The Corner House Girls Snowbound Part 23

"Neither do I."

Agnes began to giggle. "What were you doing down there?" she asked.

"I was looking for my pocketknife. Wouldn't lose it for a farm Down East with a pig on it!" declared the boy. "What are you doing out here?"

"I went to Mrs. Mac's room to give her her nightcap. It was in my bag.

Oh, Neale! do you suppose it will be clear by morning, as that funny old man says?"

"It's clear now."

"You don't mean it?"

"Come along here to the window and look for yourself," the boy said, and led her toward the front of the house along the gallery.

There was a broad and deep-silled window over the front door of the Lodge. Neale drew back the hangings. They could see out into the night which was now all black and silver.

The forest that edged the clearing in which stood the Lodge was as black as ever an evergreen forest could be. The tops of the trees were silvered by the moonbeams, but the shadows at the foot of the trees were like ink.

In the open the new-fallen snow glittered as though the moonlight fell on precious stones. It was so beautiful a scene that for a moment Agnes could only grip Neale O'Neil's arm and utter an ecstatic sigh.

"Scrumptious, isn't it?" said the boy, understanding her mood.

"Lovely!" sighed Agnes. "Ruth and Cecile ought to see this."

"Hold on!" warned the boy. "Get them out here and we'll both be sent to bed in a hurry. Ruth's got her bossing clothes on--has had 'em on ever since we left Milton."

"Te-he!" giggled Agnes suddenly. "She feels her responsibility."

"Guess she does," chuckled Neale. "But there's no need to add to her troubles. Believe me! the less I am bossed around by her the better I like it."

"Oh, Neale," said Agnes, "she only does it for your good."

"Don't you fret," returned the boy, with a sniff. "I can get along without Ruth or anybody else worrying about whether I'm good, or not.

Believe me!"

"Oh!" squealed Agnes suddenly. "What's that?"

"Huh! Seen a rat? Scared to death?" scoffed Neale O'Neil.

"Look at that thing out there! It's no rat," declared the girl eagerly.

Neale then looked in the direction she pointed. Not twenty yards from the house, and sitting on its haunches in the snow, was an object that at first Neale thought was a dog. The shadow it cast upon the moon-lit snow showed pointed ears, however, and a bushy tail.

"Crackey, Aggie!" gasped Neale, "that's a fox."

"A fox? Right here near the house? Just like that?" gasped the girl.

"Why--why, he must be wild!"

"Crackey!" returned Neale, smothering his laughter, "you didn't suppose he was tame, did you?"

"But--but," stammered the girl, "if a wild fox comes so near the house, one of those dreadful lynxes may come--or a bear. I never! Why, we might be besieged by wolves and bears and wildcats. Did you ever?"

"No, I never was," scoffed Neale. "Not yet. But, really, I am willing to be. I'll try anything--once."

"I guess you wouldn't be so smart, young man, if the animals really did come here and serenade us. Why--"

"Listen! That fellow is serenading us now," declared Neale, much amused.

The sharp, shrill yap of the fox reached their ears. Then, from the rear of the house where Tom Jonah was confined in the back kitchen, the roar of the old dog's bark answered the fox's yapping.

And then from somewhere--was it from above and inside the house, or outside and in the black woods?--there sounded a sharp explosion.

Agnes flashed a questioning glance at Neale; but the boy pointed, crying:

"Quick! Look! The fox!"

The little animal with the bushy tail that had raised its pointed nose to yap mournfully at the moon, had suddenly sprung straight up into the air. It cleared the snow at least four feet. One convulsive wriggle it gave with its whole body, and fell back, a black heap, on the snow.

"Oh, Neale! what happened to it?" gasped Agnes, amazed.

"Shot," said the youth, a curious note in his voice.

"Oh, who shot it?"

"Ask me an easier one."

"Why--what--I think that was sort of cruel, after all," sighed the girl. "He wasn't really doing any harm."

"I thought you were afraid he might eat us all up," said Neale, dropping the curtain which he had been holding back, and turning away from the window.

"Oh--but--I am serious now," she said. "Who do you suppose shot him?"

"I could not say."

"That old woodsman, perhaps? There is none of our party out there with a gun, of course. Oh, dear! I hope I don't dream of it. I don't like to see things killed."

But the thought of dreaming about seeing the fox shot did not trouble Neale O'Neil when he parted with Agnes and went back to his room. Nor was it anything about the death of the creature that absorbed his attention.

It was who the huntsman was and from where the shot was fired that puzzled Neale O 'Neil. Had the shot been made from outside or inside the house?

For it seemed to the boy that the explosion had been above their heads; and he chanced to know that none of the party from Milton--not even the servants--were quartered on the third floor of Red Deer Lodge.

Who, then, could be up there shooting out of one of the small windows at the yapping fox? He said nothing about this to Agnes; but he determined to make inquiry regarding it the first thing in the morning.

CHAPTER XV

A VARIETY OF HAPPENINGS