"Oh Wil-lee!" sobbed Aunt Saxon. "That's all right dear! Just
you lie right down in your bed and take a good sleep. I didn't
understand. Auntie didn't understand. All right Willie. I'll keep it
real still. Now you lie down won't you? You will won't you? You'll
really lie down and sleep won't you Willie?"
"Didn't I say I would?" snapped Willie shamedly, and subsided on his
bed again while Aunt Saxon stole painfully, noiselessly over the creak
in the stair, closed the house for the night and crept tearfully to her
own bed, where she lay for hours silently wiping the steady trickle of
hopeless tears. Oh, Willie, Willie! And she had had such hopes!
But Billy lay staring wide eyed at the open square of his window that
showed the little village nestling among the trees dotted here and
there with friendly winking lights, the great looming mountains in the
distance, and Stark mountain, farthest and blackest of them all. He
shut his eyes and tried to blot it out, but it seemed to loom through
his very eyelids and mock him. He seemed to see Mark, his idol, carried
between those other three dark figures into the blackness of that
haunted house. He seemed to see him lying helpless, bound, on the musty
bed in the deserted room, Mark, his beloved Mark. Mark who had carried
him on his shoulder as a tiny child, who had ridden him on his back,
and taught him to swim and pitch ball and box, Mark who let him go
where even the big boys were not allowed to accompany him, and who
never told on him nor treated him mean nor went back on him in any way!
Mark! He had been the means of putting Mark in that helpless
position, while circumstances which he was now quite sure the devil had
been specially preparing, wove a tangled maze about the young man's
feet from which there seemed no way of extrication.
Billy shut his eyes and tried to sleep but sleep would not come. He
began to doubt if he would ever sleep again. He lay listening to the
evening noises of the village. He heard Jim Rafferty's voice going by
to the night shift, and Tom McMertrie. They were laughing softly and
once he thought he heard the name "Old Hair-Cut." The Tully baby across
the street had colic and cried like murder. Murder! Murder! Now
why did he have to think of that word of all words? Murder? Well, it
was crying like it wanted to murder somebody. He wished he was a baby
himself so he could cry. He'd cry harder'n that. Little's dog was
barking again. He'd been barking all day long. It was probably at that
strange guy at the parsonage. Little's dog never did like strangers.
That creak was Barneses gate with the iron weight hitched on the chain
to make it shut, and somebody laughed away up the street! There went
the clock, nine o'clock! Gee! Was that all? He thought it must be about
three in the morning! And then he must have dozed off for a little, for
when he woke with a start it was very still and dark, as if the moon
had gone away, had been and gone again, and he heard a cautious little
mouse gnawing at the baseboard in his room, gnawing and stopping and
gnawing again, then whisking over the lath like fingers running a scale
on the piano. He had watched Miss Lynn do it once on the organ.