To bed I went, but not to sleep. Did I close my eyes I saw the Professor in the clutches of Byron Lukens being dragged along the village street amid the jeers of the people. Swallows fluttered in the chimney, and I heard there the echoes of the struggle when the constable laid his hand on the shoulders of my friend. The wind moaned in the trees, and I fancied Penelope now upbraiding me for the trouble I had brought upon them, now pleading with me to send her father home to her. A faint crowing sounded from the orchard, hailing the shadow of the morning, the gray ghost rising from the dark ridges. I slipped from my bed to the window, and watched the valley as it shook itself from sleep. How slowly came that day! The birds stirred in their nests, but, like me, they dared not venture forth into a world so filled with uncanny shadows. Yet the day did come. Over by the dark, towering wall that hemmed in the valley the gray turned to pink, and I could see the trees on the ridge-top like a fringe against the brightening sky. Louder sounded the crowing in the orchard, and to me it brought a warning that I must hurry. I looked to the northward, and saw only the mists covering the land, and in my fancy beyond them the mountains where bear and wildcat lurked. There the Professor and Penelope lay unconscious that even now the terrible warrant might be issuing and at any moment would fall upon them. There was only one thing for me to do, and though when I had closed the house door softly behind me and turned my back to the reddening east the mists were tenfold more mysterious and the mountains tenfold more forbidding, I ran straight down the road into the gloom, as though the warrant were racing with me. CHAPTER IV