Flick laughed.  “Any number of them,” he said.  “If the rats they’ve caught want to run around in the trap, what’s that to them?”

Seagreave had no opportunity to carry out his plan just then, for Hugh began to play and Pearl made her second appearance.  The very sight of her, their vision of spring, who seemed to have sped up from the valley far below and transformed the dark and dreary winter, brought the house to its feet and sent a storm of applause ringing to the rafters.

But she was spring no longer.  In this dance of the seasons she was giving them she now typified summer, splendid and glowing.  Her gown was a vivid green, spangled with gold and wreathed in roses.  A festoon of pink and crimson flowers lay about her neck, its long ends falling almost to the foot of her frock, and her hair was crowned with roses.  And her dancing had changed.  It was no longer the springtime she portrayed, with all her plastic grace of motion, symbolizing its delicate evanescence with arch hesitations and fugitive advances, and all the playful joyousness of youth.

On this second appearance she was dancing the summer and dancing it with a passionate zest and spirit, alternated with enchanting languors.  When at last she ceased it seemed as if the encores which drew her back on the stage again and again would never end.

And the sheriff, noting this, stirred uneasily and whispered to a grizzled companion:  “I wish this was over, Lord, I do!  Things don’t look quite so dead sure as they did.  Gosh!  She’s got ’em all right in the hollow of her hand.”

“It’s her you got to reckon with,” returned the companion gloomily.  “This blasted long winter’s got the boys right on edge.  They’re jus’ spoiling for some deviltry or other, and if she comes out in front of the curtain and makes an appeal to ’em, why, there’ll be one of the meanest scraps that’s been seen in the mountains for some time.”

“You bet,” agreed the sheriff.  “What do you suppose that Seagreave’s chinning Hughie about.”

“God knows!” returned his pessimistic companion.  “Nothing that’s going to help us any, you can stake your bottom dime on that.  Here she comes again, and you and me’s just as big fools about her as the rest if we’d let ourselves be.”

This time Pearl danced the autumn, a vision of crimson and gold, with grape leaves wreathing her black hair.  If Hugh had conveyed to her any disturbing news during the intermission, she showed no trace of it in her dancing, and if she had stirred her audience to impassioned enthusiasm before, it was unlimited, almost frantic now.  She was the flame of autumn upon the mountain hillsides, a torch burning with the joy of life and flinging her gay, defiant splendor in the menacing face of winter.  Before she had finished the house was on its feet, shouting and clapping and refusing to let her leave the stage.

“She’s gone to their heads worse’n wine,” muttered the sheriff.  “I suppose it’s now she’s goin’ to ask ’em to stand by her, an’ with leaders like Gallito an’ Bob Flick an’ Harry Seagreave to line ’em up an’ carry things with a rush, where in hell are we?”