It would have seemed that in such confusion even the rashest intruder might go unchallenged, unrecognized, yet Vesta pushed her companion from her and into the shadow again before she looked around for her people. Her Aunt Miranda was puffing ponderously down the aisle toward a shrieking infant which had awakened from its nap on a back bench.
“Aunt ’Randy,” Vesta called, “I’m goin’ home with—somebody. I’m all right. I’ll be thar afore ye.”
She could see Mrs. Minter’s lips shape themselves to some words which her vigorously nodded head suggested were those of assent. She dipped into the dark; Ross swept his sweetheart up on a capable arm, and they set off running down the wood path which led across the fields to the Minter place.
The noises of the meeting behind them diminished as they ran. Other people were hurrying through the forest, calling, assuring themselves of the whereabouts and safety of members of their parties. Here and there lanterns or torches flickered.
“Hadn’t we better go through the bushes?” panted the girl. “Somebody’s apt to see ye—an’ then—”
“No,” returned Adene, half lifting her along; “nobody’ll take notice in a storm like this; an’ if they should, I’m about tired of dodgin’. We got to marry sometime, girl. How about then? Yer pappy’ll know then, won’t he?”
Thereafter they ran in silence. Twice the lightning illuminated their way, diminishing peals of thunder following. It was after the second of these that a shot rang out, startling Vesta so that she clung to Ross’s arm and screamed. The young fellow made the usual dry comment of the mountain-born, “They’s a man standin’ somewhars right now with an empty gun in his hand.” Then they fled breathlessly under the cover of a projecting ledge in the small bluff among the bushes which had been Adene’s objective point. The heavens opened, and the floods descended.
There is something cozy and delightful about standing sheltered and dry, while the whole world falls down in rain, the elements themselves seeking all in vain to reach and destroy you. Vesta put out a hand to let the great drops strike on it, pushing back her hair and lifting her face to the keen, sweet coolness of the downpour.
“Don’t you love it?” she asked again and again. “Hit ’minds me of playin’ when I was a child, and just goin’ crazy hollerin’ ‘Rain flag’ when hit come down this a-way.”
“You an’ me used to play that together,” Ross reminded her. “That was in the days before your dad took up the feud again.”