For a moment the worried woman felt as if she would like to go to bed and cover up her head and so escape these persistent persecutors.  But she shook her head.  That would never do.  She knew that when she awoke in the morning some of those women would still be in the parlor, and, to save her soul, she could not now imagine what it was that kept them there like hounds upon her track.

It was now eleven o’clock.  When had the Port house been open so late as that?  The people in the town must be talking about it, and there would be more talking the next day.  Perhaps it might be in the town paper.  The morning would be worse than the night.  She could not bear it any longer.  There was now nothing to be heard in front but that maddening chatter in the parlor, and up the back stairs came the snores of the servant.  She got a traveling-bag from a closet and proceeded to pack it; then she put on her bonnet and shawl and put into her bag all the money she had with her, trembling all the time as if she had been a thief:  robbing her own house.  She could not go down the back stairs, because, as has been said, she could have been seen from the parlor; but a carpenter had been mending the railing of a little piazza at the back of the house, and she remembered he had left his ladder.  Down this ladder, with her bag in her hand, Miss Port silently moved.  She looked into the kitchen; she could not see the servant, but she could hear her snoring on a bench.  Clapping her hand over the girl’s mouth, she whispered into her ear, and without a word the frightened creature sat up and followed Miss Port into the yard.

“Now, then,” said Miss Port, whispering as if she were sticking needles into the frightened girl, “I’m goin’ away, and don’t you ask no questions, for you won’t get no answers.  You just go to bed, and let them people stay in the parlor all night.  They’ll be able to take care of the house, I guess, and if they don’t I’ll make ’em suffer.  In the morning you can see Mrs. Faulkner—­for she’s the ringleader—­and tell her that you’re goin’ home to your mother, and that Miss Port expects her to pull down all the blinds in this house, and shut and bolt the doors.  She is to see that the eatables is put away proper or else give to the poor—­which will be you, I guess—­and then she is to lock all the doors and take the front-door key to Squire Allen, and tell him I’ll write to him.  And what’s more, you can say to the nasty thing that if I find anything wrong in my house, or anything missin’, I ’ll hold her and her husband responsible for it, and that I’m mighty glad I don’t belong to their church.”

Then she slipped out of the back gate of the yard, and made her way swiftly to the railroad-station.  There was a train for the north which passed Glenford at half-past twelve, and which could be flagged.  There was one man at the station, and he was very much surprised to see Miss Port.

“Is anything the matter?” he said.