She started to run. Howell glanced back at the bobbing flashlight for a moment, then turned to follow. At that moment, there was a high-pitched snarl, and a small ball of fur hit him just below the knee and bounced off. Howell ran, but this time, his route was more directly toward where the boat lay, and there was brush to slow him down. It didn’t slow down Duchess.

The little dog was all over him as he moved, going for his throat. Fortunately, being a short dog, it couldn’t reach much above his ankles. Still, it was a damned nuisance. It boiled around his feet, tripping him, hanging onto his trousers when it could, slowing him all the way. Once, he stopped and threatened it with the flashlight, hoping to scare it away. It wouldn’t scare, and he couldn’t bring himself to hit it. It was Yorkshire Terrier. It was too cute.

Finally, he broke out of the trees at a point where he had estimated the boat would be. Neither the boat nor Scotty was there. It must be further up toward the town, he thought, and anyway, he didn’t want to go back toward Sutherland’s. He could hear Alfred calling the dog again.

Then he saw the boat, and he saw Scotty. The boat had been another hundred yards along the shore toward the town, but now it was a good thirty yards offshore, and drifting, and Scotty was in the water, half that distance from the shore, making for the boat. He began to run down the shore, the dog still, amazingly, with him every step of the way. At the closest point to the boat, he turned and hit the water running.

Scotty was three quarters of the way to the boat, now, and up to her chest in the cold water. But then, she was short and short-legged.

Howell yanked the maps out of his waistband and held them above his head as he plowed through the deepening water. Dutchess stood at the water’s edge, yapping still.

When Howell made the boat, Scotty was clinging to it, apparently too exhausted to climb aboard. Howell, who was swimming, now, as best he could with the handful of maps held out of the water, tossed them into the front seat, held onto the side of the boat with one hand, and with the other, grabbed Scotty by the seat of her pants and heaved. That got all but her legs into the boat, and Howell, with his last strength, gave a kick and hoisted himself in with her.

They lay in the bottom of the boat, gasping for air, too exhausted to move. Perhaps a minute later, Alfred’s voice, borne on the breeze, drifted out to them.

“Duchess, what’s the matter with you? Don’t you know how to mind anymore? You been after another rabbit? I keep telling you them rabbits bigger than you, they going to eat you up one of these days. Come here to me! What you barking at?” There was a silence. “Oh, somebody’s boat done gone adrift, huh? Well, it ain’t none of your business and ain’t none of mine, either. Come here to me.” Then, still talking to the Yorkie, his voice faded into the distance.

“You incredible jerk,” Howell wheezed, when he had a little of his breath back. He still could not move, and they lay tangled together in a heap. “When I get my health back, I’m gonna strangle you, if you aren’t already dead.” There was no response. “Scotty? You hear that? I’m going to strangle you with my bare hands.” Nothing. She was lying awfully still, he thought. He struggled up onto an elbow. “Scotty?” He wrestled himself into a sitting position. Over the gunwales of the boat, he could see Alfred’s flashlight moving jerkily toward the house, nearly there.

He got Scotty by the shoulders and shifted her limp form until her head was in his lap. He brushed the wet hair away from her face and felt for a pulse at her throat. “Say something, for Christ’s sake!”

“I can’t,” she said, suddenly. “You’ll strangle me.” Then she began to laugh. “Jesus, you should have seen yourself,” she managed to say. “Some cat burglar you are – not even a Doberman, either, a Yorkshire terrier! I couldn’t believe it!”

He laughed, in spite of himself, at the thought of the determined little dog. “Well, I’ll tell you this, sweetheart, it was the biggest fucking Yorkshire terrier I ever saw. Must’ve been a four pounder!”

It was another ten minutes before they could stop laughing enough to get the boat started.

They huddled in front of a roaring fire, naked, swathed in blankets, sipping hot coffee heavily laced with brandy.

“We did it,” Scotty said, elatedly.

“Your first illegal entry?”

“Yep. It was terrific.”

“You’re crazy. We damn near got caught, we damn near drowned, and it was terrific?”

“Well, we got it, didn’t we?”

“Yep, we got it.”

“What did we get?”

“The maps, dummy.”

“I know that, but what’s in the maps?”

“Confirmation of a theory of mine, maybe.”

“Look, you’re acting as though you’ve taken me into your confidence, but I don’t have a clue to what’s going on here.”

“Well, something is wrong around here, and somebody’s trying to put it right. Whoever it is, is using me to do it. I think.”

“Okay, what’s wrong?”

“I told you about the O’Coineen family, the story that Enda McCauliffe told me. Rabbit, remember?”

“Yes, I remember. They were the holdouts when Eric Sutherland was buying the land to build the dam.”

“Then they disappeared, after Eric Sutherland says they agreed to sell. His story was that he went out to their place, got the deal signed, then put the money in their bank account.”

“And McCauliffe says it’s still there.”

“Right. Uncollected. Building up interest for twenty-odd years. Then I turn up, we meet these people at dinner, we have this little seance, and somebody named Rabbit, which is English for the Irish name, O’Coineen, turns up and says howdy.”

“To me.”

“Yes, but mostly, I think, to me.”

“Whaddaya mean, you? It was me, the table liked, remember?”

“Well, I don’t exactly understand this, myself, but Mama Kelly thinks it was me.”

Scotty shifted her weight, tugged on the blanket and looked thoughtful. “Now, let me see if I’ve got this,” she said. “You think Eric Sutherland has knocked off the O’Coineens for their land to build the lake, and now somebody from the spirit world has tapped you on the shoulder and whispered in your shell-like ear that you’re supposed to bring him to justice.”

Howell was quiet for a moment. “Maybe.

“You think the house we saw is real, then?

“I don’t know, but it might be best if it were, because that would put us firmly back on this earth.”

“And if it’s not real?”

“That would be nearly as good, because I’d know I was making the whole thing up in my mind and, somehow, communicating it to you, and I could spend some time in a rubber room and, maybe, be all right again.”

Scotty was shaking her head. “You’re losing me. If it’s real, everything’s okay; if it’s not real, everything’s okay…”

Howell held up a restraining hand. “What if it used to be real, but isn’t anymore?”

“Huh?”

“That’s what I hope the maps are going to tell us. We know the O’Coineen place is under the lake, but we don’t know where under the lake.” He went to the maps on the desk and unfolded them. “Come over here.”

Scotty went to the desk.

Howell spread out a map. “This was made in 1969. Now look here, this is where we are now, at this moment. Crossroads, road to the lake, cabin.” He pointed to a lakeside lot and a house marked, “Denham White Property.”

“Right.”

Howell unfolded the other map. “Now this is the 1936 map, covering, according to the coordinates, exactly the same area in the same scale.” He switched on the word processor and turned the brightness control on the monitor all the way up, then placed the newer map on top of the older one and spread them across the screen, using it as a light box. “Now, what we have is the new map superimposed on the old one…”