Footsteps were rushing up and down stairs, and excited voices were calling her name all over the house, but she did not pause or turn from her task.  It was Miss Penelope who first found her and clamored to know what had happened; but she did not stop to answer, and went on turning back the covers of the bed—­the last thing needing to be done—­and listening for the sounds of the horses’ hoofs.  They could now be heard approaching with that sad, slow, solemn rhythm—­that subdued beat, beat, beat, of horses’ feet—­which has fallen on all our bruised hearts as an awful part of the funeral march.  She ran out of the room and downstairs, drawing her skirt away from Miss Penelope’s frightened grasp, and passing William Pressley, as if his restraining words had been no more than the gusty wind.  She was waiting outside when the three horsemen drew up at the door.  The burden which they bore was still apparently lifeless, and with a sickening pang of fear she bent over the parted lips as they lowered him from the saddle, thinking for one despairing moment that he no longer breathed.  But the faint flutter went on, and she gave way so that he might be borne up the stairs, and running before, she told them where to lay him down.

William Pressley made one or two efforts to direct what was being done, and although the girl’s passionate excitement swept him aside, he still did what he could, and offered to furnish a fresh horse for the quicker fetching of the doctor, when the attorney-general said he would go for him at once.  It was like William Pressley to do this; it would have been unlike him to neglect any duty that he saw.  But the offering of the horse and the full performance of his own duty did not keep him from looking at Ruth in severe displeasure.  He did not yet know how this thing had happened, and was far from suspecting that she had been out of the house that night.  Yet it disturbed and angered him to see her flying here and there, and running to and fro to get things that were wanted, as though the servants could not be quick enough.  With all this in his tone, he coldly and strongly urged her to join the rest of the family, pointing out the fact that there was nothing more to be done by any one till the doctor should come.  But she merely shook her head, without speaking, and slid softly into a seat by the bedside, and there William Pressley left her, disdaining to contend.  She thought that she was alone—­so far as she thought of herself at all—­but the boy sat unseen and forgotten in a shadowed corner of the chamber.  He was gazing at her, but her gaze never once wandered from the still white face on the pillow.

The rest of the family were gathered around the hearth in the great room downstairs.  The judge had been summoned from the cabin in which he slept, and he was now plying Father Orin with questions.  There was a cry of alarmed amazement when the priest told of finding Ruth at Anvil Rock.  Only William Pressley said nothing, and sat perfectly still, with a sudden stiffening of his bearing.  It was not easy for the priest to make the whole story clear, for he did not understand it quite clearly himself.  But he told as much as he knew of the night’s events.  And when he was done, the judge’s voice stilled the clamor of the other excited voices.