“If we can’t,” she pressed me, “will you drive into Hagerstown with me?” “Yes,” I promised. “Oh,” she said, “I can’t bear it. I can see him lying dead on those cruel paving stones. I can’t bear it.” I remembered that, just as Rex and Leslie had been inseparable all through their childhood, so Anna and Pake had been comrades from the cradle on. I said nothing. “Can you hitch up without the lantern?” she demanded. “Has the stable been altered?” I asked. “Not a bit,” she said. In fact my hand in the dark found in the same places what might have been the same hickory harness-pegs and on them what seemed like the same old sets of harness. “Which stall?” I asked. “Laddie’s old stall,” she directed me; “call her Nell.” I harnessed the mare and led her out to the carriage shed. Anna climbed into the buggy. I opened the gate into the grove and closed it after she had driven through. At the far end of the grove I got out of the buggy again and let down the bars. After I had put them up and was at last in the buggy she handed the reins to me. “Nell can trot,” she said. Nell trotted, the snaky black shadows lay inky dark across the road. We tore past Grotto station. We neared Jonesville. I had no sense of ineptitude or futility in what we were trying to do. I did not feel I was on a wild goose chase. I did not feel absurd. I took our errand most seriously. We were on our way to warn Pake against the devilish machinations of a fiend who had contrived and compassed three ingenious murders. We were racing against time to warn him before it was too late. I was wrought up to the highest pitch of excitement over the gravity and urgency of our mission. We found the telegraph operator still awake. We persuaded him to do as we asked. Anna wrote and I amended till we agreed on: “Change your office immediately. Do not enter it again on any account. Get another office at once. Act instantly; this is a matter of life and death. Explanations by letter. “ANNA.” When the cablegram was sent off we drove homeward, at Nell’s natural pace, which was not slow. We felt only partly relieved. A dozen times Anna sighed: “I hope we were in time; oh, I hope we were in time!” The atmosphere of gloom and tragedy pursued us as we returned, enveloped the Alders when again we were seated on the porch. Hardly were we seated when Mattie’s husband came. I had heard he had been consumptive, but had recovered completely. He looked to me like a dying man; haggard, gray-cheeked, sunken-eyed, trembling. He greeted people like a sleep-walker. As soon as greetings were over he said: “Buck, I want to talk business to you a moment.” Buck stood up. He had the Hibbard faculty of intuition and unexpectedness. I was used to both, of old. But I was very much astonished when he pinched me as he passed and indicated that I was to come, too.