“I’ll listen for a few minutes and if she doesn’t go to bed, I’ll go down and shake her,” he concluded, and then promptly went to sleep and was awakened by voices. Low, earnest voices, but he heard no words and was sleepily confused. If he thought anything, he thought Peter had been doing what was needed to be done––driving Polly to bed!
And then Northrup did hear words. A word here; a word there. He knew things he had no right to know––he was awake at last, conscientiously, as well as physically. He got up and slammed the door!
But he could not go to sleep. He felt hot and cold; mean and indignant––but above all else, tremendously excited. He lay still a little longer and then opened his door in time to hear that “good-night, good-night”; and presently Aunt Polly’s raid on the unoffending attic door at the other end of the corridor and her pattering feet on their way, at last, to her bedchamber.
“She’s forgot to bank the fire.” Northrup could see the glow from his post and remembered Uncle Peter’s carefulness. “I’ll run down and make things safe and lock the door.” Northrup still held his respect for doors.
In heavy gown and soft slippers he noiselessly descended. The living-room at the far end was dark; the fire glowed at the other, dangerously, and one threatening log had rolled menacingly to the fore.
Bent upon quick action Northrup silently crossed the floor, grasped the long poker and pushed the blazing wood back past the safety line and held it there.
His face burned, but there was a hypnotic lure in that bed of red coals. All that he had just heard––a disjointed and rather dramatic revealment––was having a peculiar effect upon him. He had become aware of some important facts that accounted for things, such as Rivers’s appearance on the Point. He had attributed that advent to Maclin’s secret business; but it was, evidently, quite different.
What had occurred in the yellow house before the final break? Northrup’s imagination came to the fore fully equipped. Northrup was a man of the herd––at least he had been, until lately. He knew the tracks of the herd and its laws and codes.
“The brute!” he muttered under his breath; “and that kind of a girl, too. Nothing is too fine for some devils to appropriate and––smirch. Poor little girl!”