d
Hiram stopped in his walk to count the strokes.

The last vibration died away into silence, and still he stood
motionless, now listening with a new and sudden intentness, for, even as
the clock rang the last stroke, he heard soft, heavy footsteps, moving
slowly and cautiously along the pathway before the house and directly
below the open window. A few seconds more and he heard the creaking of
rusty hinges. The mysterious visitor had entered the mill. Hiram crept
softly to the window and looked out. The moon shone full on the dusty,
shingled face of the old mill, not thirty steps away, and he saw that
the door was standing wide open. A second or two of stillness followed,
and then, as he still stood looking intently, he saw the figure of a man
suddenly appear, sharp and vivid, from the gaping blackness of the open
doorway. Hiram could see his face as clear as day. It was Levi West, and
he carried an empty meal bag over his arm.

Levi West stood looking from right to left for a second or two, and then
he took off his hat and wiped his brow with the back of his hand. Then
he softly closed the door behind him and left the mill as he had come,
and with the same cautious step. Hiram looked down upon him as he passed
close to the house and almost directly beneath. He could have touched
him with his hand.

Fifty or sixty yards from the house Levi stopped and a second figure
arose from the black shadow in the angle of the worm fence and joined
him. They stood for a while talking together, Levi pointing now and then
toward the mill. Then the two turned, and, climbing over the fence,
cut across an open field and through the tall, shaggy grass toward the
southeast.

Hiram straightened himself and drew a deep breath, and the moon, shining
full upon his face, snowed it twisted, convulsed, as it had been when
he had fronted his stepbrother seven months before in the kitchen. Great
beads of sweat stood on his brow and he wiped them away with his sleeve.
Then, coatless, hatless as he was, he swung himself out of the window,
dropped upon the grass, and, without an instant of hesitation, strode
off down the road in the direction that Levi West had taken.

As he climbed the fence where the two men had climbed it he could see
them in the pallid light, far away across the level, scrubby meadow
land, walking toward a narrow strip of pine woods.

A little later they entered the sharp-cut shadows beneath the trees and
were swallowed in