CHAPTER XIX.
WHAT THE MOON SAW IN THE CORN-FIELD
October had now nearly gone, and there was a chill in the air which would, under ordinary circumstances, have made both Eunice and Susanna pause before setting off into the woods at that hour in the afternoon. Certainly they would not have gone without wraps and shawls galore, but neither paused now. As swiftly, almost as secretly, as two guilty schoolgirls would have started upon some surreptitious adventure, they left the house by the back door and passed through the back garden. From thence they struck into the path to the woodland and hurried forward. Between strides the widow managed to interject a few explanatory sentences.
"I got the wash off the line." Pause. "An' I got oneasy." Another pause. Resuming: "I felt druv to go out there, alone even, an' see. What you said about starvin' him worked on me, dreadful. I took a basket o' victuals. Bad as he is—Oh, my suz!"
"Walk slower, Susanna. We shall be overdone if we keep this pace. What then?" asked Miss Maitland.
"Well, I went. I run 'most all the way. I got there—an' he wasn't. He wasn't at all!"
"Do you mean that he had left the cottage?"
"My suz! I should think he has. He's left, an' my log-cabin quilt's left, an' my best feather tick, an' pillows, an' a pair blankets—that kitchen-bedroom bedstead's stripped as clean as 'twas the day it was born—I mean, sot up. Now—what do you think of that?"