Helen sat by the window, no comfort touching her heart.
Tears coursed her cheeks no longer, but her eyes were
wide and staring, and her lips parted, for the hush
was broken by the far clamor of the court-house bell
ringing in the night. It rang, and rang, and
rang, and rang. She could not breathe. She
threw open the window. The bell stopped.
All was quiet once more. The east was growing
gray.
Suddenly out of the stillness there came the sound
of a horse galloping over a wet road. He was
coming like mad. Some one for a doctor? No;
the horse-hoofs grew louder, coming out from the town,
coming this way, coming faster and faster, coming
here. There was a splashing and trampling
in front of the house and a sharp “Whoa!”
In the dim gray of first dawn she made out a man on
a foam-flecked horse. He drew up at the gate.
A window to the right of hers went screeching up.
She heard the judge clear his throat before he spoke.
“What is it? That’s you, isn’t
it, Wiley? What is it?” He took a good deal
of time and coughed between the sentences. His
voice was more than ordinarily quiet, and it sounded
husky. “What is it, Wiley?”
“Judge, what time did Mr. Harkless leave here
last night and which way did he go?”
There was a silence. The judge turned away from
the window. Minnie was standing just outside
his door. “It must have been about half-past
nine, wasn’t it, father?” she called in
a shaking voice. “And, you know, Helen
thought he went west.”
“Wiley!” The old man leaned from the sill
again.
“Yes!” answered the man on horseback.
“Wiley, he left about half-past nine—just
before the storm. They think he went west.”
“Much obliged. Willetts is so upset he
isn’t sure of anything.”
“Wiley!” The old man’s voice shook;
Minnie began to cry aloud. The horseman wheeled
about and turned his animal’s head toward town.
“Wiley!”
“Yes.”
“Wiley, they haven’t—you don’t
think they’ve got him?”
“By God, judge,” said the man on horseback,
“I’m afraid they have!”
THE COURT-HOUSE BELL
The court-house bell ringing in the night! No
hesitating stroke of Schofields’ Henry, no uncertain
touch, was on the rope. A loud, wild, hurried
clamor pealing out to wake the country-side, a rapid
clang! clang! clang! that struck clear in to
the spine.
The court-house bell had tolled for the death of Morton,
of Garfield, of Hendricks; had rung joy-peals of peace
after the war and after political campaigns; but it
had rung as it was ringing now only three times; once
when Hibbard’s mill burned, once when Webb Landis
killed Sep Bardlock and intrenched himself in the
lumber-yard and would not be taken till he was shot
through and through, and once when the Rouen accommodation
was wrecked within twenty yards of the station.
