“'Tisn't anything we talk about much, Nan. Who told you?”
“Oh, it's been hinted to me by various people,” said Nan, slowly. “But I saw Injun Pete, Tom.”
“When? He hasn't been to Pine Camp since you came.”
Nan told her cousin of her adventure in the hollow near Blackton's lumber camp. Tom was much excited by that.
“Gracious me, Nan! But you are a plucky girl. Wait till Rafe hears about it. And marm and dad will praise you for being so level-headed today. Aren't many girls like you, Nan, I bet!”
“Nor boys like you, Tom,” returned the girl, shyly. “How brave you were, staying to pull that old wagon-wheel out of the fire.”
“Ugh!” growled Tom. “A fat time I'd have had there if it hadn't been for you helping me out of the oven. Cracky! I thought I was going to have my leg burned to a cinder.
“That would have been terrible!” shuddered Nan. “What would poor Aunt Kate have said?”
“We can't tell her anything about it,” Tom hastened to say. “You see, my two older brothers, Jimmy and Alfred, were asleep in the garret of our house at Pale Lick, and marm thought they'd got out. It wasn't until afterward that she learned they'd been burned up with the house. She's never got over it.”
“I shouldn't think she would,” sighed Nan.
“And you see she's awfully afraid of fire, even now,” said Tom.
They rattled on over the logs of the road; here and there they came to bad places, where the water had not gone down; and the horses were very careful in putting their hoofs down upon the shaking logs. However, it was not much over an hour after leaving the island that they spied the lights of Pine Camp from the top of the easy rise leading out of the tamarack swamp.
They met Rafe with a lantern half way down the hill. Uncle Henry was away and Aunt Kate had sent Rafe out to look for Nan, although she supposed that the girl had remained at the Vanderwillers' until the rain was over, and that Toby would bring her home.
There was but one other incident of note before the three of them reached the rambling house Uncle Henry had built on the outskirts of Pine Camp. As they turned off the swamp road through the lane that ran past the Llewellen cottage, Rafe suddenly threw the ray of his lantern into a hollow tree beside the roadway. A small figure was there, and it darted back out of sight.