"Don't you worry, dear. He's all right. It isn't your fault, dear. They wouldn't come on a night like this."

But Helen drew away and went to the window, flattening her arm against the pane, her forehead pressed against her arm. She had let him go; she had let him go alone. She had forgotten the danger that always beset him. She had been so crazy, she had seen nothing, thought of nothing.

She had let him go into that, and into the storm, alone. Who knew better than she how cruel they were? She had seen the fire leap from the white blossom and heard the ball whistle, the ball they had meant for his heart, that good, great heart. She had run to him the night before--why had she let him go into the unknown and the storm to-night? But how could she have stopped him? How could she have kept him, after what he had said? She peered into the night through distorting tears.

The wind had gone down a little, but only a little, and the electrical flashes danced all around the horizon in magnificent display, sometimes far away, sometimes dazingly near, the darkness trebly deep between the intervals when the long sweep of flat lands lay in dazzling clearness, clean-cut in the washed air to the finest detail of stricken field and heaving woodland. A staggering flame clove earth and sky; sheets of light came following it, and a frightful uproar shook the house and rattled the cas.e.m.e.nts, but over the crash of thunder Minnie heard her friend's loud scream and saw her spring back from the window with both hands, palm outward, pressed to her face. She leaped to her and threw her arms about her.

"What is it?"

"Look!" Helen dragged her to the window. "At the next flash--the fence beyond the meadow----"

"What was it? What was it like?" The lightning flashed incessantly.

Helen tried to point; her hand only jerked from side to side.

"_Look_!" she cried.

"I see nothing but the lightning," Minnie answered, breathlessly.

"Oh, the _fence_! The fence--and in the field!"

"_Helen_! What was it _like_?"

"Ah-ah!" she panted, "a long line of white--horrible white----"

"What _like_?" Minnie turned from the window and caught the other's wrist in a fluttering clasp.

"Minnie, Minnie! Like long white gowns and cowls crossing the fence."

Helen released her wrist, and put both hands on Minnie's cheeks, forcing her around to face the pane. "You must look--you must look," she cried.

"They wouldn't do it, they wouldn't--it _isn't_!" Minnie cried. "They couldn't come in the storm. They wouldn't do it in the pouring rain!"

"Yes! Such things would mind the rain!" She burst into hysterical laughter, and Minnie, almost as unnerved, caught her about the waist.

"They would mind the rain. They would fear a storm! Ha, ha, ha!

Yes--yes! And I let him go--I let him go!"

Pressing close together, shuddering, clasping each other's waists, the two girls peered out at the flickering landscape.

"_Look_!"

Up from the distant fence that bordered the northern side of Jones's field, a pale, pelted, flapping thing reared itself, poised, and seemed, just as the blackness came again, to drop to the ground.

"Did you _see_?"

But Minnie had thrown herself into a chair with a laugh of wild relief.

"My darling girl!" she cried. "Not a line of white things--just one--Mr.

Jones's old scarecrow! And we saw it blown down!"

"No, no, no! I saw the others; they were in the field beyond. I saw them! When I looked the first time they were nearly all on the fence.

This time we saw the last man crossing. Ah! I let him go alone!"

Minnie sprang up and enfolded her. "No; you dear, imagining child, you're upset and nervous--that's all the matter in the world. Don't worry; don't, child, it's all right. Mr. Harkless is home and safe in bed long ago. I know that old scarecrow on the fence like a book; you're so unstrung you fancied the rest. He's all right; don't you bother, dear."

The big, motherly girl took her companion in her arms and rocked her back and forth soothingly, and petted and rea.s.sured her, and then cried a little with her, as a good-hearted girl always will with a friend.

Then she left her for the night with many a cheering word and tender caress. "Get to sleep, dear," she called through the door when she had closed it behind her. "You must, if you have to go in the morning--it just breaks my heart. I don't know how we'll bear it without you. Father will miss you almost as much as I will. Good-night. Don't bother about that old white scarecrow. That's all it was. Good-night, dear, good-night."

"Good-night, dear," answered a plaintive little voice. Helen's hot cheek pressed the pillow and tossed from side to side. By and by she turned the pillow over; it had grown wet. The wind blew about the eaves and blew itself out; she hardly heard it. Sleep would not come. She got up and laved her burning eyes. Then she sat by the window. The storm's strength was spent at last; the rain grew lighter and lighter, until there was but the sound of running water and the drip, drip on the tin roof of the porch. Only the thunder rumbling in the distance marked the storm's course; the chariots of the G.o.ds rolling further and further away, till they finally ceased to be heard altogether. The clouds parted majestically, and then, between great curtains of mist, the day-star was seen shining in the east.

The night was hushed, and the peace that falls before dawn was upon the wet, flat lands. Somewhere in the sodden gra.s.s a swamped cricket chirped. From an outlying f.l.a.n.g.e of the village a dog's howl rose mournfully; was answered by another, far away, and by another and another. The sonorous chorus rose above the village, died away, and quiet fell again.

Helen sat by the window, no comfort touching her heart. Tears coursed her cheeks no longer, but her eyes were wide and staring, and her lips parted, for the hush was broken by the far clamor of the court-house bell ringing in the night. It rang, and rang, and rang, and rang. She could not breathe. She threw open the window. The bell stopped. All was quiet once more. The east was growing gray.

Suddenly out of the stillness there came the sound of a horse galloping over a wet road. He was coming like mad. Some one for a doctor? No; the horse-hoofs grew louder, coming out from the town, coming this way, coming faster and faster, coming _here_. There was a splashing and trampling in front of the house and a sharp "Whoa!" In the dim gray of first dawn she made out a man on a foam-flecked horse. He drew up at the gate.

A window to the right of hers went screeching up. She heard the judge clear his throat before he spoke.

"What is it? That's you, isn't it, Wiley? What is it?" He took a good deal of time and coughed between the sentences. His voice was more than ordinarily quiet, and it sounded husky. "What is it, Wiley?"

"Judge, what time did Mr. Harkless leave here last night and which way did he go?"

There was a silence. The judge turned away from the window. Minnie was standing just outside his door. "It must have been about half-past nine, wasn't it, father?" she called in a shaking voice. "And, you know, Helen thought he went west."

"Wiley!" The old man leaned from the sill again.

"Yes!" answered the man on horseback.

"Wiley, he left about half-past nine--just before the storm. They think he went west."

"Much obliged. Willetts is so upset he isn't sure of anything."

"Wiley!" The old man's voice shook; Minnie began to cry aloud. The horseman wheeled about and turned his animal's head toward town.

"Wiley!"

"Yes."

"Wiley, they haven't--you don't think they've got him?"

"By G.o.d, judge," said the man on horseback, "I'm afraid they have!"

CHAPTER X. THE COURT-HOUSE BELL

The court-house bell ringing in the night! No hesitating stroke of Schofields' Henry, no uncertain touch, was on the rope. A loud, wild, hurried clamor pealing out to wake the country-side, a rapid _clang!

clang! clang!_ that struck clear in to the spine.

The court-house bell had tolled for the death of Morton, of Garfield, of Hendricks; had rung joy-peals of peace after the war and after political campaigns; but it had rung as it was ringing now only three times; once when Hibbard's mill burned, once when Webb Landis killed Sep Bardlock and intrenched himself in the lumber-yard and would not be taken till he was shot through and through, and once when the Rouen accommodation was wrecked within twenty yards of the station.

Why was the bell ringing now? Men and women, startled into wide wakefulness, groped to windows--no red mist hung over town or country.