The tiresome butter came at last, and the dough passed into a higher form of existence through the fiery ordeal of the oven; supper was laid and silently eaten; two neighbors, volunteers for the night-watch with the dead, came, and were ushered into the gloomy parlor; while apples, cheese, doughnuts and a pitcher of cider were placed on the table outside, for their refreshment in the small hours. Night fell upon the farm.
Melissa Lawton stole out-doors as soon as Alvira retired to her room, and made her way through the darkness to the barns. As Albert had done on the fatal previous evening, she opened the sliding door of the big stable, and called up the stairs to Milton. There was no response, and investigation showed that he was not in his room, although the lamp was burning dimly. The girl stopped long enough to look over the familiar coarse pictures on the walls and the shelf, and then crept down the steep stairs again.
As she groped her way through the blackness to the stable door she came suddenly in contact with a person entering, and felt herself rudely seized and pushed back at arms’ length.
“Who’s here? What d’yeh want?” demanded a harsh voice, which seemed despite its gruffness to betray great trepidation.
“It’s me—M’lissy!”
“Come along aout here into the light, so I kin see yeh. What a’ yeh doin’ here, praowlin’ ’raoun’ ’n th’ dark, skeerin’ people fur?”
The Lawton girl’s native assurance all came back to her as she confronted Milton in the dim starlight outside—which was radiance by contrast with the stable’s total darkness—and she grinned satirically at him.
“You’ve got a nerve on you like a maouse, I swaow! You trembled all over when yeh tuk holt o’ me, in there. What was yeh skeert abaout? I wouldn’t hurt yeh!”