ground his own, with a frightful look on his face. He would meet the man who had slain him, in lonely places, and reveal hideous spiritual errors to him, and some day would fall upon him and throttle him; and those who might find him would never know why Teck Jepson had died. He would walk,—he would walk! And he began to gather the sheet about him. “Oh, Marcelly!” cried the cowering Mrs. Strobe, “I hev done wrong. The yerb tea ain’t no good, sure enough, this time, an’ mebbe thar war some healin’ in the old doctor’s powders. He ’lowed they’d keep Eli quiet. Oh, I wish I hedn’t flung ’em away! He said the lotium air ter go on the outside, else I’d gin Eli a mouthful o’ that. Oh, Marcelly, ef the doctor war jes’ hyar agin!” “I’ll go arter him!” cried the girl, springing up with renewed hope. “Ye sha’n’t! Ye sha’n’t!” The old woman clutched her arm. “In this storm ez seems ter kem from perdition itself, an’ he livin’ fourteen miles off! Ye dunno the way. Ye’ll git los’.” “Waal,” said Marcella, full of courage again, since there was something to do and to risk, “I’ll rouse up the nighest neighbors, an’ git some o’ them ter go.” “I dunno whether they will!” cried Mrs. Strobe, wringing her hands. “I couldn’t blame ’em ef they wouldn’t. Listen at that wind ’mongst the trees; it sounds ez ef the very mountings war groanin’ in mis’ry. An’ the thunder, an’ the lightnin’, an’ the rain!” “I’ll try ’em,” said Marcella, sturdily. Her grandmother still clung to her, first remonstrating, then urging and charging her as she prepared to slip through the door. Marcella only stopped to put a red shawl over her head, and then she was out in the blackness of the night and the terrors of the storm. The wind caught the door with so violent a wrench that her grandmother and Isabel had much ado to close it again, and ere they did they called wildly to her to come back; she would be blown away, or a limb of a tree might fall upon her and kill her. There was no response from the darkness without, and as they barred the door they knew that she was gone, and felt as forlorn as if many had been withdrawn instead of one.