One thing still so puzzled him that his baffled thoughts came back to it again and again. Was it the two Edmonds who had occupied the Pirate’s shack yesterday, that quiet Sunday when he and Oscar had sat talking so long before the cottage door? Was it the smoke from their fire that he had seen rising from the chimney?
After long reflection, during which his thoughts began to wander sleepily here and there and had to be brought back again with a jerk, he began to be certain that it could not have been the two Edmonds brothers. He himself had seen three men walk across the clearing and from the letter he could make sure that Dick and his brother had been alone. Besides, the distance was not so great that he could not have made out so big a creature as Nicholas, had the dog been with them. Evidently the pirates had come and gone before the storm—but why? Evidently the Edmonds, after the wind and rain had come on in such fierceness, had taken refuge there—but how did they dare? And, evidently, he was growing very sleepy now, but the force of this new thought served to rouse him completely again, evidently the pirates would be returning—and when?
The night wore to a slow end, and day broke at last. With the first gray light there came a change in his patient, the fever was succeeded by chills and shivering and for an hour Hugh was doing his utmost with hot blankets and warming drinks. Gradually the trembling stopped and John Edmonds, opening his eyes, gave Hugh a look of bewildered amazement and stared about him as though the cabin and the boy were both totally unfamiliar. It was not until his eyes fell upon Nicholas that he seemed satisfied and dropped off to sleep again. It was broad daylight now and time for Hugh to realize that he was exceedingly hungry. He fell to examining his own stores, Edmonds’ and Half-Breed Jake’s, to see what the combined larder afforded. There was not much in his pack, for he had not thought he would be very long away from the cottage; there was nothing in Edmonds’, but quite a supply of flour and bacon in Jake’s store room.
“I don’t care to use anything that belongs to that gang unless I have to,” he thought. “It was probably all stolen in the first place.”