amount to much,"
Mr. Barber insisted. "Better come out, you ladies, and have a look
around. It may rain a bit, but you'll feel easier if you come and get
acquainted with things, so to say." And gathering their resolution the
two women followed him out on the portico.

They shuddered at what they saw.

Night was at hand, two hours before its time. Nothing stirred, not a
vocal chord of hungry, puzzled, frightened chicken or cow. The whole
region seemed to have caught its breath, to be smothered under a pall of
stillness, unbroken except for some occasional distant earthquake of
thunder from the inverted Switzerland of cloud that hung pendant from
the sky.

Mr. Barber's emotions finally ordered themselves into speech as he
watched. "Ain't it grand!" he said.

The two women made no reply. They sat on the steps to the portico, their
arms entwined. The scene beat their more sophisticated intelligences
back into silence. Some minutes they all sat there together, and then
again Mr. Barber broke the spell.

"It do look fearful, like. But you needn't be afraid. It's better to be
friends with it, you might say. And then go to bed and fergit it."

They thanked him for his goodness, bade him good-by, and he clinked down
the flags of the walk and started across the street.

He had got midway across when they all heard a startling sound, an
unearthly cry.

It came out of the distance, and struck the stillness like a blow.

"What is it? What is it, Margie?" Mrs. Reeves whispered excitedly.

Faint and quavering at its beginning, the cry grew louder and more
shrill, and then died away, as the breath that made it ebbed and was
spent. It seemed as if this unusual night had found at last a voice
suited to its mood. Twice the cry was given, and then all was still as
before.

At its first notes the muscles in Mrs. Pollard's arm had tightened. But
Mr. Barber had hastened back at once with reassurance.

"I guess Mrs. Pollard knows what that is," he called to them from the
gate. "It's only our old friend Moll, that lives down there in the
notch. She gets lonesome, every thunderstorm, and let's it off like
that. It's only her rheumatiz, I reckon. We wouldn't feel easy ourselves
without them few kind words from old Moll!"

The two women applauded as they could his effort toward humor. Then,
"Come on, Sallie, quick!" Mrs. Pollard cried to her guest, and the two
women bolted up the steps of the portico and flew like girls through th