She waited, with head erect and eyes closed and rigid tortured lips apart, till the feet were heard at the door.
XXVI. — PEACE TO THIS HOUSE
Mrs. Remsen and her delicate daughter had driven away to avoid excitement and the night air.
Chauncey hovered round the piazza steps, talking, with but little encouragement, to Miss Sallie and the young man who had become the centre of all eyes.
“I don't see how anybody on the face of the earth could blame her, nor me either!” Chauncey protested. “If the critter wanted to git out, why couldn't he say so? I stood there holdin' the door open much as five minutes. 'Who's in there?' I says. I called it loud enough to wake the dead. 'Nobody wants to hurt ye,' says I. There want nothing to be afraid of. He hadn't done nothing anyway. It's the strangest case ever I heard tell of. And the doctor don't think he was much crazy either.”
“Can he live?” asked Miss Sallie.
“He's alive now, but doctor don't know how long he'll last. There he comes now. I must go and git his horse.”
The doctor, who seemed nervous,—he was a young local practitioner,—asked to speak with Miss Sallie's hero apart.