“They are the people of Virginia,” he said, “and they come, Zindorf, in the purpose of events that you have turned terribly backward!”
The man was in some desperate perplexity, but he had steel nerves and the devil's courage.
He looked my father calmly in the face.
“What does all this mean?” he said.
“It means, Zindorf,” cried my father, “it means that the very things, the very particular things, that you ought to have used for the glory of God, God has used for your damnation!”
And again, in the clear April air, there entered through the open window the faint tolling of a bell.
“Listen, Zindorf! I will tell you. In the old abandoned church yonder, when they came to toll the bell for Duncan, the rope fell to pieces; I came along then, and Jacob Lance climbed into the steeple to toll the bell by hand. At the first crash of sound a wolf ran out of a thicket in the ravine below him, and fled away toward the mountains. Lance, from his elevated point, could see the wolf's muzzle was bloody. That would mean, that a lost horse had been killed or an estray steer. He called down and we went in to see what thing this scavenger had got hold of.”
He paused.
“In the cut of an abandoned road we found the body of Ordez riddled with buckshot, and his pockets rifled. But sewed up in his coat was the silk envelope with these papers. I took possession of them as a Justice of the Peace, ordered the body sent on here, and the people to assemble.”
He extended his arm toward the faint, quivering, distant sound.