Agnes remained in her usual apathetic mood, unheeding the flight of time, until the sudden rising of the wind and the sudden hustling of hail-stones against the windows told her that a furious storm was coming up. She arose and closed the window-shutters with some difficulty, and lighted a candle, when she found, to her surprise, that it was already seven o’clock. It was high time for Miss Joe to be at home. And now it occurred to the kind heart of Agnes that the good old lady, coming in from the storm, might relish a cup of hot tea. So she threw more wood upon the fire (Miss Joe’s forethought had supplied her with a pile of wood by the chimney corner), and filled the tea-kettle and hung it over the blaze. But Agnes knew that if Miss Joe did not come almost immediately, if she had not already landed on the island, she would not come that night. Agnes set the table and made the tea.
An hour passed by and Miss Joe had not returned, and Agnes gave her up for the night.
At about midnight the storm abated, the clouds broke up, and a few stars looked shyly out as if reconnoitering the darkness. The night was very dark. Agnes, who felt lonely and nervous, and could not sleep, opened the window-shutters to look out, but could scarcely discern the line where the dark waters met the snow-covered beach. The sky hung like a black pall over the island. The deep darkness, the deep silence, the deep solitude oppressed her with gloom and fear. Her form was shrunk, and her eyes dilated by terror.
Suddenly, while she gazed, the whole scene was brightly illuminated. Several torches blazed along the beach, lighting up the whole line of coast, and revealing the forms of three boats already landed, and the figures of several men passing back and forth.
At the same instant that Agnes perceived them, she felt that she herself must have been seen in the strong glare of the lighted window at which she sat.
She started up with the wish to extinguish her candle, when she saw several of the men with torches approaching the house; and, overpowered with terror, she fell in a swoon.
In the meantime Miss Joe had very reluctantly been detained at Huttontown by the utter impossibility of getting through the snowstorm to the isle. She had passed the night with Mr. Fig’s—the grocer’s—family, bemoaning the necessity, and lamenting that “that poor young thing would feel so lonesome, staying by herself on the island all night.”
Very “bright and early” the next morning Miss Joe, with a fine fat hen-turkey, living, and tied by the legs, and several packages of raisins, currants, and spices, entered her boat and set out on her return home.
When she reached the lodge the scene of confusion that met her eyes nearly transfixed her. Both doors, front and back, were wide open, and the air was rushing through the room. The fire had gone out; the great logs of wood had burned in two and fallen apart, and the charred and blackened ends were sticking up. The candle had expired in melted grease, which was now spread, cold, all over the candlestick, and down upon the nice white-oak table. The bed had not been slept in, for there it was perfectly smooth as Miss Joe had left it, with her own peculiar folds and twists about it. And there lay the baby in the cradle, screaming its little life away.