For an instant the group was motionless from fear; then Jim made a dash for the front entrance whence, apparently, the crash had come. There had been no thunder accompanying the storm which now raged wildly over the mountain top, and Alfy found sufficient voice to cry:
"'Tain't no lightnin' stroke. _Somethin's_ fell!"
The words were so inadequate to the description that Molly laughed nervously, and in relieved tension all followed James forward; only to find themselves rudely forced back by old Ephraim, gray with fear and anxiety.
"Stan' back dere, stan' back, you-alls! 'Tis Eph'am's place to gyard Miss Betty's chillens!"
He didn't look as if the task were an agreeable one and the lads placed themselves beside him as he advanced and with trembling hands tried to unbar the door. This time he did not repulse them, and it was well, for as the bolts slid and the heavy door was set free it fell inward with such force that he would have been crushed beneath it had they not been there to draw him out of its reach.
"Oh! oh! oh! The great horse chestnut!" cried Dorothy, springing aside from contact with the branches which fell crowding through the doorway. Hinges were torn from their places and the marvel was that the beautifully carved door had not itself been broken in bits.
Jim was the first to rally and to find some comfort in the situation, exclaiming:
"That's happened exactly as I feared it would, some day; and it's a mercy there wasn't nobody sittin' on that piazza. They'd ha' been killed dead, sure as pisen!"
"Killing generally does mean death, Jim Barlow, but if you knew that splendid tree was bound to fall some day why didn't you say so? We--" with a fine assumption of proprietorship in Deerhurst--"we would have had it prevented," demanded Dorothy.
Already she felt that this was home; already she loved the fallen tree almost as its mistress had done and her feeling was so sincere, if new, that nobody smiled, and the lad answered soberly:
"I have told, Dolly girl. I kept on tellin' Mrs. Calvert how that lily-pond she would have dug out deeper an' deeper, and made bigger all the time, would for certain undermine that tree and make it fall. But--but she's an old lady 't knows her own mind and don't allow nobody else to know it for her! Old Hans, the gardener, he talked a heap, too; begged her to have the pond cemented an' that wouldn't hender the lilies blowin' and'd stop trouble. But, no. She wouldn't listen. Said she 'liked things perfectly natural' and--Well, she's got 'em now!"