XVII. The Night In The Snowstorm

"Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river and the heaven."—Emerson.

All through that long, wild night David searched and shouted, to find only snow and silence.

Through the darkness and the falling flakes he could not see more than a foot ahead, and when he would stumble over a stone or the fallen trunk of a tree, he would stoop down and search through the drifts with his bare hands, thinking perhaps that she might have fallen, and not finding her, he would again take up his fruitless search, while cold fear gnawed at his heart.

At home in the warm farm house, sat the Squire who had done his duty. The consciousness of having done it, however, did not fill him with that cheerful glow of righteousness that is the reward of a good conscience—on the contrary, he felt small. It might have been imagination, but he felt, somehow, as if his wife and Kate were shunning him. Once he had tried to take his wife's hand as she stood with her face pressed to the window trying to see if she could make out the dim outline of David returning with Anna, but she withdrew her hand impatiently as she had never done in the thirty years of their married life. Amasy's hardness was a thing no longer to be condoned.

Furthermore, when the clock had struck eleven and then twelve, and yet no sign of David or Anna, the Squire had reached for his fur cap and announced his intention of "going to look for 'em." But like the proverbial worm, the wife of his bosom had turned, and with all the determination of a white rabbit she announced:

"If I was you, Amasy, I'd stay to hum; seems as if you had made almost enough trouble for one day." With the old habit of authority, strong as ever, he looked at the worm, but there was a light in its eyes that warned him as a danger signal.

They were alone together, the Squire and his wife, and each was alone in sorrow, the yoke of severity she had bowed beneath for thirty years uncomplainingly galled to-night. It had sent her boy out into the storm—perhaps to his death. There was little love in her heart for Amasy.

He tried to think that he had only done his duty, that David and Anna would come back, and that, in the meantime, Louisa was less a comfort to him, in his trouble, than she had ever been before. It was, of course, his trouble; it never occurred to him that Louisa's heart might have been breaking on its own account.

The Squire found that duty was a cold comforter as the wretched hours wore on.

Sanderson had slunk from the house without a word immediately after Anna's departure. In the general upheaval no one missed him, and when they did it was too late for them to enjoy the comfort of shifting the blame to his guilty shoulders.

The professor followed Kate with the mute sympathy of a faithful dog; he did not dare attempt to comfort her. The sight of a woman in tears unnerved him; he would not have dared to intrude on her grief; he could only wait patiently for some circumstance to arise in which he could be of assistance. In the meantime he did the only practical thing within his power—he went about from time to time, poked the fires and put on coal.

Marthy would have liked to discuss the iniquity of Lennox Sanderson with any one—it was a subject on which she could have spent hours—but no one seemed inclined to divert Marthy conversationally. In fact, her popularity was not greater that night in the household than that of the Squire. She spent her time in running from room to room, exclaiming hysterically:

"Land sakes! Ain't it dreadful?"

The tension grew as time wore on without developments of any kind, the waiting with the haunting fear of the worst grew harder to bear than absolute calamity.

Toward five o'clock the Squire announced his intention of going out and continuing the search, and this time no one objected. In fact, Mrs. Bartlett, Kate and the professor insisted on accompanying him and Marthy decided to go, too, not only that she might be able to say she was on hand in case of interesting developments, but because she was afraid to be left in the house alone.

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Toward morning, David, spent and haggard, wandered into a little maple-sugar shed that belonged to one of the neighbors. Smoke was coming out of the chimney, and David entered, hoping that Anna might have found here a refuge.

He was quickly undeceived, however, for Lennox Sanderson stood by the hearth warming his hands. The men glared at each other with the instinctive fierceness of panthers. Not a word was spoken; each knew that the language of fists could be the only medium of communication between them; and each was anxious to have his say out.

The men faced each other in silence, the flickering glare of the firelight painting grotesque expressions on their set faces. David's greater bulk loomed unnaturally large in the uncertain light, while every trained muscle of Sanderson's athletic body was on the alert.

It was the world old struggle between patrician and proletarian.

Sanderson was an all-round athlete and a boxer of no mean order. This was not his first battle. His quick eye showed him from David's awkward attitude, that his opponent was in no way his equal from a scientific standpoint. He looked for the easy victory that science, nine times out of ten, can wrest from unskilled brute force.

For, perhaps, half a minute the combatants stood thus.

Then, with lowered head and outstretched arms, David rushed in.

Sanderson side-stepped, avoiding the on-set. Before David could recover himself, the other had sent his left fist crashing into the country-man's face.

The blow was delivered with all the trained force the athlete possessed and sent David reeling against the rough wall of the house.

Such a blow would have ended the fight then and there for an ordinary man; but it only served to rouse David's sluggish blood to white heat.

Again he rushed.

This time he was more successful.

True, Sanderson partially succeeded in avoiding the sledge-hammer fist, though it missed his head, it struck glancingly on the left shoulder. numbing for the moment the whole arm. Sanderson countered as the blow fell, by bringing his right arm up with all his force and striking David on the face. He sank to his knees, like a wounded bull, but was on his feet again before Sanderson could follow up his advantage.

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