“I done my best to shet ’em up,” Nancy said, “but land’s sake, ’tain’t no use. They are jest ravin’. But I’d like to see ’em try to take your father, sick as he is. They’d walk over my body fust, and I told ’em so, but they jest laughed in my face, and that sneak of a Sheldon said it was all very well for me, a preferred creditor, to feel that way, but if I’d lost all he had I’d talk out of ‘tother side of my mouth. The hound! He’s settin’ ’em on.”
Nancy was doing her duty religiously, and had been in two or three fights with boys and innumerable quarrels with others in her zeal to defend the Greys. And Louie knew it, and while she felt grateful for the old woman’s kindness, she grew sick at heart and more and more nervous as she thought of what she must do, and wondered how she could face a set of men as excited and determined as Nancy represented them to be. She had known them all as friends, and to meet them now as enemies was hard to do, but she must do it.
As the sun went down a heavy rain began to fall, and the night closed in dark and stormy, with gusts of wind which shook the house and bent the trees and shrubs in the yard, breaking some of the smaller limbs and scattering the leaves in showers. It was a wild night for any woman to be out, and much less for a young girl like Louie. Her wheel was sold, and, though the horses were still in the stable, she dared not take them out, for Nancy Sharp had brought her rumors of stones and eggs laid up for the carriage, should it appear in the street. She must walk and go alone, for the one servant who had not left them must stay with her father and mother, and she would not take Nancy with her.
Nancy had said the meeting was to be at half-past eight, and at quarter-past she started in her waterproof cloak, the hood of which was drawn over her head the better to shield her from the rain, and from observation, too, as she did not care to be recognized by any she chanced to meet.
There was little danger of her meeting anyone, for few were abroad that night except the men who had the appointment at the village hall, and no one noticed the slight figure moving rapidly through the street and keeping as much as possible in the shadow until the hall was reached.
There was a light shining from the windows and streaming down upon the walk where Louie stood for a moment, trying to gather courage for the trial.
“God help me, and give me strength and success,” she said, and then ascended the stairs to the upper hall, which was dimly lighted by a defective gas jet.
In a little recess, where he was unobserved, a young man was standing, or, rather, sitting, on a dry-goods box, motionless as a statue, and with a curse in his heart for his own cowardice. He had been there a long time, watching the men as they came up, now half resolving to join them and do Louie’s bidding, and now held back by the fear of his father, with whom there had been a second interview stormier than any which had preceded it. At lunch the judge, who seemed unusually irritable, had said to him:
“Did you go to see that Grey girl?”
“Yes, sir; I did,” was Herbert’s answer, and his father continued: