CHAPTER XXXII.—THE ALARM AT THE FARMHOUSE.
To come upon the street again was like the confused awakening from a dream. With the first few steps Jessica found herself shivering in an extremity of cold, yet still uncomfortably warm. A sudden passing spasm of giddiness, too, made her head swim so that for the instant she feared to fall. Then, with an added sense of weakness, she went on, wearily and desponding.
The recollection of this novel and curious happiness upon which she had stumbled only a few moments before took on now the character of self-reproach. The burning headache had returned, and with it came a pained consciousness that it had been little less than criminal in her to weakly dally in Horace’s office when such urgent responsibility rested upon her outside. If the burden of this responsibility appeared too great for her to bear, now that her strength seemed to be so strangely leaving her, there was all the more reason for her to set her teeth together, and press forward, even if she staggered as she went.
Only—where to find Reuben Tracy! The search had been made cruelly hopeless by that shameful delay; and she blamed herself with fierceness for it, as she racked her brain for some new plan, wondering whether she ought to have asked Horace or gone into some of the other offices.
There were groups of men standing here and there on the comers—a little away from the full light of the street-lamps, as if unwilling to court observation. These knots of workmen had a sinister significance to her feverish mind. She had the clew to the terrible mischief which some of them intended—which no doubt even now they were canvassing in furtive whispers—and only Tracy could stop it, and she was powerless to find him!
There came slouching along the sidewalk, as she grappled with this anguish of irresolution, a slight and shabby figure which somehow arrested her attention. It was a familiar enough figure—that of old “Cal” Gedney; and there was nothing unusual or worthy of comment in the fact that he was walking unsteadily by himself, with his gaze fixed intently on the sidewalk. He had passed again out of the range of her cursory glance before she suddenly remembered that he was a lawyer, and even some kind of a judge.
She turned swiftly and almost ran after him, clutching his sleeve as she came up to him, and breathing so hard with weakness and excitement that for the moment she could not speak.
The ’squire looked up, and angrily shook his arm out of her grasp. “Leave me alone, you hussy,” he snarled, “or I’ll lock you up!”