Saturday brought her many visitors, Vashti among the rest. Vashti talked to her about the finding of Hemans’ body, the ghost, and the terror which the village lay under, and then departed.
As Saturday waned down to night a sick nervous fear oppressed Mabella; she lit two lamps and tried to fight off her terrors. The ticking of the clock seemed to grow louder and louder. Dorothy tossed in her sleep. Mabella had kept the child awake to cheer her till the little one was thoroughly over-tired. The tension became almost unbearable. She rose, frightened at the sound of her own footstep and took Lanty’s violin from the shelf; she could not play, but she thought it would comfort her to pick at the vibrant strings which were so responsive to Lanty’s touch. She seated herself beside the lamp—her back to the front door, and facing the door in the rear. She thought she heard a noise behind her—she turned swiftly to look over her shoulder—she caught the shadow of a face at the front window—her eyes dilated. There came a sound from the rear door, and a breath of air. She forced her eyes to look. A tall figure, wrapped in black and with gleaming eyes, stood between the lintels. The fiddle fell; its strings breaking with a shriek. Mabella gave one scream of terror, “Lansing—Lansing!” and darted toward the cot where the child lay—but ere she reached it the front door came crashing in, as Lanty dashed his shoulders against it, and before Mabella quite lost consciousness she felt his strong arms about her, and knew that nothing could harm her.
With Mabella in his arms Lanty rushed across the little kitchen to the empty portal of the rear door, and looked forth, and in the starlight saw his cousin Vashti, with head down, running like a hunted hare for home.
“I know you!” he cried in a clarion-like voice—and Vashti heard.
Lanty, eager, yet ashamed to seek Mabella’s pardon, had held lonely vigil without the little cottage; it was his footstep which had so terrified her. It was the fleeting shadow of his face which she had seen. As she looked around he had withdrawn out of sight, and was crouched beside the window when he heard her cry of “Lansing—Lansing!” Only twice before had she called him thus. Once when she came to his arms in Mullein meadow; once during the terrible day when Dorothy came to them, and when Lanty heard it the third time it was as a chord made up of the greatest joy, the greatest agony of his life; he would have crossed the river of death to answer it.