he would not have been heading for anywhere,” answered Don, and Nathan nodded in complete acquiescence. “If it was your grandfather, he must have been wandering for the sake of wandering, or else he must have lost his way in the snow, and that is not likely, seeing how well he knew the ground. But we may know more about it when we have scooped the snow away. You and Amanda had better go back to the house and not worry about this.” Don nodded in the direction of the hollow, and Pam shivered anew.
“Will you bring the remains to our house?” she asked, and before her eyes came a picture which made her feel as if she would faint.
“No, we shan’t, we shall carry them to The Corner,” answered Don briefly; and then he hurried Pam off the scene, and hustled Amanda until she turned on him with a childish impertinence on her tongue, though she burst into noisy crying before it was uttered. Her nerves were shaken by the tragedy on which she had stumbled, and she clung to Pam, sobbing violently.
“You must help me carry the pot of syrup; you can cry when you get home,” said Pam in a matter-of-fact fashion intended for the soothing of Amanda.
“She had better wait until she has something to cry about,” put in Nathan, who was also doing his best to speed their going.
Pam picked up the pot with the syrup.
“What about the trees I have not done?” she said to Don. “Will you be able to go over them later, or shall I come back presently?”
“I will do them when I come back from The Corner,” replied Don, and then he watched until Pam and the weeping Amanda had passed out of sight.
Gone was the joy of the sugaring! The grim story which the melting snows revealed was on every tongue. Nothing else was talked about, or thought about. A formal inquiry was held at The Corner, the Doctor’s wagon-house being used as a court-house for want of a better. Pam had to attend, also Sophy, and both of them told the story of the night alarm, describing how they had heard someone crying for help, and how, in spite of the fact that they knew wolves were in the neighbourhood, they had gone into the forest to hunt for the person they believed to be in difficulties.
“You must have been mad to do such a thing!” exclaimed the Doctor, looking at his daughter with horror on his face. He had thought so much of Sophy’s level-headed discretion that he had never seriously worried about the unprotected state in which she and Pam had lived all the winter. But the story of their wandering made him inclined to change his estimate of his daughter’s good sense. “Of course Miss Walsh would not understand how full of danger such a search might be; but you have been reared in the forest, or near it. If you had failed to hit the trail back to the house you would both have perished miserably by morning.”
“Would you have had us remain in the warmth and security of the house while someone was perhaps perishing within shouting distance of us?” demanded Pam with fire in her eyes. All this talk of taking care of themselves rather grated on her nerves.
“We should all have felt pretty bad if harm had come to you,” answered the Doctor, looking up at her with a smile which completely disarmed her resentment.
It was dreadful to Pam to have to stand in that crowded wagon-house and tell the assembled men that she had hidden the fact of the house being robbed, because she was afraid that if she spoke of her loss it would put the police on the track of her grandfather.
“If you did not see the person who entered the house and took the money, how could you be sure that it was your grandfather who had done it?” asked the legal gentleman in charge of the inquiry.
“I was not sure,” said Pam, turning to him with wistful appeal in her eyes. “I only felt that it must be Grandfather, who, pressed by his sore need, had lured us out so that he could enter the house, his own house, unobserved, to get the money.”
“I happened to know your grandfather,” said the lawyer, “and anything less likely for him to do I cannot conceive. No, Miss Walsh, if ever the story of that night is known, you will find that it was not your grandfather, coming, as you pathetically put it, to take his own money, but a miserable scamp of a thief, who, not content with robbing a lone house at night, made his wrong-doing into black crime by exposing two girls to risks of the gravest kind. It is deeds of this sort which call for summary justice, only the trouble is the wily rogues are hard to catch.”
“At least the justice of heaven overtook this one,” said the Doctor as a murmur of anger went through the crowd, and Pam realized with a thrill how kindly was the feeling for her and Sophy. She had to listen meekly enough to the lecture which the lawyer read her on her wrong-headedness in trying to keep what she thought was the visit of her grandfather from the police, but in her heart she knew that in similar circumstances she would do the same again.
The verdict of the inquiry was that a man had been found dead in the forest, but that there was not sufficient evidence to show whether he had died first and his body had then been eaten by wolves, or whether he had fallen a victim to the hungry creatures when he was making his way from Ripple. There was no evidence to show who he was; from the size of the bones it might have been Wrack Peveril, but equally it might not. One thing only was certain—that it must have been the man who entered the house at Ripple in the absence of Pam and Sophy, for both Pam and Mrs. Buckle testified to this. Mrs. Buckle had marked the paper money with a little cross on the flourishes of one capital letter, which she pointed out, while Pam testified to the stout little wallet being the one in which she had stored the twenty dollars. One thing was very puzzling to her, and that was the fact that the canvas bag only contained seven dollars in cash, whereas it should have had fourteen dollars, this being the amount of the money she had found in her grandfather’s desk, and left there against the time of his necessity.
