“He rode to the upper end and Joe is slow as molasses,” said she aloud for the sake of hearing a human voice. Then she set about preparing the kind of supper that Herbert liked. For a while she whistled; then her own whistling disturbed her. When supper was prepared she walked to the edge of the woodland and called, then she walked back to the house. She remembered now that she had a new blow to transmit to him. If their orchards could not be planted, then they had reason for anxiety. At least she would not tell him until after supper. She said aloud her mother’s proverb about an empty stomach. She knew as she said it that she was trying to keep out of her mind another thought.
“In a few minutes it will be quite dark!” said Elizabeth in terror. She walked again to the border of the woods, and again back to the house. She should never have allowed him to go alone. But he had proposed to look for traces of old boundary lines and she had consented, glad of his independence.
As she reached the edge of the woods once more, she looked back over her shoulder at the house. She had been in but one room and she felt suddenly afraid, afraid of the great bulk, afraid of the dark corners, afraid of the deep cellar and the cubby-holes in the attic. She turned and crossed the yard to the barn.
But the stable was empty. Elizabeth then walked directly to the front door and back to the kitchen and there lit the lamp and lifted it from the table.
“Shall I find another vague notice?” said she to herself. “Or a positive threat of kidnapping?”
A notice was exactly what she found. Tossed in at the window of her own room, lying just where the first soiled scrap of paper had lain, was another. Upon it was the same gruesome sign of skull and cross-bones and below another ill-written message.
You bring that paper and you can hav him back.
“What paper?” said Elizabeth. “Have him back! Who! Where is he?”
But no voice answered, either from the house or from the dusky woodland.
Elizabeth stood still, the lamp shaking in her hand. When at last she had taken the few steps between her and her bureau and had set down the lamp it seemed to her that she had accomplished a great feat.
They commanded her to bring back “the paper.” What paper? Was it the will she had written for the poor old woman? Herbert’s safety should not be jeopardized for that! It lay on the beam in her house. What had they done with Herbert? Had they carried him to some cave or den, or to some dreadful cabin like the one she had visited? Would they torture him, starve him?