It all happened in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. Before the cup touched his lips, the girl struck it out of his hand. It fell with a sharp crash on the floor. She threw up her arms with a cry which rang through the house, and darted out into the night.
"She's got a spell on her!" said Jacob Bailey, rising quickly. "It's been coming on this week past, m' wife says. Come, Pippin; come, Wisk! We'll have to find the poor child and bring her home."
He spoke sadly, but without surprise, as of a thing well known.
"You come too, Brand! Oftentimes she'll answer your voice when she won't another. The barn first!"
"She was there this afternoon," said the blind man, following. "Likely she's gone to put back something she—borrowed!"
Not in the barn; not in the corncrib, where she used to sit by the hour, crooning her wordless songs; not in the kennel with old Rover, where they had found her more than once, poor thing, her arms around the dumb creature who perhaps—who knows?—was nearer her dumb mind than the human beings around her.
"This way!" said Brand. "Here's a thread of her dress on the gatepost. She's gone to the wood lot."
Not in the wood lot; no answer to the calls of friendly, tender voices.
"Flora! Flora May! Where be you, little gal? Speak up, won't you?"
Further on, through the meadows, guided by the blind man's unerring fingers which found here a broken twig, there a shred of cotton, here again a knot of ribbon caught in a bramble wreath; searching, calling, searching, through weary hours.