She let him go and listened to his retreating footsteps down the street into the darkness. She felt suddenly faint and weak. She walked back to the house, entered the sitting room, and lit a candle. Then she went to Miss Susie's door and opened it. Miss Susie's eyes were looking calmly at her from the bed as she entered. "What's the matter?" said Miss Susie's voice. "He was here just an hour ago. I saw him go down the street. And now they're bringing him back, broken. Just an hour! God knows what happened to him." "Who do you mean, child?" Miss Susie moved forward and raised up a little on her elbow. "It just seems as if the hand of Fate was stretching out over this place, reaching down over us. It makes no difference what we do--we're helpless--all of us." She seemed to steady herself. She came over to the bedside and laid her hand on Miss Susie's forehead. "Don't you want me to bring you a drink of water?" she asked. CHAPTER XX Directly after breakfast she went to the Mosby place. The sunlight was making glaring white patches on the pavement, of which she was but dimly conscious as she walked along. The house looked very peaceful, with the mellowness of respectable old age, that fresh October morning. She climbed the steps to the front door, feeling a little self-conscious as she stood and waited. It was possible that she was borrowing trouble; the accident might not prove to have been a serious one at all and she might seem too solicitous. The door opened and a very old Negro woman in a stiff, white, starched apron stood and peered forth at her. "Mrs. Mosby in?" she asked. The old woman ducked her head and held open the door. "I see." And then she waddled off. Half-way down the dim hallway she turned, paused a moment, and then came back. She went to a tall door, on the left side of the hall, and pushed it open, casting up a furtive eye at Mary Louise as she did so. A wave of clammy air rushed forth and there was a faint crackling as of dried leaves back in the darkness. "Won' you set down?" said the old woman. Mary Louise realized how early she had come; she had quite disturbed the usual order of things. "No, thank you," she said. "I'll just wait here in the hall." The woman waddled away again and disappeared through a back door which wheezed shut with a sort of sucking noise, and the hall was left in hushed silence. Mary Louise gazed up at the ceiling, then at the stairway reaching far back and into the depths of upstairs hall. Even in the soft light the place looked like a barn. It seemed to be watching her sullenly as a small child watches an intruder. Odd little crackings sounded in far corners, and a whispering, starting somewhere in that upstairs hall, came slinking down the wainscoting, across the hall carpet, and out beneath the front door. She wondered what might be going on back in those silent, unexplored depths.