At their bedroom window Leon looked out. Coming to stand behind him, Sarah said, “What can it be?”

Leon rapidly donned trousers over his nightshirt, put on boots without stockings, and snatched a greatcoat from the wardrobe, arms blindly finding sleeve openings as he ran into the upper hallway. Sarah flung a robe about her and followed him into the hall, as Juanita poked her head anxiously around the opened door of Rachel’s room. At the front end of the hall, walk-through shutters led to a balcony that afforded a more general view than did the bedroom windows.

“Look!” Sarah said, but Leon’s eyes had already found the far glow of light. Something in Highboro was burning, and from the importance given it by the ringing of the town’s church bells, it was something considerable. Fear sent him back into the hall and down the stairs, racing through the dark lower floor of the house and out to the stables.

There he found Floyd, hastily half-dressed as he was, Plumboy with him. They were saddling two horses, who stood quivering with nervous excitement until Leon and Floyd mounted and swung them out of the stable yard, around the house and into the orchard drive.

From the second-floor balcony Sarah watched them ride by below her; and as the sound of the horses’ hoofs grew fainter on the hard clay road, she again heard the bells and turned her face to the glow of light off yonder in the night. A shutter banged behind her, and Rachel pulled at her robe sash. “Mama!”

Juanita arrived as Sarah picked the little girl up and held her close, cheek pressed to cheek, as they listened together to the urgent calling of the bells.

“Is it Christmas?” the child asked.

“No, my darling.”

Leon and Floyd went at a fast canter through the orchard. The moon had set, but their eyes were quick to adapt to the dark. They saw well enough, and what they could not see, they left to the intuition of the horses. Hitting the main road they broke into a gallop, straining their bodies as they urged the horses to full effort, not knowing why, or if there was any true reason, but all their senses and sinews alerted to the possibility of doom.

23

Having set down on paper “Dear Aunt Pea,” Sarah wrote:

It is after midnight of the night after Christmas, the 26th of December, or I should say 27th, shouldn’t I? I am alone in the office which you know so well. The others of the household have gone to their rooms, if not to sleep. I hope my dear Leon is asleep at last, for he has not closed his eyes to rest for fully three days and nights.