“Oh, I'll not melt,” responded Dan, and bowing to the thin lady he stepped upon the wheel and mounted lightly to the box.
“There's no end to this eternal drizzle,” he called down, as he tucked the waterproof robe about him and took up the reins.
Then, with a merry crack of the whip, the stage rolled through the gate and on its way.
As it turned into the road, a man on horseback came galloping from the direction of the town, and when he neared the tavern he stood up in his stirrups and shouted his piece of news.
“Thar was a raid on Harper's Ferry in the night,” he yelled hoarsely. “The arsenal has fallen, an' they're armin' the damned niggers.”
XII. — THE NIGHT OF FEAR
Late in the afternoon, as the Governor neared the tavern, he was met by a messenger with the news; and at once turning his horse's head, he started back to Uplands. A dim fear, which had been with him since boyhood, seemed to take shape and meaning with the words; and in a lightning flash of understanding he knew that he had lived before through the horror of this moment. If his fathers had sinned, surely the shadow of their wrong had passed them by to fall the heavier upon their sons; for even as his blood rang in his ears, he saw a savage justice in the thing he feared—a recompense to natural laws in which the innocent should weigh as naught against the guilty.
A fine rain was falling; and as he went on, the end of a drizzling afternoon dwindled rapidly into night. Across the meadows he saw the lamps in scattered cottages twinkle brightly through the dusk which rolled like fog down from the mountains. The road he followed sagged between two gray hills into a narrow valley, and regaining its balance upon the farther side, stretched over a cattle pasture into the thick cover of the woods.