“You are quite sure about this amount?” the lawyer asked her. And Pam was quite sure. Conjecture was busy then, but it amounted to no more than conjecture, and the affair had to be left shrouded in mystery.
The remains were buried in a nameless grave. The lawyer would not permit it to be assumed that the bones were those of Wrack Peveril, while the strictest search revealed nothing by which an identity could be set up. The torn clothing, such as remained, was what anyone might have worn, the boots had no name on them, and there was nothing else to go by.
Pam came out of the wagon-house at the close of the inquiry feeling as if she would like to run away and never show her face in the neighbourhood again. She was acutely miserable, and it did not tend to raise her spirits when a small boy, lean and ragged, who hung on the outskirts of the crowd, deliberately stuck his tongue out at her. She flushed scarlet at the insult and turned away so sharply that she punted into Sophy, who was walking on the other side of her, and who immediately wanted to know what was the matter that she was so red in the face, because she had been so pale before.
Pam would not tell her. She would not even inquire the name of the ragged boy. It was such an emphasis of what she had been feeling, just as if her secret thoughts had been put into speech, and shouted out so that all might hear. Surely never before had a girl so hard a thing to bear! The very pity of these kindly folk did but add to her suffering. She thought of her mother, and it was only the urgent necessity for safe-guarding the interests of the dear home people that enabled her to bear the ordeal with patience.
In her own mind Pam was absolutely certain that the poor remains found in the forest were those of her grandfather. She found it best to keep silent about her belief, however. The neighbours were indignant that that idea should gain a moment’s credence. They held it an insult to his memory that such a thing should be believed of him as that he should enter his own house like a burglar and steal his own money! Yet everyone believed he had beaten Sam Buckle so sorely that the man had died from his wounds! Pam would have laughed at the absurdity of their standpoints, if she had not been so sore at heart about it all. If only the remains had had anything upon them to prove her right, most of her troubles would have been over; she could have written to her mother to say that her grandfather was dead, and then Mrs. Walsh would have disposed of the boarding-house, and would have come out to Ripple with the other children. It was Pam’s comfort that Jack was coming. Perhaps when he arrived, and heard all that there was to be told, he would be able to persuade her mother that it was best to come.
The maple trees on Ripple had not been tapped for so long that the yield was quite wonderful. Pam found herself in the position of being able to sell a couple of hundredweights of sugar, as well as having enough for home consumption for a long time to come. She reckoned that her trees had averaged twenty pounds weight of sugar each. Of course higher averages had been made; some people talked of having had trees which yielded thirty pounds each. But, as Galena said, you would not find more than one tree in a few hundreds do as much as that; the average of twenty pounds was very high, and it would not be safe to tap those trees again next spring, as it would probably kill them.
By the time the sugaring was safely over, the snow had melted sufficiently for the plough to get to work. Neither Pam nor her next neighbour, Mrs. Buckle, had horses for ploughing. Mrs. Buckle did certainly possess an ancient nag, knock-kneed and a roarer, which drew her to meetings on Sundays, but the creature was not capable of very much in the way of exertion, so the ploughing on both farms had to be done by outside labour. Nathan Gittins having undertaken the work, in addition to his own fields, his plough was going every day and all day. Then the wind veered round to the cold quarter, there was another blizzard, and they were back in winter again, to the secret disgust of Pam, who had seen enough of snow to last her for that season.
But spring snow is swift to go. The brown earth was showing, and a brisk but warm wind was blowing on the day when Pam went to borrow Mrs. Buckle’s ancient horse to drive to Hunt’s Crossing to meet Jack. It was amazing to Pam that the widow should be such a kind friend to her. Indeed, Mrs. Buckle’s attitude was something remarkable, seeing how her husband had met his death. But she had no strong prejudices, and common sense told her that Pam, the stranger, was in no way to blame for the long-standing animosity between the men who had quarrelled for so many years about the fence, which, in point of fact, made no difference to either.
“Can you spare the horse?” asked Pam, standing on the threshold of Mrs. Buckle’s little brown house, her feet with difficulty refraining from dancing, and her face wreathed in smiles. Such happiness she had not known since her feet had first pressed Canadian soil, and she was thinking of what Jack would say when he saw the house and the land at Ripple, for the keeping of which, for him and the others, she had borne so much.
“Why, yes, of course,” replied Mrs. Buckle with an answering smile. “It is not Sunday, so I don’t want to go to meeting, and there is nowhere else to go to in these benighted parts that I know of.”
“You might go to school.” Pam gurgled into happy laughter at her own small joke. It is so easy to find things to laugh about when one is happy.
“Well, well, of course. I had not thought of the school; I might go there. The youngsters would laugh, and nudge each other as we used to do in the old days, and they would wonder what Martha Buckle was up to. They would maybe want me to spell something, and oh, my word! where should I be then!” Mrs. Buckle leaned against the door-post and fairly rocked with laughter, while Pam laughed too, until Amanda came running from the out-place, where she had been washing the breakfast dishes, and joined in the merriment, although she had not the remotest idea what the others were laughing about.
