“Want me to go back wid yer, Marse John?” he asked.

“No,” answered Westerfelt, and he drove rapidly homeward.  Reaching the stable, he put up his horse, and went to the room over the office.  He sat down, took up an old newspaper, and tried to read it, but there seemed to be something in the paling light on the bare fields outside and the stillness of the empty building that oppressed him.  He rose and looked out of the window.  Not a soul was in sight.  The store and the bar, with their closed shutters, looked as if they had not been opened for a century.  A brindled cow stood in the middle of the street, jangling a discordant bell, and lowing dolefully.  He rose, went down-stairs, walked aimlessly about in the stable, and then went up the street towards Bradley’s.  He wondered if Harriet had returned, but as he passed the hotel he had not the courage to look in.

Every door of the Bradley house was closed.  He tried all the windows, but they were held down by sticks placed over the sashes on the inside.  Even the chickens and ducks in the back yard seemed to have fallen under the spell of the unwonted silence.  The scare-crow in the cornfield beyond the staked-and-ridered rail fence looked like the corpse of a human being flattened against the yellow sky.

He went out at the gate and turned up the Hawkbill road till he was high enough to see the village street above the trees.  Later he noticed the vehicles beginning to come back from the camp-ground, and he returned home by a short path through the fields.  He reached the Bradleys’ just as Luke was helping his wife out of the spring-wagon at the gate.

“We didn’t fetch Mis’ Dawson back,” explained Mrs. Bradley.  “She met some old acquaintances—­the Hambrights—­an’ they made ’er go home with ’em.  Lawsy me, haven’t I got a lots to tell you, though!  You had as well prepare fer a big surprise.  You couldn’t guess what tuk place out thar atter you left ef you made a thousand dabs at it.  Luke, go put up the hoss.  I want to talk to John, an’ I don’t want you to bother us tell I’m through, nuther.  You kin find plenty to do out at the barn fer a few minutes.”

Westerfelt followed her into the sitting-room and helped her kindle the fire in the big chimney.

“Well, what has happened?” he asked, when the red flames were rolling up from the heap of split pine under the logs.

“It’s about Mis’ Dawson,” announced Mrs. Bradley, as she sank into a big chair and began to unpin her shawl.  “She’s got religion!”

“You don’t mean it!”

“Yes, an’ I’m what give it to her—­me, an’ nobody else.  I’m a purty thing to be talkin’ that way, but it’s the livin’ truth.  I caused it.  When I seed her git up an’ go acrost to you and drive you clean off, I got so mad I could a-choked her.  I wus sittin’ by Brother Tim Mitchell.  You don’t know ’im, I reckon, but he’s the biggest bull-dog preacher ’at ever give out a hymn.  He’s