“I’ll git even with Nate Griggs,” he said, over and again. “I’ll git even with him yit.”
CHAPTER VII.
When Birt reached the fence, he discovered that the bars were down. Rufe had forgotten to replace them that afternoon when he drove in the cow to be milked. Despite his absorption, Birt paused to put them up, remembering the vagrant mountain cattle that might stray in upon the corn. He found the familiar little job difficult enough, for it seemed to him that there was never before so black a night. Even looking upward, he could not see the great wind-tossed boughs of the chestnut-oak above his head. He only knew they were near, because acorns dropped upon the rail in his hands, and rebounded resonantly. But an owl, blown helplessly down the gale, was not much better off, for all its vaunted nocturnal vision. As it drifted by, on the currents of the wind, its noiseless, out-stretched wings, vainly flapping, struck Birt suddenly in the face, and frightened by the collision, it gave an odd, peevish squeak.
Birt, too, was startled for a moment. Then he exclaimed irritably, “Oh, g’way ow
el
” - realizing what had struck him.
The next moment he paused abruptly. He thought he heard, close at hand, amongst the glooms, a faint chuckle. Something - was it? -
somebody
laughing in the darkness?
He stood intently listening. But now he heard only the down-pour of the rain, the sonorous gusts of the wind, the multitudinous voices of the muttering leaves.