Then she sank away to sleep. She dreamed at length of hands snatching at her, of Macbeth and his hags about the cauldron of trouble. She woke to find her mother looking a very witch and plucking at her with one hand, while she clutched at her own throat with the other. She kept croaking something with her toothless gums. It was long before Patty could make it out: “Come quick! Your papa has k-k-k—your papa has k-k-killed himshelf; killed himshelf!” Patty flung away drowsiness as one whips off a coverlet, and leaped from her bed, seizing her husband’s arm and shrieking to him to follow. CHAPTER XXIX Sleep was like laudanum in RoBards’ tired soul and he stumbled drunkenly after his wife. They found old Jessamine sprawled along the floor, his scrawny legs thrust stiffly out of his nightgown, his toes turned up in all awkwardness. His ropy neck seemed to have released the head rolled aside on one cheek. Near an outspread hand lay the bottle of soothing lotion. The cork was gone, but nothing poured from the bottle. It had been drained. The cupboard door stood open. Patty and her mother flung themselves down and implored a word from the suddenly re-beloved saint. But RoBards knew that they called to death-deafened ears. He could not feel frantic. A dull calm possessed him. The women’s screams woke the farmer and he was heard pounding for admission. RoBards’ first thought was one of caution. He bent down by Patty and said: “We must get the poor old boy back in his bed. We mustn’t let anybody know that he—that he——” Patty looked up at him in amazement and he felt a certain rebuke of him for being so cold-hearted as to be discreet at such a time. But she nodded and helped him lift the unresisting, unassisting frame to the bed and dispose its unruled members orderly. Then he went down and unlatching the door confronted the Albesons with a lie of convenience: “Mr. Jessamine has been taken very ill—very ill. Saddle me a horse and I’ll go for a doctor.” There was a tonic in the privilege of action. He flung into his clothes, and kissing Patty good-by, ran down the stairs and out into the starlit deeps. He stepped from the porch right into the saddle, and the horse launched out like a sea gull. Startled from sleep, it was wild with the unusual call to action and ran with fury along the black miles. RoBards’ hat flew back at the first rush of wind but he did not pause to hunt it. The air was edged with cold and watery with mist. Now and then the road dipped into pools of fog. Riding in such night was like being drawn through the depths of an ocean. RoBards swam as on the back of a sea horse. There was no sound except the snorting of his nag and the _diddirum-diddirum_ of hoofs that made no question of the road, but smoothed it all with speed.