Some of the men said they would stay all night, and watch, and gradually the others departed, but even before they separated that night they had found, by the corner of the barn, the point where the fire had been lighted; kerosene oil had been poured upon broken-up shingles, taken from the bundles laid there ready to reshingle the barn when the work grew slack; more than that, Ab Ranger found a box of parlour matches, a luxury little used in Dole; the box was marked with oily fingers.
Mabella, numb with her despair, was taken home by Nathan and Temperance. The tired men whispered together as they lay upon couches improvised of the saved bedding, and watched the embers glow and flicker up into flame, and die away, and leap up again and again.
Vashti was conducted home by the village people.
They stood at the gate watching her run up the little garden path, and open the door of her home; she waved to them from the threshold, and they knew she was safe from the ghost, and as the groups diminished and separated the units composing them drew closer together, for a great fear had laid hold upon Dole.
At length all found sleep, and some from exhaustion, some from despair, some by reason of great grief slept well, but none of them all rested so quietly as did an inert white-faced figure which lay upon the road to Brixton, opposite Witches’ Hill in Mullein meadow. A sorrel horse sniffed at the prostrate shape, and whinnied in the night, but it was not till nearly noon the next day that the dead body of Hemans the machine agent was found. His hands and clothes were covered with kerosene oil, in his pocket was another box of parlour matches.
The burning of Lanty’s home had been terribly avenged.
Vashti Lansing, actuated by the spirit of unrest which possessed her, had taken her big black shawl about her and fled swiftly through the by-ways to Mullein meadow. She had no fears of the night. Her dark spirit was akin to it. In its mystery she saw a simulacrum of the mysteries of her own soul.
And as she sat upon the stones of Witches’ Hill and felt the summer wind raising the heavy locks of hair upon her brow, a sense of peace and rest, fleeting, but inexpressibly precious, came to her. Some strange influence made her turn her head and she saw a tongue of flame shoot up like a flaming dart of defiance hurled from earth to heaven. It was Lanty’s home! As the thought formulated itself in her brain she was aware of the soft thud, thud, of galloping hoofs coming towards Mullein meadow.