Page:Alice Stuyvesant - The Vanity Box.djvu/207

 like, when we get back, I'll sketch you a picture of the gnome at the bottom of the rabbit-hole, opening the treasure-chest; only you must leave me alone in my room while I do it. I never could make pictures with any one watching me."

So they walked down to the farmhouse, the man and the child, with Jacky trotting at their heels or darting ahead on some quest or other; and Gaylor told Poppet the best story he had invented yet, which was saying a good deal, as he had a magnificent talent in verbal fiction. But all the time he was thinking of what he had found, and congratulating himself on the success of his plans. He had remembered the fox-terrier, and the innocent tales of its cleverness in finding rabbit holes, told by the little girl during their first conversation together; and it was the recollection of that childish boasting which had given him the idea of lodging at the Home Farm. Known, as he already was in the neighbourhood, a marked man since his evidence given at the inquest, he could not have wandered freely about the woods with a strange dog, had he continued to stop at the inn in his own character, as Gaylor, the man from Scotland Yard. He would have been followed and watched by curious people, and any discovery he might have made would have been known to others almost as soon as to himself. Or, if he had adopted some disguise, his actions as a stranger would have been regarded with suspicion.