Episode Twelve Her Highness Intervenes Chapter 1

Toward noon the wind changed, and about one o'clock it began to snow.

Eve, exhausted, lay on the sofa in her bedroom. Her step-father lay on a table in the dance hall below, covered by a sheet from his own bed. And beside him sat Trooper Stormont, waiting.

It was snowing heavily when Mr. Lyken, the little undertaker from Ghost Lake, arrived with several assistants, a casket, and what he called "swell trimmings."

Long ago Mike Clinch had selected his own mortuary site and had driven a section of iron pipe into the ground on a ferny knoll overlooking Star Pond. In explanation he grimly remarked to Eve that after death he preferred to be planted where he could see that Old Harrod's ghost didn't trespass.

Here two of Mr. Lyken's able assistants dug a grave while the digging was still good; for it Mike Clinch was to lie underground that season there might be need of haste -- no weather prophet ever having successfully forecast Adirondack weather.

Eve, exhausted by shock an a sleepless night, was spared the more harrowing details of the coroner's visit and the subsequent jaunty activities of Mr. Lyken and his efficient assistants.

She had managed to dress herself in a black wool gown, intending to watch by Mike, but Stormont's blunt authority prevailed and she lay down for an hour's rest.

The hour lengthened into many hours; the girl slept heavily on her sofa under blankets laid over her by Stormont.