The open hillside had seemed inviting as Doby viewed it from the boat. As he mounted higher and higher the perspective changed. The sheltering home boat sank in lonesome distance. The shadows of the trellises twisted grotesquely at his feet as if to twine about them. Calls of "whip-poor-will" came mournfully from afar. The May night was turning chill. The solitary path had lost its accustomed look. He began to shiver.
"This isn't as pleasant as I thought 'twould be. I'll get the water and hurry home," he resolved as he knelt at the spring. In the damp loam where the spring dribbled in front of him were the prints of the feet of one who had been there before him. They were fresh and distinct. Born and bred near the frontier and raised to read its signs, he understood the prints at a glance. But he bent nearer in the moonlight to be sure he was not mistaken.
One was of a broken boot sole. The other was a moccasin impression.
There was nothing else.
He did some thinking. "This is odd. A white man wouldn't hop up on one foot to drink. Neither would an Indian. And no one man would wear a moccasin on his right foot and a boot on his left." Oh, wouldn't he? Doby's memory jumped. The scarecrow on the wharf, the prisoner in the jail, had just such feet.
He retreated from the spot as though the culprit himself stood in the tracks. He was not thirsty any more. He told himself in quaking thoughts: "Even if I didn't notice the prints this afternoon, they must have been there. They can't be fresh, 'though they do look so. The man has been in jail for hours."
Perhaps so; but the boy could not drive himself back to the spring. The moonlight only served to make the shadows blacker. They threatened him. He seemed paralyzed where he stood. Nothing was real but the dread that filled him. Even the earth and sky were changing hideously.
From the town came the cry of, "Fire! fire! fire!"
Bells clanged. Women screamed. Dogs howled. Men yelled for "help! help! help!"