In the "Stranger People's" country

by Charles Egbert Craddock

She stared at him with dumb amazement for a moment, then turning her little body about with agility, her tousled shock of hair and her pallid little face vanished from the opening in the floor.

The appearance there of an armed party of rescuers could hardly have been more unwelcome, and the sheriff breathed freely when she was at last gone.

He lifted his head presently, glancing questioningly about the darkening place, for the irregular spaces of the crevices gave now only a dim fragmentary glimmer. He turned, as if with a sudden thought, took his way down the ladder and stood in the door, slipping the pistol into his pocket, and looking out with a lowering, disaffected eye. In that short interval within the barn all the world had changed; the flaring sky had faded, and was of a dull gray tint, too pallid to furnish relief to the coming of the stars, which were only visible here and there in a vague scintillation, colorless too. The gloom of the darkling mountains oppressed the spirit, something so immeasurably mournful was in their sombre, silent, brooding immensity. The indubitable night lay on the undistinguishable valley as if the darkness rose from the earth rather than came from the sky; only about the summits the day seemed to tarry. Many a vibrant note was tuning in the woods; for the nocturnal insects, and the frogs by the water-side, and vague, sibilant, undiscriminated sounds, joined in a twanging, melancholy chorus that somehow accented the loneliness.

"Waal, night hev overtook us," the sheriff remarked to Felix Guthrie, who had joined him at the door. Then, with gathering acerbity, "'Pears like ter me ef Providence lays ez much work on a man ez I hev got ter do, he ought ter hev daylight enough left him ter git through with it, or else hev a moon allowed him ter work by."

Guthrie said nothing, but stood solemnly watching the darkening face of the landscape.

"We air roosted up hyar fur all night, Fee," Carew continued, in a tone that was a querulous demand for sympathy. "We could sca'cely make out ter git up that thar outdacious, steep, rocky road in the daytime; ef we war ter try it in the pitch-dark with a bed-ridden prisoner, the whole posse, prisoner an 'all, would bodaciously roll over the rocks into some o' them gorges ez look ter be deep ez hell!" He paused for a moment, his light-gray eyes narrowing. "I could spare the posse toler'ble well, but I could in no wise git along 'thout the prisoner." A secret twinkling that lighted his eyes seemed communicated in some sort to his lips, which twitched suddenly, as if suppressing a laugh.

Fee Guthrie's face wore no responsive gleam. He stood gruffly silent for a time, his gaze fixed uncomprehendingly upon the sheriff. "Air thar ennything ter hender yer stayin' all night?" he asked at last.

The officer hesitated, then moved nearer, and laid his hand confidentially upon his companion's shoulder, among the ends of his flaunting, tawny curls.

"Fee," he said, lowering his voice, and with a very definite accession of gravity and anxiety, "I hev made a mistake—a large-sized one—about the build o' that man Shattuck."

Guthrie's immobile, unfriendly face changed suddenly. There was a slight quiver upon it, which passed in an instant, leaving it softened and wistful and anxious. He knew naught of the officer's suspicions touching Shattuck; he only knew that this man had lingered without the window to hear Letitia sing, while he waited for the moon to rise in the great rocky gorge of the river. It seemed to Guthrie that the very suggestion of her name would have a power over him, that it would stir him if he were dead, if he shared the long death in which the Little People lay and waited for their summons to rise again. And somehow the thought of them, silent, motionless, undisturbed in their long, long abeyance, brought a qualm of remorse. "I ought not ter hev gin my cornsent ter open one of thar coffins," he reflected, his lips moving unconsciously with the unspoken words. "My head won't rest no easier in the grave fur hevin' stirred his'n, an' jes' fur Shattuck's cur'osity, ef the truth war knowed; 'the hist'ry o' the kentry'"—he remembered the words with a sneer—"air nowhar." "This hyar Shattuck air a mighty takin' man," he said aloud, suddenly. The sheriff cocked his head with keen attention. "Nowise good-lookin', special, but saaft-spoken. Folks like him mighty well; he pulls the wool over everybody's eyes."