Early Ann broke off abruptly in the middle of her sentence. Her eyes grew large and the terror crept down her cheeks and caught at the comers of her mouth. She started to scream, then bit her knuckles and with great deliberation turned away from the apparition at the window-pane. By the time Gus had rushed out into the yard no one was to be seen and the starlit night was silent and empty.
In the parlor Sarah still read to Stanley, unaware of anything beyond her own circle of lamp light. But as Early Ann listened in the throbbing stillness she heard the older woman falter and stop. Then she heard quiet weeping.
"Why ... what are you crying about, Mother?" she heard Stanley ask.
"Nothing, nothing at all," Sarah said. "I—I guess I'm just tired, that's all."
CHAPTER III
1
The basement of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Brailsford Junction rang with the shouts of children playing tag despite the scolding of their busy mothers. Flushed matrons buzzed in laden down with loaves of homemade bread, pans of biscuits ready for the oven, mason jars full of sweet, sour, and mixed pickles, bags of ground coffee, and huge pots of dressed and dismembered chickens so tender and plump that their flesh would have warranted the term "voluptuous" if stewed by a less austere generation.
Joe Whalen, town drunk, general roustabout, and janitor of the church was starting a paper fire in the furnace.