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When they had disappeared, she slunk down the lane and made straight for Lon's hut. With dread in her eyes, she stood for sometime before the dark shanty, and then swayed forward to the window. When she reached it, superstition forced her back; but love proved stronger than fear, and she looked into the room.
Everett bent over and looked keenly into Lon's face; then slowly he threw a question at the fellow: "Are you fond of those two children, or have you other motives for taking them from Shellington?" Cronk made no reply, but settled back in the rickety chair and eyed Everett from head to foot. "Be that any of yer business?" he said at length. The lawyer took the repulse calmly.
He flashed a murderous look upward. "Ye could have left her dead in the hut, as long as yer killed her!" said he. Not heeding the interruption, Vandecar went on: "But you sent me no word, and, because I was sorry, and because " The knife slipped from Lon's stiffened fingers, and a long groan fell from his lips. "I didn't get no word from ye!" he burst out.
"Flea's jumped overboard!" The churning of the tug suddenly stopped, and the canalman saw Lon's big body pass through the moonlight into the water. The scow was soon close to the tug, and together Lem and Middy Burnes examined the lake's surface for a sight of the man and the girl. Many minutes passed.
She was staring into Lon's face, and he was flashing from her to Katherine glances that changed and rechanged like dark clouds passing over the heaven's blue. He saw Katherine, so like his dead wife, bow her fair head before him. He noted her trembling fingers pressed into pink palms, her slender body grow tense again and again, relaxing only with spontaneous sobs.
They halted with thumping hearts in sight of the dark lake. All three noticed a small light twinkling through the Cronk window, and, without knocking, Governor Vandecar flung wide the door of Lon's hut and stepped in. The squatter sat on the floor, whittling a stick; Fledra crouched by the window.
First thing I hear, the winter-sports club has been organized, snowshoes sent for and a couple of toboggans, and a toboggan slide half a mile long made out in Price's Addition, starting at the top of the highest hill, where Lon's big board sign with the painted bungalow made a fine windshield, and running across some very choice building lots to the foot of the grade, where it stopped on the proposed site of the Carnegie Library.
A telegram, telephoned over from the junction, announced the proposed arrival of the party on Thursday morning, and the school-teacher was sure that everything would be in readiness at that time. The paint on Lon's repairs would be dry, the grass in the front yard was closely cropped, and the little bed of flowers between the corn-crib and the wood-shed was blooming finely.
The words startled Fledra. Not until the trouble of Lon's coming had she wished that Floyd might linger in the sickroom. The man outside, watching every movement in the house, frightened her. She knew that when her brother was well enough he and she would be called away for the court's decision as to their future. "Floyd, will you spare your sister just a few moments? I want to talk with her."
"Dead," Lon answered. "In hell, maybe. I don't know. Shut up." "But you just said that you expected to meet him here to-night," I challenged. "Oh, shut up, can't you," was Lon's reply, in the same cautious undertone.
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