“If it hadn’t been for that dumb creature, Joseph Stagg,” said Aunty Rose, still quite shaken over the incident, “we wouldn’t maybe have our little girl unhurt. If Timothy tells the truth——” “I guess he tells the truth, all right,” snorted Mr. Stagg. “He don’t know enough to tell anything but truth. Howsomever, if he’d stopped his team, he could have licked that old lynx to a fare-ye-well. I wouldn’t trust Hannah’s Car’lyn with him again—not even to go to church.” “Why, Uncle Joe,” said Carolyn May, “you can’t really blame Mr. Timothy for being scared at that awful wildcat. I was scared myself.” CHAPTER XX—THE SPRING FRESHET Since Joseph Stagg had listened to the rambling tale of the sailor regarding the sinking of the _Dunraven_, he had borne the fate of his sister and her husband much in mind. He had come no nearer to deciding what to do with the apartment in New York and its furnishings. Carolyn May had prattled so much about her home that Mr. Stagg felt as though he knew each room and each piece of furniture. And, should he go down to New York and make arrangements to have his sister’s possessions taken to an auction room, he would feel on entering the flat as though the ghosts of Carolyn May’s parents would meet him there. Mr. Price had written him twice about the place. The second time he had found a tenant willing to sublet the furnished apartment. It would have made a little income for Carolyn May, but Mr. Stagg could not bring himself to sign the lease. The lawyer had not written since. After listening to Benjamin Hardy’s story, the hardware dealer felt less inclined than before to close up the affairs of Carolyn May’s small “estate.” Not that he for one moment believed that there was a possibility of Hannah and her husband being alive. Five months had passed. In these days of wireless telegraph and fast sea traffic such a thing could not be possible. The imagination of the practical hardware merchant could not visualise it. Had the purser’s boat, in which the old sailor declared the Camerons were, been picked up by one of the Turkish ships, as the other refugees from the _Dunraven_ had been rescued by the French vessel, surely news of the fact would long since have reached the papers, even had circumstances kept Mr. and Mrs. Cameron from returning home. The Mediterranean is not the South Seas. A steam vessel could reach New York from the spot where the _Dunraven_ had sunk in a week. No, Mr. Stagg held no shred of belief that Hannah and her husband were not drowned. Carolyn May did not speak of the tragedy; yet it was continually in the child’s mind. Her conversation with the sailor regarding the sufferings of drowning people only touched a single phase of the little girl’s trouble.