“Oh!” she exclaimed.
I had an idea. The flash had made our surroundings as light as day for an instant and across the road I saw Sylvanus Snow's old house, untenanted, abandoned and falling to decay. I took Miss Colton's arm.
“Come!” I said.
She hung back. “Where are you going?” she asked.
“Just across the road to that old house. On the porch we shall be out of the rain.”
She made no further objections and together we stumbled through the wet grass and over Sylvanus's weed-grown flower beds. I presume I shall never again smell the spicy fragrance of “old maids' pinks” without thinking of that night.
I found the edge of the piazza by the direct process of barking my shins against it, and helped her up on to the creaking boards. My sanguine statement that we should be out of the rain proved not quite true. There was a roof above us, but it leaked. I unfurled the wet umbrella and held it over her head.
For some moments after we reached the piazza neither of us spoke. The roar of the rain on the shingles of the porch and the splash and gurgle all about us would have made conversation difficult, even if we had wished to talk. I, for one, did not. At last she said:
“Do you see or hear anything of Jenkins?”
I listened, or tried to. I was wondering myself what had become of the coachman.