f the main road and started up the long
hill toward the Bolton place--not just dark, but a blackness so
profound that the mare between the shafts was only a half formless
splotch of gray as she plodded along ahead. Even his dread of the
place, which formerly had been so acute, did not penetrate the mental
misery that wrapped him; he did not vouchsafe so much as one uneasy
glance ahead until a glimmer of light which seemed to flash out from
the rear of the house fairly shocked him into conscious recollection
of it all.

He sprang erect then, spilling a cataract of water from his hat brim
in a chill trickle down the back of his neck, and barked a shrilly
staccato command at the placid horse. The creaking buggy came to a
standstill.

He tried to persuade himself it was a reflection of the village lights
upon the window panes which had startled him, but it was only a
half-hearted effort. No one could mistake the glow that filtered out
of the black bulk of the rear of the house for anything save the thing
it was. Half way up the hill he sat there, hunched forward in a
hopeless huddle, his eyes protected by cupped palms, and stared and
stared.

Once before, the evening of that day when the Judge's exhibition of
Young Denny's bruised face had been more than his curiosity could
endure, he had approached that bleak farmhouse in fear and trembling,
but the trepidation of that night, half real, half a child of his own
erratic imagination, bulked small beside the throat-tightening terror
of this moment.

And yet he did not turn back. The thought that he had only to wheel
his buggy and beat as silent a retreat as his ungreased axles would
permit never occurred to him. It was much as if his harrowed spirit,
driven hither and yon without mercy throughout the whole day long, had
at last backed into a corner, in a mood of last-ditch, crazy
desperation, and bared its teeth.

"If he is up there," he stated doggedly, "if he is up there,
a-putterin' with his everlasting lump o' clay, he ain't got no more
right up there than I hev! He's just a-trespassin', that's what he's
a-doin'. I'm the legal custodian of the place--it was put into my
hands--and I'll tell him so. I'll give him a chance to git out--or--or
I'll hev the law on him!"

The plump mare went forward again. There was something terribly
uncanny, even in her relentless advance, but the old man clung to the
reins and let her go without a word. When she reached the top she
s