Sahwah was more quiet, and there was a sober look in her eyes.  Her mind was filled with perplexity, and her heart with foreboding, and the cause was Veronica.  The mystery that seemed to be hovering over her head had not been dispelled as the days went on; on the contrary, it had been deepened.  Several more times Sahwah had seen her slipping out of the house at dead of night and an incident had occurred several days before which Sahwah was not able to put out of her mind.

Sahwah was behind the big carved settle in the hall, fishing for a bead that had rolled underneath, when the telephone rang.  The telephone was in the hall, at the other end near the dining-room door.  Sahwah sighed, thinking she would have to crawl out and answer it, because Nyoda and the girls were all out in the yard working among the vegetables, but just then she heard Veronica answer the call, and went on placidly feeling for her bead.  Near to the telephone as she was, she could not help hearing every word Veronica said.

Instead of the “Mrs. Sheridan is in the garden, I will call her,” that Sahwah had expected to hear.  Veronica had answered, “This is Veronica talking.  Yes, I can.  I will come immediately.  The coast is clear.  No one is in the house just now and I can slip away without rousing any suspicions.”

Then Sahwah heard her hang up the receiver and pass out of the hall.  Sahwah sat up quickly and bumped her head sharply on the back of the settle.  Then, as the significance of the conversation she had just overheard sank into her mind she remembered Veronica’s mysterious nocturnal errands, and it came to her in a startled flash that Veronica was carrying on something which was a secret from the others—­was stealing away from the house to meet someone.  She sprang out from behind the settle, not knowing what she intended to do, but bent on seeing where Veronica went.

The hall was empty; Veronica was not there.  Sahwah darted to the front door, expecting to see Veronica going down the walk to the street, but there was no sign of her.  The street lay clear in the sunshine for its whole length down the hill; there was not a soul in it.  Veronica could not have gone out the front way.  Neither could she have gone out the back way, because the vegetable garden came up close to the kitchen door, and there Nyoda and the Winnebagos, including Agony and Oh-Pshaw, were working.  Veronica must still be in the house.  Sahwah went back in and looked through all the rooms for her, upstairs and down, but she was nowhere to be found.

Sahwah sat down on the lowest step of the stairway and thought, and thought, and a great dread came over her and would not be beaten back, a dread of something nameless and undefined, a sinister something that hovered over her with great dark wings, like the Thunder Bird.  In an agony of love and sorrow Sahwah faced the fact which her prophetic soul, in its new insight, told her, even while her loyal heart tried to stop the whisper with a resolute hand.