And the vagueness of his
alarm added to its terrors; when once you have taken the
Impossible into your calculations its possibilities become
practically limitless.
Crefton rose at his usual early hour the next morning, after one
of the least restful nights he had spent at the farm. His
sharpened senses quickly detected that subtle atmosphere of
things-being-not-altogether well that hangs over a stricken
household. The cows had been milked, but they stood huddled about
in the yard, waiting impatiently to be driven out afield, and the
poultry kept up an importunate querulous reminder of deferred
feeding-time; the yard pump, which usually made discordant music
at frequent intervals during the early morning, was to-day
ominously silent. In the house itself there was a coming and
going of scuttering footsteps, a rushing and dying away of hurried
voices, and long, uneasy stillnesses. Crefton finished his
dressing and made his way to the head of a narrow staircase. He
could hear a dull, complaining voice, a voice into which an awed
hush had crept, and recognized the speaker as Mrs. Spurfield.
"He'll go away, for sure," the voice was saying; "there are those
as runs away from one as soon as real misfortune shows itself.
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