As the black hours wore on, the boards above his head dully gave notice that the ha’nt was prowling back and forth on its softly thumping bare heels. Perhaps his subconscious self knew of the movement, but it did not arouse his sleeping senses—it was only the usual nightly occurrence. Out in the main room beyond his closed door, too, something moved about: a silent, hideous, unhuman thing which paused awhile beside the wooden barrier, then glided elsewhere; a thing which opened no doors or windows, which neither entered the house nor left it, but which presently was gone. Of this, too, he knew nothing. The weird sough of the sepulchral pines behind the house, the proximity of the mound holding all that was left of the man who had been done to death here, the steel-slashed rent in the corn-husk mattress beyond the wall—none of these things troubled him. Tranquilly he slept until morning light smote softly on his lids and woke him to a new day.
Sun and warmth flooded the Traps when, after breakfast, he emerged into the open. After the grayness and the numbness of the past few days, the change was magical. But for the thinly clad branches above and the sodden wind-blown leaves below, it would have seemed mid-August instead of late October. In the hot air flies buzzed, bees hummed, and a resounding chorus throbbed from crickets and katydids defiantly informing the world that they were not yet dead. And from all sides drifted the damp fragrance of forest mould and of grass-ground drying in the heat.
But, as a wandering breeze floated from the region of a bush-bound little brook beyond the road, it bore into the pleasant aroma of plant life a vague taint.
Douglas, inhaling the freshness of the morning, half sensed that slight odor and glanced around. But then the breeze died and he forgot it. Drawing another great lungful of air, he struck off up the road toward the Oaks place.
Before he reached it the sound of chopping came to him. As he entered the yard he found a figure slugging away at a chopping-block with an ax which seemed dull. It wore a man’s hat, but it also wore a dress. The hat fell off as he approached, and the sun glowed red in the tumbled hair suddenly revealed. At the sound of his step the girl wheeled sharply and, panting and flushed, looked at him.
“No, he ain’t home,” she said before he could speak. “You can run right ’long up to Lou’s.”
She turned from him, picked up another stick of fire-wood, swung the ax dexterously, and split the fagot clean. Something about her words and manner gave him a sudden glimpse of her side of that pride-wall which had stood between them: the side which he had supposed to bear the face of Steve, but which now seemed to hold something else. He stepped forward and closed one hand over the ax-helve.
“Look here, Marion,” he said quietly, “I don’t like that.”
“’Tain’t much to me what you like,” she retorted, though with little heat. “Jest travel ’long.”
“When I’m ready.” He kept his grip on the handle. “But let’s settle this now. You’ve been acting offish for quite awhile—ever since the day we talked about art and—and so on, up the brook. I’ve been too bull-headed to ask you why. But I’m asking you now, straight and square; and asking you, too, why you keep intimating that Lou is a particular friend of mine. Now speak up, man to man.”