But he had yielded long enough to vain speculations--there were things to be done. Whether Portunus were the ghost of Diggory Carp or merely a doited old weaver, he evidently knew something that he wanted to communicate--and it was connected with the orchard herm. Of course, it might have nothing whatever to do with the murder of the late farmer Gibberty, but with the memory of the embroidered slipper fresh in his mind, Master Nathaniel felt it would be rank folly to neglect a possible clue. He went over in his mind all the old man's words. "Dig, dig," ... that word had been the ever recurring burden. Then he had a sudden flash of inspiration--why should not the word be taken in its primary meaning? Why, instead of the first syllable of Diggory Carp, should it not be merely and order to dig ... with a spade or a shovel? In that case it was clear that the place to dig in was under the herm. And he decided that he would do so as soon as an opportunity presented itself. CHAPTER XXIII THE NORTHERN FIRE-BOX AND DEAD MEN'S TALES That night Hazel could not get to sleep. Perhaps this was due to having noticed something that afternoon that made her vaguely uneasy. The evenings were beginning to be chilly, and, shortly before supper, she had gone up to Master Nathaniel's room to light his fire. She found the widow and one of the maidservants there before her, and, to her surprise, they had brought down from the attic an old charcoal stove that had lain there unused for years, for Dorimare was a land of open fires, and stoves were practically unknown. The widow had brought the stove to the farm on her marriage, for, on her mother's side, she had belonged to a race from the far North. On Hazel's look of surprise, she had said casually, "The logs are dampish today, and I thought this would make our guest cozier." Now Hazel knew that the wood was not in the least damp; how could it be, as it had not rained for days? But that this should have made her uneasy was a sign of her deep instinctive distrust of her grandfather's widow. Perhaps the strongest instinct in Hazel was that of hospitality--that all should be well, physically and morally, with the guests under the roof that she never forgot was hers, was a need in her much more pressing than any welfare of her own. Meanwhile, Master Nathaniel, somewhat puzzled by the outlandish apparatus that was warming his room, had got into bed. He did not immediately put out his candle; he wished to think. For being much given to reverie, when he wanted to follow the sterner path of consecutive thought, he liked to have some tangible object on which to focus his eye, a visible goal, as it were, to keep his feet from straying down the shadowy paths that he so much preferred.