"What is wrong with everybody?"
The squire came flying across the lawn. He saw as he opened the door the struggling Alvin and the excited Bevy and Edwin Gaumer armed here on this peaceful night with a gun. He saw also his grandniece with her flaming cheeks, her swollen eyes, her disheveled hair. The squire did not know what had happened, but he closed his door behind him so that the scene should be no longer illuminated.
"Nothing is wrong," he declared sternly. "Nobody shall bring a gun."
With a gesture he ordered his kinsfolk and Bevy and her prey into his office; with an arm thrown across her shoulders he protected his niece from further observation. Then, cruelly, upon Millerstown he shut his office door. For a while Millerstown hung about; then having recognized no one but the squire, and neither able to see nor to hear further, departed for their several homes.
Inside the squire locked the door and motioned his excited guests to seats. If Katy had had her way she would have died on the spot, she would have sunk into the earth and would have been swallowed up. But with the squire's arm about her she could do nothing but proceed to his office with the rest.
The squire looked from one to the other, from Edwin with his gun to Aunt Sally with her round and staring eyes; from Bevy to Alvin, who smoothed his hair and laid a protecting hand over his suffering ear.
"What on earth is the matter with you people?" he demanded. "Has war broken out in Millerstown?"
At once began an indescribable clamor.
"I was going over to Sally a little—" this was Bevy. "I saw him." Bevy indicated her prisoner with a contemptuous gesture. "He was digging in the hole, and I—"
"You didn't!" contradicted Alvin. "You didn't!"