Harm—personal, bodily harm. To whom? To her friend of the Rock—Barney Loutrelle, Dick, who would take things over. She turned on her light and dropped into a chair. She was accusing her grandfather of directing a crime; and her grandfather did not direct crimes. Oh, other people had said so; but they had been demagogues, slanderers; no one with any sense believed them. Yet, yet men did direct crimes; some one did; crimes were committed. But not by her grandfather; no!
She heard a whine at her door and the pat of a dog's paw at the panel and, opening the door, she let in Lad and stroked his head. Something matted the white hair under his neck,—something which seemed to have frozen and dried there.
When she realized this was blood, she set her fingers to feeling for a cut from which it might have flowed; and when she could find no wound, she clung to Lad, demanding of him:
"It was the fox, Lad! You caught the fox! Lad, tell me—tell me, you caught the fox!"
But her own terrors denied her; her own terrors snatched at her heart and overwhelmed her struggles for calm thought. The dried, brown mat in the dog's hair was not about his jaws where it must have been had he caught and killed the fox; it was under his neck where it would have come if Lad had sniffed over some one who lay bleeding.
That deed, secret and violent, which Kincheloe and her grandfather had considered,—was it already done? What sort of deed?
"Ah, j'y étais mousquetaire!"
The voice, Barney Loutrelle's voice, seemed to float
