Judge Henderson, white-faced, trembling, looked in the starlight into the face of the one man whom he classed as his rival, his enemy in this town—it was a wide, white face with narrow and burning eyes, a Berserker face framed with its fringe of red. Horace Brooks himself was still almost sobbing with sheer fighting rage. There was that in his eye terrible to look upon.
"Oh, my God!" said Judge Henderson again and again. "Oh, my God!—my God!—--" He supported himself against the broken posts of what had been the little gate of Aurora Lane.
CHAPTER XX
THE IDIOT
At seven o'clock of Monday morning, Johnnie Adamson stood at the roadside at the front of his father's farmhouse. He held in his hands a wagon stake which he had found somewhere and with it smote aimlessly at anything which came in his way. His usual amiable smile was gone. A low scowl, like that of some angered anthropoid, had replaced it. His mother, seeing that some unusual turn had taken place in his affliction, stood at the window of the farmhouse looking out at him and wringing her hands. She long ago had ceased to weep—the fountain of tears had dried within her soul. There came to her now and then the sound of his hoarse defiance, hurled at all who passed by on the road.
"Son John!—Eejit!—Whip any man in Jackson County!"
Ephraim Adamson was at the time in the field at work. His wife at length crept out to the back porch and pulled the cord of the dinner bell. Its sound rang out across the fields. Her husband came running, more than half suspicious of the cause of the alarm. Long had their lives been lived in vague dread of this very thing—a violent turn in the son's affliction. The father's anxious face spoke the question.
"Yes, he's bad," said the wife to him. "I'm afraid of him—he's getting worse."
The father walked out into the front yard. The youth came toward him, grinning pleasantly. He fell into the position of a batsman, swinging his club back and forth as he must some time have seen ball players do.