Page:The Indian Drum (1917 original).pdf/192

176 had come there often; Wassaquam did not know why. Wassaquam had sent the man away, and I ran out after him; but I could not find him."

He stopped an instant, studying her. "That was not the first man who came to the house," he went on quickly, as she was about to speak. "I found a man in Mr. Corvet's house the first night that I spent there. Wassaquam was away, you remember, and I was alone in the house."

"A man there in the house?" she repeated.

"He wasn't there when I entered the house—at least I don't think he was. I heard him below, after I had gone up-stairs. I came down then and saw him. He was going through Mr. Corvet's things—not the silver and all that, but through his desks and files and cases. He was looking for something—something which he seemed to want very much; when I interfered, it greatly excited him."

They had turned back from the bridge and were returning along the way that they had come; but now she stopped and looked up at him.

"What happened when you 'interfered'?"

"A queer thing."

"What?"

"I frightened him."

"Frightened him?" She had appreciated in his tone more significance than the casual meaning of the words.

"He thought I was a ghost."

"A ghost. Whose ghost?"

He shrugged. "I don't know; some one whom he seemed to have known pretty well—and whom Mr. Corvet knew, he thought."