“Yep.”

“Are ye goin’ to let me go with him?”

“Nope.”

“Will ye swear, Lem, that when he comes to the hut ye’ll say that he can’t have me?”

Lem’s jaw dropped, and he uttered a throat sound, guttural and rough.

“Do ye mean, Flea, that ye’d rather come to the scow than go with the young, good-lookin’ cuss?”

“Yes, that’s what I mean; and Pappy Lon says he’s comin’.”

Lem made a spring toward her.

“Don’t touch me now!” she cried, shuddering.  “Don’t—­yet!  I’m comin’ back by and by.”

Before he could place his hands upon her, Fledra had gone down the plank.  From the small boat-window Lem could discern the little figure flitting among the hut bushes; in another moment she had crawled through the open window into Lon’s hut.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

When Everett arrived in Ithaca he made arrangements with the conductor of the local train running to Geneva to have it slow down at Sherwoods Lane.

A sudden jerk of the engine as it halted at the path that led to Lon’s hut brought Brimbecomb to his feet, and he hurried from the car with muttered thanks and a substantial consideration to the conductor.  While the train rumbled away in the distance, he stood in the shadow of a large pine tree by the track and looked about to get his bearings.  Suddenly he heard not far from him the faint, weird cry of an owl.  Instantly he was on the alert; for there was something familiar in the melancholy sound.  It took him back to a night in Tarrytown, when he had cast a woman into the cemetery, and he remembered that she had said she lived in Ithaca.  Superstition sent him deeper into the shadow for a moment; but he recovered himself and, shaking his shoulders, went his way toward the lake with a muttered oath.

So dense was the woodland bordering the path, and so dark was the shadow of the bushes in the twilight, that he had almost to feel his way down the dark lane.  He had not proceeded more than fifty yards when he saw a light gleaming through the underbrush from the opposite side of the gulch that ran parallel with the narrow road.  He came to a path that branched in the direction of the light, and picked his way along it.  Soon he crossed a primitive bridge and, climbing a little incline, paused before a dilapidated shanty.  He knocked peremptorily on the door; but only a droning voice humming a monotonous tune made answer.  Again he knocked, this time harder.  The singing ceased, and after a shuffling of feet the door opened.

Standing before him, her hair bedraggled as it had been the first time he saw her, was the woman who had claimed to be his mother, the woman he had thrown into Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.  Brimbecomb, in his astonishment, almost fell back into the gulch.  But he quickly gathered his scattered wits and, forcing a face of effrontery, doffed his hat.