"Yes; we'll do that. In the meanwhile, I am going to investigate that old ark myself. There's something about, something concealed in it, that he wants to get. When I took him in there the day after he came, he couldn't keep his eyes off it. If you can get Nance out of the way tomorrow afternoon, I'll send the Marquis off with Jesse for that long-talked-of visit to Mondy Port; and I'll give Jesse instructions not to get him back before dark. And while they are away, I'll investigate the Oak Parlour myself. Can you get Nance off?"
"I might ask her to go and look over the Red Farm with me. She might like the walk through the woods. I could easily manage to be away for three or four hours."
"Good! You may think it odd, Tom, that I should seem to distrust Nance. I don't distrust her, but there has always been a mystery about her. Mother knows a good deal more than she has even been willing to tell to me, or even to Nance, I guess. I know nothing except that she is of French extraction, and I have sometimes wondered since she has been so often with the old Marquis this winter, if he didn't know something about her. It flashed over me to-night as I saw them in that deserted room. Whatever is a-foot, I am going to get at the bottom of it. We will watch again to-morrow night. I heard him whisper as he left Nance, 'More success next time!' This sort of thing may have been going on for a month."
They undressed again, and Dan put his gun away in his bureau. "We may have use for that yet, Tommy," he said. "It would do me good, after what I have seen to-night, to put a bit of lead into the Marquis de Boisdhyver as a memento of his so delightful sojourn at _L'Auberge au Chene Rouge_."
The two young men felt self-conscious and ill-at-ease the next morning at the breakfast table, but apparently their embarrassment was neither shared nor observed. Mrs. Frost had kept her room, but Nancy and the Marquis were in their accustomed places; the old gentleman, chattering away in a fashion that demanded few answers and no attention; Nancy, speaking only to ask necessary questions as to their wants at table and meeting the occasional glances of Dan and Tom without suspicion. Tom could scarcely realize in that bright morning light, that only seven or eight hours earlier he and his friend had spied upon their companions prowling about in the abandoned wing of the inn.