"Yes, cousin Ethan."
"You are too far off. Bring the light nearer."
She heard steps creaking down the stair. Or was it only that Yaffti turned and strained in his rusty fetters? The door was hurriedly opened.
"Why are you two sitting in the dark?" said John Gano.
"We've been telling ghost stories," said Ethan, as Val slipped out.
CHAPTER XXII
Mrs. Gano sat with Emmie that evening in the long room. The little girl had been having restless nights, and had fallen asleep just before supper. Val went alone into the parlor after that meal, and waited for the two men to join her. They were smoking in the dining-room—a thing unprecedented. They stayed a long time. Eight o'clock—nine o'clock—nearly ten. Val lay down on the sofa in the shadow behind the big arm-chair, so worn out with emotion she fell asleep. By-and-by, through the mist of her dreaming, the low sound of voices broke: her father's, with that familiar note of weary cheerfulness, and now another, deep, vibrant, full of mutiny and music. She lay a moment with shut eyes, her half-awakened senses luxuriously steeped in the sound, careless of the meaning. Now her father answered. Ah, how long his insistent staccato kept striking the troubled air. It was plain he was in one of his talking moods, when there was no stopping him, just as for days—sometimes for weeks—there would be no such thing as getting more than "Yes," or "No," or "Thank you," across his tightened lips. She was dropping off to sleep again when suddenly Ethan's voice stabbed her broad awake, saying:
"The world is a cruel place, the world is an evil place, ergo, I hate the world."