She hardly noted the incidents of the wayside,—the foot-bridge over the creek; the stars amongst the ripples; the sound of the insects; the zigzag fences on either hand; the mists that lurked among the trees, that paced the turn-rows of the corn-fields, that caught the moonbeams, and glittered against the dark mountain side. It was another gleam that struck her attention; she looked again,—the slant of the rays against the windows of a little school-house. There was a deep impression of silence upon it, vacant in the night, dark but for the moonbeams. The pines that overhung it were sombre and still. The vapors shifted about it, fringing even the rotten palings that inclosed it. Her feet had followed her gaze. She was near the edge of the narrow road, as she paused to wait for Buck and the wagon to come up. She heard nothing as she listened. She said to herself that she must be a long way ahead. She was sensible of fatigue presently; the excitements of the evening were superimposed on the work of the day. She leaned against the tottering fence. Her bonnet had fallen back on her shoulders; she rested her head on her hand, her elbows on the low palings. She might have dreamed for a moment. Suddenly something touched her. She turned her head quickly; her shriek seemed to pierce the sky, for there in the inclosure,—did she see aright?—the idiot’s face! white with a responsive terror upon it, vanishing in the mist. Or was it the mist? Did she hear the quick thud of retreating footsteps, or was it the throbs of her own plunging heart? As she turned, wildly throwing up both arms, she beheld Buck and the wagon on the crest of the hill, with the worshipers from the camp-meeting, and the sight restored to her more mundane considerations. VIII. In those long days while Mink languished in jail, he wondered how the world could wag on without him. He hungered with acute pangs for the mountains; he pined for the sun and the wind. Sometimes he stood for hours at the window, straining for a breath of air. Then the barred aspect of the narrow scene outside of the grating maddened him, and he would fling himself upon his bed; and it would seem to him that he could never rise again. He speculated upon Alethea with a virulence of rage which almost frightened him,—whether she had heard of his arrest, how she had received the news. “Mighty pious, I reckon,” he sneered. “I know ez well ez ef I hed seen her ez she be a-goin’ ’round the kentry a-tellin’ ’bout my wickedness, an’ how she worried an’ worked with me, an’ couldn’t git me shet o’ my evil ways.” He thought of Elvira, too, with a certain melancholy relish of her fancied grief. His heart had softened toward her as his grudge against Alethea waxed hot. “_She_ tuk it powerful hard, I know. I’ll be bound it mighty nigh killed her,—she set so much store by me. But I reckon her folks air glad, bein’ ez they never favored me.”