, the long ride, and the night in the storm.
Nevertheless, the feeling did not depart because he willed that it
should go.

"No, we thank you," Jimmy Grayson was saying; "we are not hungry; but we
should like very much to go to bed."

"It's jest with you," said Simpson. "Marthy, I'll show the gen'lemen to
their room, and you kin stay here till I come back."

The old woman did not speak, but stood in a crouched attitude looking at
Grayson and then at Harley and then at the driver; it seemed to the
correspondent that she did not dare trust her voice, and he saw fear
still lurking in her eyes.

"Come along, gen'lemen," said Simpson, taking from the table a small
lamp, that had been lighted at their entrance, and leading the way.

Harley glanced back once at the door, and the woman's eyes met his in a
look that was like one last despairing appeal. But there was nothing
tangible, nothing that he could not say was the result of an overwrought
fancy.

It was a small and bare room, with only a single bed, to which the old
man took them. "It's the best I've got," he said, apologetically. "Mr.
Grayson, you an' the newspaper man kin sleep in the bed, an' t'other
feller, I reckon, kin curl up on the floor."

"It is good enough for anybody," said Jimmy Grayson, gallantly. As a
matter of fact, both he and Harley had known what it was to fare worse.

"Good-night," the man said, and left them rather hastily, Harley
thought; but the others took no notice, and were soon in sound slumber,
the candidate because he had the rare power of going to sleep whenever
there was a chance, and the driver because he was indifferent and tired.

But Harley lay awake. An hour ago his dream of heaven was a bed, and
now, the bed attained, sleep would not come near. Out of the stillness,
after a while, he heard the gentle moving of feet below, and he sat up
on the bed, all his suspicions confirmed. Something unusual was going on
in this lone house! And it had been going on even before he and the
candidate came!

He listened to the moving feet for a few moments. Then the noise ceased,
but Harley knew that there was no further chance of sleep for him, with
his nerves on edge, and likely to remain there. He lay back on the edge
of the bed, trying to accustom his eyes to the darkness, and presently
he heard a sound, the most chilling that a man can hear. It was the
sound of a woman, alone and in the dark, between midnight and morning,
crying gently,