“She is the one who ought to be hanged!” said the captain, speaking very warmly.  “As for Miss Olive, she ought to have a monument set up for her.  I’d do it myself if I had the money.”

Old Jane answered not, but in her heart she said:  “But she killed a man!  It is truly dreadful!”

By nightfall of that day the two hotels of Glenford were crowded, the visitors being generally connected with newspapers.  On the next day there was a great deal of travel on the turnpike, and old Jane was kept very busy, the captain having resigned the entire business of toll-taking to her.  Everybody stopped, asked questions, and requested to see the captain; and many drove through and came back again, hoping to have better luck next time.  But their luck was always bad; old Jane would say nothing; and the captain and Olive were not to be seen.  The gate to the little front garden was locked, and there was no passing through the tollhouse.  To keep people from getting over the fence a bulldog, which the captain kept at the barn, was turned loose in the yard.

There were men with cameras who got into the field opposite the toll-gate, and who took views from up and down the road, but their work could not be prevented, and Olive and her uncle kept strictly indoors.

It was on the afternoon of the second day of siege that the captain, from an upper window, discovered a camera on three legs standing outside of his grounds at a short distance from the house.  A man was taking sight at something at the back of the house.  Softly the captain slipped down into the back yard, and looking up he saw Olive sitting at a window, reading.

With five steps the captain went into the house and then reappeared at the back door with a musket in his hand.  The man had stepped to his pack at a little distance to get a plate.  The captain raised his musket to his shoulder; Olive sprang to her feet at the sound of the report; old Jane in the tollhouse screamed; and the camera flew into splinters.

After this there were no further attempts to take pictures of the inmates of the house at the toll-gate.

After two days of siege the newspaper reporters and the photographers left Glenford.  They could not afford to waste any more time.  But they carried away with them a great many stories about the captain and his erratic niece, mostly gleaned from a very respectable elderly lady of the town by the name of Port.

CHAPTER XXXIII

Dick Lancaster does not Write.

On the third morning after their arrival at the toll-gate the captain and Olive ventured upon a little walk over the farm.  It was very hard upon both of them to be shut up in the house so long.  They saw no reporters, nor were there any men with cameras, but the scenery was not pleasant, nor was the air particularly exhilarating.  They were not happy; they felt alone, as if they were in a strange place.  Some of the captain’s friends in the town came to the toll-gate, but there were not many, and Olive saw none of them.  The whole situation reminded the girl of the death of her mother.