IT was long past midnight when Mrs. Eaton went down-stairs for the fourth time to see if her son had returned home. She was alone with the servants in the old Eaton house, which was three miles from Broad Acres, and she had not ventured out in the storm, which had been raging since early evening. The wind shook the old house at intervals with the moan of autumn in the gale, yet the roll of thunder recalled midsummer. Once she had looked out and, in a blinding flash, saw the old cottonwoods in front of the house stripped naked by the wind. There was a weird aspect to the world in that one fierce moment of illumination, and the tumult of sounds without, the creaking of the old house within, and the interminable ticking of the clocks recalled to her shrinking mind a memory of that other night, long ago, when she had been summoned home from Lexington, to find her husband’s dead body in the long west room, and hear the whisperings of the terrified servants on the stairs. She knew that even now the negroes were locked in the wing, for they believed that on such nights Eaton walked, demanding the blood of the Yarnalls, and since Yarnall’s death, violent as his own, they had shrieked at shadows. Though she realized the folly of their superstitions, poor Jinny Eaton, alone and vaguely terrified, shivered too. Once she caught herself looking over her shoulder, and at last she cried hysterically. The wind, sweeping a long branch against the window, rattled the pane, and she started up, white with fright. In a sudden panic she rang for her maid, but no one answered, though she heard the blurred sound far in the distance; a glance at the clock told her it was nearly two. There was no light except in the hall and the library, where she herself had turned the electric switch, and she walked through all the other dim rooms, starting at a shadow, and looking over her shoulder when the floors creaked behind her. The house was much more richly furnished than Broad Acres, and everywhere she was surrounded with the luxuries that she loved. But alone there, in those desolate hours before the dawn, poor Jinny found no comfort in the things that had always seemed so comforting. In a vague way at first, and constantly resisting even her own convictions, she had begun to feel a doubt of Jacob,--Jacob, who had been almost omnipotent to her, who had represented all her hopes and aspirations for years, and was, in her own eyes, the achievement of her life. To have her faith in him shaken was more bitter than death. And where was he? A premonition of evil oppressed her, as she wandered from place to place in restless unhappiness. Earlier in the night she had tried in vain to reach him over the telephone: now her only resource was to wait. She went from window to window, peeping out, her face drawn and haggard, and all the well-preserved traces of her former beauty lost in her pathetic dishevelment. She watched the morning dawn over the long fields that