Pam harnessed the horse herself, an accomplishment she had learned from Mrs. Buckle, and then she mounted the rickety old wagon and drove out on to the trail which led to Hunt’s Crossing. She had asked Sophy to come with her, but Sophy, with a rare understanding of what that meeting would mean to Pam, had pleaded too much work, at the same time pointing out to Pam what a heavy load they would be on the homeward journey—Jack and his baggage, Pam and herself. The ancient horse might well object to so much weight behind it, and Pam was fain to see that the excuse was reasonable. She was even glad, right down at the bottom of her heart, that she could be alone when she met her brother again.
The sun was very hot to-day, and the old horse was not disposed to move very fast. Pam got so tired of trying to get some pace out of the creature that she finally got out of the wagon and walked on ahead, with the lines over her arm. It was really pleasant walking too; the grass was fresh, flowers were springing on all sides, while over the forest was creeping a daily thickening veil of green. It was springtime, and the winter was past and gone!
“Hullo! How far is it to Ripple?” A lanky youth rose from a fallen log which lay by the side of the trail, and advanced upon Pam before she was aware of anyone being near at hand. One long look she gave him, and then she shrieked joyfully.
“Jack! Why, Jack, how enormously you have grown!” She cast the lines from her as she spoke, and rushing towards the youth hugged him rapturously.
“Pam, old girl, you are quite a beauty!” exclaimed Jack, holding her at arm’s length, and surveying her critically. “You always were pretty fair, as far as looks go, but now you are a peach, and a daisy, and everything else that is blooming!”
“The life suits me, I guess!” laughed Pam, and then she hugged Jack again, just to convince herself that he was really here in the flesh; and because she was very silly she had to cry a little in memory of the fierce home-sickness which had been upon her so often in the winter that was past.
“Hullo! Where is the ancient horse off to with so much haste?” demanded Jack, as he looked round in time to see that the horse had deliberately turned back on its tracks, and was proceeding along the trail at a brisk walk.
“Oh, the wretched creature!” cried Pam. “I have had such a task to get it along this morning, it seemed so old and spent. Now look at it!” She and Jack had both started to run after the animal, and when it heard them coming it broke into a run, going at a shambling trot that made it exceedingly difficult to overhaul it.
“Moral: never leave go of the lines when you go a journey with a racer of this description!” said Jack, who was panting heavily by the time they had overtaken and stopped the horse. He had not the wind of Pam, and seemed quite done up by the scramble.
“The lazy creature has got to turn round again, and do the bit to the river,” she said, tugging its head round with great energy. “Did you bring any books, Jack?”
“Nearly all we possess. I say, Pam, what trees! Why, they are giants!”
“Wait until you see some of ours on Ripple!” cried Pam, with an unconscious air of proprietorship. “Mr. Dobson told me last fall that he believed we had some of the finest timber anywhere round here.”
“Turn it into money then, before anything happens to it,” advised Jack, as the horse went slowly along the trail to Hunt’s Crossing.
“I must not sell any more just yet,” she answered nervously. “You see, it is not as if we had a clear title to the land.”
“Was that Grandfather who was found in the forest?” Jack asked, his face very serious now. The tragedy looked more real now that he was here close to it. The descriptions in Pam’s letters had been of necessity meagre. Then, too, she was not particularly good at letter-writing, and so had failed to give many details which would help to the understanding of the affair. Now, when she had loaded Jack’s baggage on to the wagon, and they had started back along the trail to Ripple, she plunged into a full and circumstantial account of everything connected with that grim find in the forest.
Presently Jack drew a long breath, made an explosive sound as if he were letting off steam, and then burst into speech.
“Oh, I say, isn’t it just ripping! To think that I am really here at last! Pam, you were a brick to come when you did, and to stick by things for us. It would have been just wasted if you had not been here! My word, though, you must have wanted some pluck, to live the life you have done here all through the winter!”
“I could not have done it if Sophy had not stayed with me!” cried Pam. “You will love her, Jack, she is such a dear!”
Jack gave a wriggle, then demanded abruptly: “Going to be married, isn’t she?”
“Yes, in June or July. It is lucky you were able to come to me, for I could not live alone at Ripple. I wish Mother and the others would come out this summer. The children would love it so much, and I am certain that Mother would not have as much anxiety as she has with that wretched old boarding-house. Does it pay better than it did?”
“Not much. We are full up, and the takings are good, but the expenses are frightful, and they run away with any chance of making the thing pay. It will be worse now that I have left home, for I could keep an eye on the kitchen in the evenings.”
“You were all the time doing your best to keep expenses down. You will have to do it still, for I need looking after. But there is Ripple, Jack, just showing through the trees. Welcome home, dear!”