When, in the course of events, the current of my thoughts receive a decided check and I find myself forced to change former conclusions or habituate myself to new ideas and a fresh standpoint, I do it, as I do everything else, with determination and a total disregard of my own previous predilections. Before the afternoon was well over I was ready for any revelations which might follow Lucetta's contemplated action, merely reserving a vague hope that my judgment would yet be found superior to her instinct.
At five o'clock the diggers began to go home. Nothing had been found under the soil of Mother Jane's garden, and the excitement of search which had animated them early in the day had given place to a dull resentment mainly directed towards the Knollys family, if one could judge of these men's feelings by the heavy scowls and significant gestures with which they passed our broken-down gateway.
By six the last man had filed by, leaving Mr. Gryce free for the work which lay before him.
I had retired long before this to my room, where I awaited the hour set by Lucetta with a feverish impatience quite new to me. As none of us could eat, the supper table had not been laid, and though I had no means of knowing what was in store for us, the sombre silence and oppression under which the whole house lay seemed a portent that was by no means encouraging.
Suddenly I heard a knock at my door. Rising hastily, I opened it. Loreen stood before me, with parted lips and terror in all her looks.
"Come!" she cried. "Come and see what I have found in Lucetta's room."
"Yes, she's gone, but come and see what she has left behind her."
Hastening after Loreen, who was by this time half-way down the hall, I soon found myself on the threshold of the room I knew to be Lucetta's.
"She made me promise," cried Loreen, halting to look back at me, "that I would let her go alone, and that I would not enter the highway till an hour after her departure. But with these evidences of the extent of her dread before us, how can we stay in this house?" And dragging me to a table, she showed me lying on its top a folded paper and two letters. The folded paper was Lucetta's Will, and the letters were directed severally to Loreen and to myself with the injunction that they were not to be read till she had been gone six hours.