“You must stay out here till I break the thing to Xoa!”

The young man clung to the trellis of the porch for a few moments until Xoa flung wide the door.  Supported in her embrace, he staggered into the sitting room.

“Cry, sonny!  Cry a little,” the Squire adjured him.  “Put your head on Xoa’s knee and have it out.  It will tide you over till your own mother can comfort you.”

But wild desire for knowledge burned the sudden tears out of Vaniman’s eyes.  “Where is Vona?  What is happening?”

“We’ll see to it mighty quick that Vona knows, sonny.  The right word must get to her in the right way.  Mother will know how.  Mother, you’d better attend to it.”

She agreed with that suggestion, but first she brought a basin and water and soft cloths and solicitously made more presentable the young man’s face.

While she ministered to him he told them what had been happening in his affairs.

“You’re alive.  That’s the main point.  Now, Xoa,” urged the Squire, “go to Vona before some lunatic tells her something to scare her to death!”

The good woman hastened away, her smile reassuring the lover.

For some time the Squire regarded Vaniman with an expression into which some of the old notary’s whimsical humor began to creep.  “So it struck you, did it, that you had dropped back into town on a lively night?  I was expecting quite a general stir, myself.  But I’ll confess that the thing hit me as livelier than what I had looked for when I was sitting here and heard a man holler outside that your ghost had chased Tasper Britt into his office.  You see, the plan was not to have Tasper disturbed by any human beings this night.  We all hoped he would sleep sound.  Everybody proposed to tiptoe when passing in the neighborhood of the Harnden house.  But to have a ghost come and chase Tasper around town was wholly outside the calculations of the human beings in Egypt this night.”

“I’m afraid I don’t see any joke hidden in this proposition, Squire,” the young man complained.

“Son, it’s a joke, but it’s so big and ironic that only one of those gods on high Olympus is big enough and broad-minded enough to be able to laugh at it.  Some day the folks of this town will be able to look back on this night and laugh, I do hope.  But not now.  They’re too much wrought up.  They’re too busy.  Hold on!  I’m going to let another man explain the thing.  He’s in a position to pass out information more to the point than anything I can hand you.  I’ll simply say this.  When you saw what you beheld in the fog this night, you were seeing a revised version of the Book of Exodus acted out in real life.  The Children of Israel, of this day and date, are departing from the land of Pharaoh, current edition.  With their flocks and their possessions, their wives and their children, they are on their way to The Promised Land.  And now, if you’ll step into the parlor with me I’ll introduce you to the promiser.”