CHAPTER XIII

WHERE THE MILL STREAM RUNS FIERCEST

Two o’clock.

Three o’clock.

Two men were talking below their breaths in the otherwise empty office.  “That ’ere mill stream never gives up anything it has once caught,” muttered one into the ear of the other.  “It’s swift as fate and in certain places deep as hell.  Dutch Jan’s body was five months at the bottom of it, before it came up at Clark’s pool.”

The man beside him shivered and his hand roamed nervously towards his breast.

“Did Jan, the Dutchman you speak of, fall in by accident, or did he—­throw himself over—­from homesickness, or some such cause?”

“Wa’al we don’t say; on account of his old mother, you know, we don’t say.  It was called accident.”

The other man rose and walked restlessly to the window.

“Half the town is up,” he muttered.  “The lanterns go by like fire-flies.  Poor Ransom!  It’s a hopeless job, I fear.”  And again his hand wandered to that breast pocket where the edge of a document could be seen.  “I have half a mind to go out myself; anything is better than sitting here.”

But he sat down just the same.  Mr. Harper was no longer a young man.

“The storm’s bating,” observed the one.

“But not the cold.  Throw on a stick; I’m freezing.”

The other man obeyed; then looking up, stared.  A girl stood before them in the doorway.  Anitra, with cheeks ablaze and eyes burning, her traveling dress flapping damp about her heels, and on her head the red shawl she preferred to any hat.  Behind her shoulder peered the anxious face of Mrs. Deo.

“I’m going out,” cried the former in the loud and unmodulated voice of the deaf.  “He don’t come back! he don’t come back!  I’m going to see why.”

The lawyer rose and bowed; then resolutely shook his head.  He did not know whether she had appealed to him or not.  She had not looked at him, had not looked at any one, but he felt that he must protest.

“I beg you not to do so,” he began.  “I really beg you to remain here and wait with me.  You can do no good and the result may be dangerous.”  But he knew he was talking to deaf ears even before the landlady murmured: 

“She doesn’t hear a word.  I’ve talked and talked to her.  I’ve used every sign and motion I could think of, but it’s done no good.  She would dress and she will go out; you’ll see.”

The next minute her prophecy came true; the wild thing, with a quick whirl of her lithe body, was at the front door, and in another instant had flashed through it and was gone.

“It is my duty to follow her,” said the lawyer.  “Help me on with my coat; I’ll find some one to guide me.”

“Here is a lantern.  Excuse me for not going with you,” pleaded Mrs. Deo, “but some one must watch the house.”

The New Yorker nodded, took the lantern offered him, and went stoically out.