"Don't you worry," she said, out of cheerful experience of her own enterprise. "I see to that. I says to John C., 'He ain't a-goin' to slip out an' git away. It's goin' to be done accordin' to law an' order,' I says. 'I sha'n't sleep a wink till that scoundrel's landed in jail.' So I says to John C., 'You harness up the colt an' ride over an' git the sheriff, an' when the boys pitch onto him, have him ready to clap the handcuffs on.' Don't you worry, Ann. You'll see your tea-set yit."
Ann stood at the door, hearing her walking heavily away, and a gentle rage possessed her when she noted how broad her back looked, how capable of carrying burdens to their goal. She was deeply attached to Mrs. John C., but she realized how impossible it was to block her purposes. Hitherto they had all seemed beneficent ones; but now Ann felt something of the indignant protest that always surged in her when she saw a sleek and prosperous cat baiting a mouse. She went in and sat down again, with a double anxiety upon her. It was not only her tea-set she lamented, but the hardness of life wherein any creature should be worried down and caught. And she remembered, as she did not in loyalty allow herself to remember often, that her brother also had been wild.
Suddenly something roused her. It was not so much a thought as a touch upon her heart, and she sat up straight, as full of fire and purpose as Mrs. John C. herself, only it was purpose of another kind. Mrs. John C. had the force of weight, and in Ann there were tense fibres of youth, not yet done thrilling. She threw her little shawl over her head and hurried out of the house. For an instant she paused, with a new impulse of caution, to lock the door. Then with a scorn of her present possessions, her one treasure gone, she latched it only, and took the wood-path to the swamp. Ann walked with a trained delicacy and caution suited to the woods. The thrilling of the frogs grew louder, and shortly she was at the old lightning oak that served her for a landmark. Before her lay the boggy place where she came in all warm seasons of the year for one thing or another: the wild marsh-marigold,—good for greens,—thoroughwort, and the root of the sweet-flag. P'ison flag grew here, too, the sturdy, delicate iris that made the swamp so gay.
Ann stayed a moment for breath. Haste had driven the blood to her face, and the cool spring air seemed to generate in her the heat of summer. Until now she had loved the sound of the frogs, piping in the spring, but in the irritation of her trouble she spoke aloud to them: "Can't anybody be allowed to hear themselves think?" The haste of her errand tapped her again upon the arm, and she picked up the board which was one of the tools of her trade, left always at the foot of the lightning oak, and with it skirted the swamp to the east where the tussocks were large. Then, throwing her board before her from one foothold to another, she crossed the swamp. Twice she had fallen, and her dress was wet. She was muddy to the knees, but she wrung out her heavy skirts and ran along the path she knew to the door of the deserted house.
Ann thought she had never seen a place so still. It had the desolation of a spot where life has been and where it is no more. She listened a moment, her eyes searching the dark bulk of the house, her hand upon her racing heart. She smelled smoke. Then she called:—
"You there? I know ye be. Open the door."
There was no sound. She tried the door, and, finding it bolted, shook the handle with all the force of her strong arms.
"You let me in," she called again. "I've got suthin' to say to ye. It's suthin' you'll be glad to hear."
But after she had waited a moment in the taunting stillness, she withdrew a little, that her voice should reach him, wherever he might be.
"I know all about it. You've took my silver tea-set an' you've got it in there now. Other folks knows it, too, an' about moonrise they're comin' here an' surround the house an' make you give it up." She paused for an eager breath. The futility of the moment choked her. "You hear to me," she called again, in her strained, beseeching voice. "'Twon't do ye no good to hide, for they know you're there. An' 'twon't do ye no good to fight, for there's a whole b'ilin' of 'em, an' like 's not they've got guns. Now when I'm gone—I'm goin' right off home now—you slip out the back o' the house an' go as straight as you can cut, right acrost the pastur'. That'll bring ye to a lane. You turn to your right an' foller it, an' it'll take ye onto the high-road. Then you take that an' keep to your left. T'others'll come from the right. An' if you find a good hidin'-place, you better clap the tea-set into it, under some brush or suthin', an' come back arter it some other time. Ye see, they've started up the sheriff an' I dunno what all. Mis' John C.'s puttin' on 't through, an' mebbe they've telegraphed over the country by this time. 'Tain't any small matter, takin' a silver tea-set so. I'm terrible worried about ye. There! Now I'm goin'. You wait a minute, if ye don't want me to see ye. Then you can put."