“I’ll get a crowbar,” suggested Harry, scowling in the fierce sunlight.  Jonas Ingram stood with his hair blowing out from under his hat and his stick grasped firmly in his gnarled old hand.  He was all ready to strike.  His chin was thrust out rigidly.  They both pressed close to Joe, but he did not heed them.  He put one shoulder against a panel; every muscle was set.

“Whoever you are, if I have to break this door down—­”

There was a soft commotion on the inside and the bolt was drawn.  Joe, with the other two at his heels, fairly burst into the darkened place, just in time to see a white figure dart across the room and cast itself in a corner.  For an instant they could only blink.  The figure wrapped its white arms about some object.

“You can have everything but this table; you can’t have—­this.”  The words ended in a frightened sob.

“Esther!”

“Oh, Joe!” She struggled to her feet, then shrank back against the wall.  “Oh, I didn’t know it was you.  Go ’way! go ’way!”

“Why, Esther, what do you mean?” He started towards her, but she turned on him.

“Where is she?”

“Where’s who?”

She did not reply, but standing against the wall, she stared at him with a passionate scorn.

“You don’t mean Sarah Norton?” asked Joe, slowly.  Esther quivered.  “Why, she came to tell me of the trouble her father was trying to get me into.  But how did you come here, Esther?  How did you know anything about it?”

She did not answer.  Her head sank.

“How did you, Esther?”

“I saw—­you in the lane,” she faltered, then caught up her veil as though it had been a pinafore.  Joe went up to her, and Jonas Ingram took hold of Harry Barker, and the two stepped outside, but not out of ear-shot; they were still curious.  They could hear Esther’s sobbing voice at intervals.  “I tried to make ’em stop, but they wouldn’t, and I slipped in past ’em and bolted the door; and when you came, I thought it was them—­and, oh! ain’t they our things, Joe?”

The old man thrust his head in at the door.  “Yes,” he roared, then withdrew.

“And won’t they take the table away?”

“No,” he roared again.  “I’d just like to see ’em!”

Esther wept harder.  “Oh, I wish they would; I ought to give ’em up.  I didn’t care for them after I thought—­that.  It was just that I had to have something I wouldn’t let go, and I tried to think only of saving the table for the water-set.”

“Come mighty near bein’ no water-set,” muttered Jonas to himself; then he turned to his companion.  “Young man, I guess they don’t need us no more,” he said.

When he regained his sister-in-law’s, he encountered that lady carrying a steaming dish.  Guests stood about under the trees or sat at the long tables.

“For mercy sakes, Jonas, have you seen Esther?  She made fuss enough about havin’ that dove fixed up in the parlor, and she and Joe ain’t stood under it a minit yet.”