"And they ran for the door. I tried to get there first, to catch my little mother. My mother only screamed, as if she were wild. And they got out--out in the dark. 'Mother!' I cried. 'Mother! Come back, come back!' No answer. My mother was gone. "Oh, that made me feel, somehow, very strong. 'I'll bring you back!' I shouted. 'You, George! I'll send you away. Wait and see!' They never answered. Maybe they never heard. The wind was blowing, like to-night. "But I knew where I could find them. I knew where to go to find George. And I ran to my loft, for my knife. But, O my God, when I saw poor Mollie in the glass! Teeth gone. I wasn't beautiful any more. And my eyes!--they came out of the glass at me, like two big dogs jumping a fence. I ran from them. I didn't know myself. I ran out of the door, in the night. I went after that man. He had done too much. That storm--the lightning that night! Awful! But no storm kept me back. Rain--hail--but I kept on. Trees fell--but I went on. I called out. I laughed then, myself. I'll get him! I say, 'Look out for Ned's girl! Look out for Ned's girl!' I say...." Unconsciously the woman was re-enacting every gesture, repeating every phrase and accent of her journey through the night, that excursion out of the world, from which there had been no return for her. "Look out for Ned's girl!"--the house rang with the cry. But this second journey, of the memory, ended in a moan and a faint. "I said I would tell it! Help me!" she said. In some fashion they worked her heavy bulk out of its crazy wrappings and into a bed. John arrived, to help them. Morning peered timidly over the eastern hills, as if fearful of beholding what the night had wrought. In its smiling calm the noise of the storm was already done away. But the storm in the troubled mind raged on. For days it raged, in fever and delirium. Then they buried the rude minister of justice in the place where she commanded--under the pile of broken stones and bricks among the trees in the hollow. And it is said that the inquisitive villagers who had a part in the simple ceremonies stirred about till they made the discovery of two skeletons under the ruins. And to this day there are persons in Bustlebury with a belief that at night, or in a storm, they sometimes hear a long-drawn cry issuing from that lonely little hollow. THE INTERVAL [17] [Note 17: Copyright 1917, by The Boston Transcript Co. Copyright, 1918, by Vincent O' Sullivan.] BY VINCENT O'SULLIVAN From _The Boston Evening Transcript_