Chapter XIV: By the Light of the Moon

Ike M'Graw, the timber cruiser, was an excellent weather prophet; and this was proved to be a fact before all of those at Red Deer Lodge had gone to bed on this first night.

Neale O'Neil chanced to raise the shade of one of the windows in the boys' room before undressing, and exclaimed to Luke:

"Hey! who said it snowed? Look at that moon up there!"

Luke Shepard joined him and looked out, too, at the rather misty orb of night that peered through the breaking clouds. But little snow had fallen during the evening.

"Going to be a good day, just as that old codger said it would," agreed Luke. "My, how white everything is--really, silver! And a lonely place, isn't it?"

"You said it," agreed Neale. He was feeling in his pockets, and suddenly added: "Crackey! I've lost my knife."

"You had it down there peeling apples for the girls," said Luke, who was beginning to undress.

Sammy was already in bed and sound asleep. Neale started for the door.

"I don't want to lose that knife," he said. "I am going to run down and get it."

The serving people had gone to bed, but there were dim lights on the gallery and one below in the big hall. Neale ran lightly down the carpeted stairs on his side of the house. The light was so dim that he fumbled around a good while hunting for the missing knife.

Suddenly something clattered about his ears--some missiles that came from above, but were not much heavier than snowflakes, it would seem. Neale jumped, and then stared around.

He could not see a thing moving or hear anything. Where the white objects had come from he could not understand. Finally he found one that had rolled on the floor.

"Popcorn! Say! it's not snowing popcorn in here--not by any natural means," the boy told himself, immediately suspicious.

Suddenly he spied his knife, and he pocketed that. As he did so there came another baptism of popcorn. He dropped down below the edge of a table which stood in the middle of the room under the chandelier. All the light came from above, and there was not much of that; so it was dark under the table.

He heard a faint giggle. "Ah-ha!" thought Neale. "I smell a mouse! That is a girl's giggle."

He saw that the way to the foot of the stairs that were nearest the girls' rooms, was quite dark. He ran out from under the table, but softly and on his hands and knees, and reached the stairway without making a sound.

The popcorn rattled again upon the table top, and once more he heard the giggle. He wormed his way up the stairs in the shadow and reached the gallery. Here a jet of gas from the side wall gave some light. He saw the robed figure hanging over the bannister and in the act of throwing another handful of popcorn at the spot where the boy was supposed to be crouching.

Neale O'Neil crept forward from the top of the stairs, still on his hands and knees. He was likewise in the shadow, although he could see the figure ahead of him plainly.

"Meow!" crooned the boy, imitating a cat with remarkable ingenuity. "Meow!"

"Oh, mercy!" hissed a startled voice.

"Ma-ro-o-ow!" urged Neale O'Neil, repeating his feline success.

"Mercy!" ejaculated the whisperer. "That's a strange cat."

"Ma-row-ro-o-ow!" continued Neale, with a lingering wail.

"Here, kitty! kitty! kitty!" murmured the girl crouching by the bannister. "Oh, where are you? Poor kitty!"

Immediately Neale changed his tone and produced a growl that not only sounded savage but seemed so near that the startled girl jumped up with a cry:

"Oh! Oh! Neale!"

"Ma-row-ro-o-ow! Ssst!" continued what purported to be a cat, and one that was very much annoyed.

"Oh! _Oh!_ OH!" shrieked Agnes, springing up and leaning over the railing. "Neale! Come quick!"

And there Neale was right beside her! He appeared so suddenly that she would have shrieked again, and perhaps brought half the household to the spot, had not the boy grabbed her quickly and placed a hand over her mouth, stifling the cry about to burst forth.

"Hush!" he commanded. "Want to get Mrs. Mac or Mr. Howbridge out here to see what is the matter?"

"Oh, Neale!" sputtered Agnes. "I thought you were a cat."

"And I thought you were a hailstorm of popcorn."

"You horrid boy! To scare me so!"

"You horrid girl! To shower me with popcorn!"

"I don't care--"

"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.