other hand clutched the boughs of a
great holly-tree close beside the house. It was only the moonlight on
those smooth, lustrous leaves, but it seemed as if smiling white faces
looked suddenly down from among the shadows: at this lonely hour, with
none awake to see, what, strange things may there not be astir in the
world, what unmeasured, unknown forces, sometimes felt through is the
dulling sleep of mortals, and then called dreams! As he stood breathless
upon the ground the wind awoke. He heard it race around the corner of
the house, bending the lilac bushes, and then it softly buffeted him
full in the face and twirled his hat on the ground. As he stooped to
pick it up he heard whispers and laughter in the lustrous boughs of
the holly, and the gleaming faces shifted with the shadows. He looked
fearfully over his shoulder; the rising wind might waken some one of the
household. His "Neighbor" was, he knew, solicitous about the weather,
and suspicious of its intentions lest it not hold fine till all the oats
be sown. A pang wrung his heart; he remembered the long line of seasons
when, planting corn in the pleasant spring days, his "Neighbor" had
opened the furrow with the plough, and the "Captain" had followed,
dropping the grains, and he had brought up the rear with his hoe,
covering them over, while the clouds floated high in the air, and
the mild sun shone, and the wind kept the shadows a-flicker, and the
blackbird and the crow, complacently and craftily watching them from
afar, seemed the only possible threatening of evil in all the world.
He hastened to stiffen his resolve. He had need of it. Tyler Sudley had
said that he did not know how the law stood, and for himself, he was
not willing to risk his liberty on it. He gazed apprehensively upon the
little batten shutter of the window of the room where Nehe-miah Yerby
slept, expecting to see it slowly swing open and disclose him there. It
did not stir, and gathering resolution from the terrors that had beset
him when he fancied his opportunity threatened, he ran like a frightened
deer fleetly down the road, and plunged into the dense forest. The wind
kept him company, rollicking, quickening, coming and going in fitful
gusts. He heard it die away, but now and again it was rustling among a
double file of beech-trees all up the mountainside. He saw the commotion
in their midst, the effect of swift movement as the scant foliage
fluttered, then the white branches of the tre