“Skipper, they want you inside. That bass voice of yours is needed.”
Joe held to the porch rail and waited for what might come next.
Alec Landry did not rise. “Allan,” he said heavily, “when you ride at dawn, don’t go by the bridge. I’ve just had word that it’s in bad shape—the weight of a horse would crash it down. It might be a good idea to run your party over and block the approaches. Some luckless devil might wander out on it.”
Presently the young men were gone with lanterns, and lights, and axes to build a barricade; and he who had been great on Allan Robb’s land waited in the house for the just punishment that would come; and a boy, and a dog and a blind man went toward home along the dirt road.
“Conscience, Joe,” Dr. Stone said quietly. “You’ll remember, I sat between them. One, or both, were behind the cold-blooded plan. If, out of a clear sky, knowledge of the plot were exploded, there would have to be a reaction. I counted on that. Conscience can steel itself to brazenly meet the expected, but against the unexpected it is unprepared. And so, when I asked if Allan were expected to return from that ride——”
“Yes?” Joe Morrow asked breathlessly.
“Conscience spoke,” Dr. Stone told him quietly. “Alec Landry’s chair trembled as his guilty soul cowered in fear.”
THE HOUSE OF BEATING HEARTS
In the short dusk of a Friday afternoon in March Joe Morrow came toward home from the village school pleasantly concerned with plans for the week-end holiday. There was a hint of spring in the air, and the hard crust of the winter’s snow had begun to soften. At the top of the last rise out of the village he passed Roscoe Sweetman’s farm, and it seemed to the boy that the burly Mr. Sweetman, busy outside the barn, turned and looked after him as he passed. From there a section of the road spread out before him—the deserted, abandoned Farley place and, beyond that, the rock-and-timber house which Frederick Wingate had built and in which he painted pictures that were sent to art dealers in New York. Queer pictures, the village said—pictures of queer blurs and shadows, pictures in which men did not look like men nor did horses look like horses. Frederick Wingate, according to village suspicion, was slightly mad.
But Joe Morrow’s thoughts were far removed from men who might be mad. Sometimes, if you were lucky, you found an apple imprisoned under the snow—a late windfall that was almost a ball of liquid cider. He swung off the road and, back in the Farley orchard, rooted diligently. Presently, triumphant, he gave a shout. He had found not one apple, but two. He bit through the skin, and the cold, imprisoned juices oozed into his mouth. When the fruit was sucked dry he tossed it aside and bit into the second. And only then did he notice how much the day had darkened.