Half an hour later he heard a latch raised.  Were the robbers breaking into the house below?  He heard a soft tread upon the floor.  Should he rise and give the alarm?  Something restrained him.  He reflected that a robber would be sure to stumble over some of the “brats.”  So he lay still and finally slumbered, only awakening when the place in which he slept was full of the smoke of frying grease from the room below.

At breakfast Pete Jones scowled.  He was evidently angry about something.  He treated Ralph with a rudeness not to be overlooked, as if he intended to bring on a quarrel.  Hartsook kept cool, and wished he could drive from his mind all memory of the past night.  Why should men on horseback have any significance to him?  He was trying to regard things in this way, and from a general desire to keep on good terms with his host he went to the stable to offer his services in helping to feed the stock.

“Don’t want no saft-handed help!” was all he got in return for his well-meant offer.  But just as he turned to leave the stable he saw what made him tremble again.  There was the same sorrel horse with a white left forefoot and a white nose.

To shake off his nervousness, Ralph started to school before the time.  But, plague upon plagues!  Mirandy Means, who had seen him leave Pete Jones’s, started just in time to join him where he came into the big road.  Ralph was not in a good humor after his wakeful night, and to be thus dogged by Mirandy did not help the matter.  So he found himself speaking crabbedly to the daughter of the leading trustee, in spite of himself.

“Hanner’s got a bad cold this mornin’ from bein’ out last night, and she can’t come to spellin’-school to-night,” began Mirandy, in her most simpering voice.

Ralph had forgotten that there was to be another spelling-school.  It seemed to him an age since the orthographical conflict of the past night.  This remark of Mirandy’s fell upon his ear like an echo from the distant past.  He had lived a lifetime since, and was not sure that he was the same man who was spelling for dear life against Jim Phillips twelve hours before.  But he was sorry to hear that Hannah had a cold.  It seemed to him, in his depressed state, that he was to blame for it.  In fact, it seemed to him that he was to blame for a good many things.  He seemed to have been committing sins in spite of himself.  Broken nerves and sleepless nights often result in a morbid conscience.  And what business had he to wander over this very road at two o’clock in the morning, and to see three galloping horsemen, one of them on a horse with a white left forefoot and a white nose?  What business had he watching Dr. Small as he went home from the bedside of a dying patient near daylight in the morning?  And because he felt guilty he felt cross with Mirandy, and to her remark about Hannah he only replied that “Hannah was a smart girl.”

“Yes,” said Mirandy, “Bud thinks so.”