The End
“Hush!” panted Mrs. Walsh, and Pam was immediately ashamed of having
made such a noise.
“Will you come, Mrs. Walsh?” asked the voice of Don again from below.
But Mrs. Walsh trembled so badly that Pam pulled her back from the top
of the ladder.
“Stay here, Mother, I will go. Strike another match, will you, Don? That
is right, I can see now!” Pam went steadily down as she spoke. She had
screwed her courage to the ordeal because of the manifest unfitness of
her mother. Down, down, down she went, until she stood on the floor of
the cellar, felt her arm grasped by Don, and heard the loud breathing of
Jack.
“Where?” she breathed, and felt a sudden rush of courage because Don
gripped her hand so hard.
“There!” As he spoke, Don struck another match, and by its light Pam saw
a small iron safe standing on a sort of table, and in a deep,
hide-covered chair beside it, a huddled something that looked like a
heap of clothes surmounted by an old hat. In the dim light she could
make out a gun leaning against the chair, but at that moment the match
went out, and Don’s voice sounded in her ear:
“Go up now,” he commanded, “you can’t do any good here.”
Pam climbed up the ladder dazed and wondering. She heard the sobs of her
mother, and wondered at it. Then she suddenly felt so faint and queer
that she was glad to stumble across to the door, and put her head out to
the sunshine, where the horse still munched in contentment, and the blue
butterflies hovered over the white cups of the bindweed, as if there
were no such thing as death in the world.
Jack came up from the cellar, still breathing heavily as if he had been
running. He was immediately followed by Don, who started to turn the
table upside down over the broken trap-door.
“Why are you doing that?” asked Pam.
Don carefully let the table drop over the broken door before he spoke,
and then he said gravely:
“From what I could see by the light of the matches, the old man must
have been in the habit of keeping his valuables there. I expect he
thought it was safer than Ripple, and I daresay he was right, though how
he got that safe there alone is more than I can imagine. We don’t want
anyone going down there until Father and the police have made their
examination. If anyone came along when we have gone, he might go down
there in all innocence of what there is to find. So it seemed best to
cover the hole. Now I will drive you and your mother back to Ripple,
then Jack and I will go and fetch the police.”
“We can walk by the narrow trail, and that will save time for you,” said
Pam; but Don would not hear of it, and he drove them back to Ripple.
Scarcely a word was spoken by any of them. What Mrs. Walsh was thinking
of was the last time she had seen her father, before she ran away to get
married. The thoughts of the three who had been in the cellar were busy
with the huddled heap of garments resting in the old hide-covered chair.
It was Reggie Furness who had last seen the old man alive, and he
identified the remains by the hat and the coat, which had a green patch
on one shoulder. The cause of death was not clear, but was supposed to
be heart trouble. Wrack Peveril had more than once complained to his
neighbours of pain in his side, which might easily have been disease of
the heart. Someone suggested that he had shot himself either by accident
or intention, but this theory was at once set aside by the fact of the
gun being found loaded in every chamber. It was Pam who testified to the
fact of the old man having been there at any rate ever since the first
snow of the previous fall, as the yellow rag which Mose Paget had tied
on the door had never been removed until the day when Don discovered the
cellar. This was proof enough that Cassidy O’Brien was either mistaken
in stating that he had seen the old man working at the lumber camp, or
else he had made the story up to suit his own ends.
From the evidence before them it was fairly easy to understand that the
old man, warned by Reggie of the coming of the surprise party, had gone
across the forest to his hiding-place in the cellar, intending that his
unwanted visitors should not find him at home. He had probably forgotten
that his granddaughter was expected that day. Death must have come to
him in a very kindly guise, for there was nothing in the position of the
body to show that he had suffered. Indeed, the peace of repose lay upon
the huddled remains, and on the table by the safe there was an end of
candle not burned out, and a box of matches was found in one of the
pockets.
All the long apprehension and the fierce anxiety were now over. The
lifting of the burden was so great that at first Pam could not realize
that there was no longer anything to dread. It was Don who emphasized
the fact for her, when he came to see her the week after the funeral,
and insisted, in the most masterful fashion possible, that their
engagement should be announced.
“There is noth to wait for now, and I have been patient long enough,” he
said, standing drawn up to his full height, and looking down at Pam, who
was resting in a rocking-chair.
“I don’t think that you have been patient at all,” she said, with a low
laugh, and her eyes sparkled with fun as they used to do before the
burden of her care dulled their light somewhat.
“Opinions differ,” he said calmly, and then he sat down on a little
wooden stool by her chair, and told her that old, old story, which,
however it may be varied by circumstances in the telling, always amounts
to the same thing in the end. He must have told it well too, for Pam had
no more excuses to bring against Don’s desire for an engagement between
them.
It was not until later, when the contents of the safe were examined,
that it was found Wrack Peveril had been quite a wealthy man. He had
made no will, and so Mrs. Walsh inherited all he had to leave. Her
future would be assured now, and there would be no poverty to fear in
her old age; but it might all have been very different, and her
interests must have suffered greatly, had it not been for the enterprise
and courage of Pam in acting as Pioneer.
TRANSCRIBER NOTES
Obvious printer errors have been corrected including missing periods,
apostrophes and closing quotations necessary to the dialogue.
The use of hyphenated words has been retained as written. Where two
spellings of the same word appear, the spelling with the highest
frequency was adopted.
[The end of _A Canadian Farm Mystery_, by Bessie Marchant.]
End of Project Gutenberg's A Canadian Farm Mystery, by Bessie Marchant