There was a significance in the last remark that did not escape Burton. As he sat in the dimly lighted office in the dark, empty, silent store, the ruins of his life came crashing down upon him. He tried to think calmly, to collect his thoughts, but his mind was a chaos of emotions. Out of the maze of perplexities, complete mysteries and half known truths more baffling still, a few characters, a few incidents, gradually distinguished themselves. The night at Grant’s, the singer, and his recital, spoken to an audience but aimed at one soul; the sacramental day at Crotton’s Crossing, again in memory he rehearsed it; he recalled the great stone, he saw the faces blend in the smiling water, and the solemn red sun look through the serried bars—! Ah, the bars! Prophetic vision which he had left unread! Bars, bars between him and the sunlight! Yes, bars, and cold, wet stone walls. They stared at him now, they glared at him, wet and shiny, out of the dark corners. They circled him, they compassed him, they crowded him. Bars, and stones, and water! They would strip him of the dress of civilization and clothe him in the garb of infamy. They would feed his body with prison fare, but his soul they would leave to shrivel and starve. However innocent he might go in, only a criminal could he come out. There was something worse than being a fugitive. Better to defy the law and the officers of the law than to let them thrust him into the criminal mill. Gardiner was right. He would fly. The world was large, there still was a chance for him, he would learn to live—and forget.
A mental numbness followed the strain of these thoughts; he did not sleep, but he lost consciousness of time. When he came to himself it was quite dark, and he was hungry. He groped his way through the store and found some cheese and biscuits, which he thrust into his pocket. Then he remembered the money Gardiner had left, but as he reached to take it from the drawer his hand paused, irresolute. Surely Gardiner had done enough for him; Gardiner, who had gone his bond and then urged him to fly. He turned away, the money untouched.
Burton let himself out by a side door; the outer air was strangely hot and oppressive. He heard many voices, and a babel of strange, confused sounds; horses being hurried into shafts, automobiles whirring along the streets. He made his way to a lane, and a large drop of rain spat on his face. His eyes were as yet unaccustomed to distant objects, but he turned to the west and beheld the heavens a-seethe with lightning—not a vivid glare that blinds the beholder, but a bright silvery flush playing like the aurora behind a mass of dark-blue cloud. Burton knew the country well enough to read the menace at a glance; the heavy blue-black cloud riding ahead of the storm never hunts except for big game. The air was oppressively still, but shortly it would be torn with the violence of the tornado; the half-obscured lightning, now playing all the way from the horizon to the zenith, would break in jagged, white-hot thunder bolts through the uneven atmosphere, and at its heels would come the deluge of rain and, perhaps, hail. It was not an uncommon scene; once or twice a season these terrifying storms were to be expected, and farmer and merchant alike watched anxiously for the straight, misty, greyish cloud and listened for the accompanying rumble of the dreaded hail.