Even the Master sat erect, he who made a study of all mankind, touched and influenced beyond himself with speculations concerning this aged woman who was still a child.
“Music! Who knows but that was the key to unlock her closed intelligence? Oh! what a pity that it came so late! But how sad is Dorothy’s mood to evoke such almost unearthly strains! It’s getting too much for her and for that helpless creature. I must stop it;” thought the farrier, but didn’t put his thought into action. Just then he could not.
“Makes me think of a snake charmer I saw once,” whispered Monty Stark to Littlejohn.
“Ssh! Luna’s cryin’! Did you ever see the beat? Alfy Babcock, stop snivellin’ as if you was at a first class funeral!” returned master Smith, himself swallowing rather hard as he happened to think of his mother bringing in her own firewood.
Luna had reached the spot directly before Dorothy and was on her knees looking up with a timid, fascinated stare. Her small hands were so tightly clasped that their large veins seemed bursting, and great tears chased one another down her pink, wrinkled cheeks. Her close cropped head was thrown back and her back was toward the windows over which no curtains had been drawn. In her gay frock, which firelight and lamplight touched to a brilliant flame color, she must have appeared to one beyond the panes like a suppliant child begging pardon for some grave misdoing.
Suddenly Alfaretta screamed, and Molly Breckenridge promptly echoed her; then bounded to Dorothy’s side and snatched the violin from her hands.
“Stop it, Dolly, stop it! I couldn’t help doing that, for in another minute you’d have had me and—and everybody crazy! What made you——”
“Why, Alfaretta! Whatever is the matter? Why do you stand like that, pointing out into the night as if you’d seen a ghost?” demanded Jane Potter, going to her schoolmate and shaking her vigorously. “Don’t yell again. It’s—it’s more frightful to hear you than it was to be locked up in that hidden chamber, with a spring-locked trap shut between you and liberty.” Which was the only admission this self-contained young person ever gave that she had once known fear.
Alfy gulped, shivered, and slowly answered:
“So I did. It—was a ghost. Or—or—just the same as one! A—lookin’—a lookin’ right through the window—with his face—big and white—He—he wore a hat——”