“Couldn’t you—couldn’t you go up the hill and warn him?” Beatrice asked desperately.
“No, they’d call me traitor if I did, for, though I’m a good friend to John Herrick, after all I’m one with those below and pledged to help them. We’ll be going back now. I’ll do the best I can. Here,” to Dabney, “get on your horse and come along. It’s just such know-nothings as you that let loose most of the mischief in the world.”
After they had gone, Beatrice still stood, clinging to the window-frame, stunned and bewildered. This, then, was the result of her angry words; this was the mischief that she had set on foot. What could she do to make amends? She did not have to think long, but she turned from the window with a sigh that was nearer a groan. She must lay the whole matter before John Herrick, tell him the real truth of what she had said and what had been the result. He could never forgive her; of that she felt sure. She had put an end, all in a minute, to that new-found trust and friendliness that had been so hardly won. Yet it was the only thing to do.
Buck, who had been brought home a week before, sprang up from his straw bed at the sound of his mistress’s footsteps. He submitted, for once, to being saddled without protest, as though he had been too full of curiosity concerning this strange night adventure to make any delay.
Down the path to the gate they made their way, then up the trail as fast as Buck could be urged, with Beatrice’s head turned over her shoulder to peer down at the town below. One building was brilliantly lighted—the hall where the men’s meetings were held. There were lights in many of the houses, too, although it was so nearly midnight. Then, carried by the chill wind that blew up from the valley, came the far-off sound of shouting voices from the throng of angry men who were marching up the trail.
John Herrick’s house was alight also, for he was a person of late hours. She could see, as she came near, that he was sitting by the big table in the living-room and that Hester was nodding over a book in the chair beside him. Since he was up and about again, she seemed unwilling to leave him for a moment. Beatrice knocked, but could not wait for an answer and burst in upon them, beginning to pour out her story before she was half-way across the room.