“He’ll have stopped at the McCreaths’!” she said, moaning. Moaning ... and making little sounds of speed to his team, which couldn’t possibly have been tearing ahead more madly. She sat rocking back and forth, and making sounds which unmanned him, overwrought as he was by his own excitement and hatred. Through the steaming slough they plunged and splashed. He didn’t care now how quickly they came to their destination. He gave up trying to control the horses. Anything to get away from that noise she was making, that anguished crooning. Never was a man with murder in his heart so undone by the grief he intended augmenting.
The sandy-haired bewhiskered McCreath had stopped still in his dooryard to watch the runaway team coming up. When he saw who it was, he dropped the hoe in his hand, and came on out down the path to meet the evident crisis. Wully pulled up the panting horses, and before they had stopped, Libby Keith cried to the man approaching,
“Where is he? Where’s my Peter?”
At first he could not understand so impossible a question. She scrambled perilously down, and started on a run for the house, with him following.
“Where is he?” she cried again, turning on him. Then McCreath understood. She was mad, the poor body. He said gently;
“He isn’t here, you know, Libby. Peter isn’t here.”
“He is!” she cried. “He’s come! They seen him!”
Wully had followed them. McCreath turned to him, and got a nod in confirmation. They were at the door, now, and Mrs. McCreath had come that far to see what the disturbance was. McCreath cried heartily to his wife;
“Peter’s home, Aggie!”
Tears sprang quickly to Aggie’s eyes.