"Don't it look like a witch's, Missy?" Virgie said, as Vesta took in its not unpicturesque outlines and crude plank carpentry, the weather-rotted roof, the decrepit chimney at the far end, the one garret window in the sharp gable, the scant little windows above stairs, and the doors low to the sand.
"It may have been the pride of the town fifty years ago, Virgie. I have passed it many a day, looking with mischievous curiosity for the steeple-hat, to show that to some city friend, little thinking I must ever enter the house. But hear that wilful bird singing so loud! Where is it?"
"I can't tell to save my life. It ain't in the tree yonder. It's the first bird up this mornin', Miss Vessy, sho'!"
"Is not that larger door standing ajar, the one with the four panels in it?" Vesta asked. "Yes, it is unfastened and partly open."
The blood left Vesta's heart a moment, as the thought ran through her mind: "He has been watched, followed home, and murdered!"
The idea seemed to explain his absence on his marriage night, and, like a sudden flame first seen upon a burning ship, lighting up the wide ocean with its bright terrors, Vesta saw the infinite relations of such a crime: her almost secret marriage, her custody of her father's notes, the record of them upon her husband's books, his last word at the church gate: "I will come soon, darling," and now, this silent abode, with its door ajar on Sunday dawn, before the town was up—they might bear the suspicion of a dreadful crime by the ruined debtor house of Custis against their friendless creditor.
This thought, personal to her father, was immediately dismissed in the feeling for a possibly murdered husband. If the idea barely touched her sense of self, that her tremendous sacrifice had been arrested by Heaven, and her purity saved between the altar and the nuptials by the bloodshed of her purchaser at the hands of some meaner avenger, though not until she had redeemed her father from Milburn's clutch, this idea never passed beyond the portal of her mind; she repulsed it, entering, and began to think of the easy prey her husband might have been, hated by so many, defended by none, known to be very rich, no loss to the community, as it might think, in its financial ignorance, and his only guard a stalwart negro notorious for fighting.
Believing Milburn to deserve better than his present fame, Vesta advanced towards the door of the old wooden store with a spirit of commiseration and awe, and still the wild bird from somewhere poured out a shriek, a chuckle, a hurrah, enough to turn her blood to ice.
As Vesta pushed open the old, seasoned door it dragged along the floor, and the loose iron bar and padlock, dropping down, made a ring that brought an echo like a tomb's out of the hollow interior.
"'Deed, Miss Vessy, I'm 'fraid to go in there," Virgie said.