"No! no!" answered the girl hastily, "it's dangerous—besides, it's growing late."
"That's scarcely treating me fair," protested the Squire, but he good-naturedly shambled along the platform, and went to get his buggy. "We won't begin to quarrel this early," he added with a laugh, "so—good night, my dear! and pleasant dreams to you!"
"Good night!" echoed Sally, mechanically. She stood motionless until the sound of the vehicle grew faint in the distance, then, with quaking frame, she hurriedly jumped off the platform into the road, and groped her way to the spot where she had seen the dark, solitary figure standing fully revealed in that brief, intense light.
She had heard no sound, save the Squire's clumsy movements, and later the rumble of his buggy along the pike, and as she eagerly started forward, the thought came to her that perhaps she was the dupe of her own vivid imagination—that the motionless figure imprinted on the retina of her eye, as it had been etched on the background of the night, was the creature of her excited brain, and had no part in the darkness without.
"Milt!" she called out softly, inquiringly.
She strained her ear attentively to the silence. The sound of labored breathing near at hand betrayed the presence she sought, and putting forth her hand fearlessly she touched the substance of the shadow she had seen.
"Milt!" she once more called aloud.
With a gesture of impatience, or anger, she knew not which, he roughly shook off the hand laid lightly upon him, with the impatient mumbling of a fierce oath.
"So, it's true," he said at last; but his voice sounded strange and harsh, and totally unlike the familiar caressing tones she had so longed to hear once more.