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!”