The old dog got onto his feet and cocked an ear.
“Rover heard it. There it is again! Hark! Like someone yellin’.”
Larry went to the door and pulled it open. Wind and snow leapt in, the fire roared in the stove, the flame of the lamp jumped high and vanished and the old dog cowered back under the table and howled.
“Shut that door!” screamed Mrs. Dent; and Larry shut it.
Vane struck a match, and lit the lamp.
“I didn’t hear anything but the wind,” he said.
“I guess that’s what it was, all right—but it sure did sound like someone hollerin’, once or twice,” said the woman.
CHAPTER XI
THE PURCHASE
The luck of the Danglers went wrong all at once. They got what was due them and overdue them suddenly and swiftly, no mistake about that! Old Luke and two others were caught in the coils of the law with enough loops over them to hold them for years, and the still and the stock were confiscated. Old Luke had money, but it availed him nothing now. And Amos was dead—and none the less so because poor Pete Sledge’s queer life had also suffered a violent and sudden conclusion. And young Steve Dangler was missing. Steve had been last seen by his father, on the day of the raid, on the road between Forkville and Goose Creek. Days passed without further sign of him or any word of him. Even Miss Hassock was sorry for the Danglers. Though she believed that nothing was too bad for them, she felt that this deluge of disaster might better have been thinned over a period of several years, thus offering opportunities for remorse and perhaps for reform.