convulsive was his grasp that it shook the hook from the staple, and the
shutter slowly opened as he stood at gaze.

Perhaps it was the motion that attracted the attention of the dealer,
perhaps the influx of a current of fresh air. He lifted his casual
glance and beheld, distinct in the light from the kerosene lamp
and imposed on the white background of the mist, that familiar and
individual face, pallid, fixed, strange, with an expression that he had
never seen it wear hitherto. One moment of suspended faculties, and he
sprang up with a wild cry that filled the little shanty with its shrill
terror. The others gazed astounded upon him, then followed the direction
of his starting eyes, and echoed his frantic fright. There was a wild
scurry toward the door. The overturning of the lamp was imminent, but
it still burned calmly on the elevated hearth, while the shoeing-stool
capsized in the rush, and the red head of its lowly occupant was lowlier
still, rolling on the dirt floor. Even with this disadvantage, however,
he was not the hindmost, and reached the exit unhurt. The only specific
damage wrought by the panic was to the big barnlike doors of the place.
They had been stanchly barred against the possible intrusion of
the constable of the district, and the fastenings in so critical an
emergency could not be readily loosed. The united weight and impetus of
the onset burst the flimsy doors into fragments, and as the party fled
in devious directions in the misty moonlight, the calm radiance entered
at the wide-spread portal and illuminated the vacant place where late
had been so merry a crew.

Walter Wyatt had known the time when the incident would have held an
incomparable relish for him. But now he gazed all forlorn into the empty
building with a single thought in his mind. "Not one of 'em keered a
mite! Nare good word, nare sigh, not even, 'Fare ye well, old mate!'"

His breast heaved, his eyes flashed.

"An' I hev loant money ter Jim, whenst I hed need myself; an' holped
George in the mill, when his wrist war sprained, without a cent o' pay;
an' took the blame when 'Dolphus war faulted by his dad fur lamin' the
horse-critter; an' stood back an' let Pete git the meat whenst we-uns
shot fur beef, bein' he hev got a wife an' chil'ren ter feed. All
_leetle_ favors, but nare _leetle_ word."

He had turned from the window and was tramping absently down the road,
all unmindful of the skulking methods of the spectral gentr