He awoke, struggling violently, but impotently. He opened his eyes upon darkness. He cried out furiously, and his voice was beaten thunderously back into his own ears by an enveloping blanket. He knew it for a blanket by the weight and feeling of it. His back was still against the familiar poplar tree, but now it was pressed to the trunk by something that crossed his chest. His hands were bound to his sides. His ankles were gripped together.
Now it happened that a large widow, named Mrs. Beesley, came to the little hillside clearing just before sunset. She had been hunting through the woods all the afternoon for an herb that enjoys the reputation, in this country, of being a panacea for all ailments of the stomach. Now she was on her way home.
Rounding the big poplar, she beheld a shapeless, blanket-swathed, rope-bound form lumped against the trunk. She did not see the ropes clearly, nor fully comprehend the blanket; in fact she received only a general impression of something monstrous, bulky, terrific. She uttered a shrill scream, and, for a few seconds, stood spellbound. A choking sound, muffled and terrible, came from the shapeless bulk, and one end of it began to sway and the other to twist and wag. Mrs. Beesley turned and ran for her very life.
Instinct, rather than reason, directed Mrs. Beesley's fleeing feet toward the clearings and farmsteads of the settlement. She left the haunted woods behind her, crossed a lumpy pasture at an amazing pace, sprang into the middle of a brush fence, and fought through without a halt, sighted a house with a male figure in the foreground, and kicked her way toward these signs of protection with such high action that her elastic-sided boots acknowledged themselves frankly, and Captain Wigmore's suspicions of white stockings were confirmed. She arrived with such force as to send the frail old captain reeling backward across an empty flower bed. Following him, she reclined upon the mold.
"Bless my soul!" cried the captain. "Why, it is Mrs. Beesley! My dear Mrs. Beesley, what the devil is the matter with you? Allow me to help you to your feet. You'll ruin your gown in that bed, I'm sure. Did you see a bear?"
She had no breath for words, just then, and her legs felt as if they had melted. Wigmore possessed himself of her fat hands, set his heels in the edge of the flower bed, and pulled. He suggested a small terrier worrying a large and sleepy pig. Presently he desisted from his efforts, retreated a few paces, and wiped his face with his handkerchief.
"Collect yourself, my dear Mrs. Beesley," he pleaded. "I'm afraid you'll catch your death sitting there. Come now, try to tell me all about the bear—and try to rise."
The widow found her voice, though she did not move.
"It weren't a b'ar, captain," she cried. "Sakes alive! No b'ar 'u'd scare me like that. Don't know what to call it, captain. The devil, I reckon—or a ghost, maybe—or a annerchrist. You better git yer gun, captain, and go back and take a look. Oh, lor'! Oh, sakes alive! I never thought to see the day Mary Beesley 'u'd jump fences like a breechy steer!"
"Calm yourself, Mrs. Beesley," returned old Wigmore, "and tell me where you saw this creature. Did it chase you?"