Old Kaskaskia | Page 9

away from her. A blacker spot in an angle of the walls and a smothered cough hinted to the care-taker where the invalid girl might be found, but where she also wished to be let alone.
Now a sob rising to a scream, as if the old building had found voice and protested against invasion, caused a recoil of the invaders. Girls brought up in neighborly relations with the wilderness, however, could be only a moment terrified by the screech-owl. But at no previous time in its history, not even when it was captured as a fort, had the Jesuit College inclosed such a cluster of wildly beating hearts. Had light been turned on the group, it would have shown every girl shaking her hand at every other girl and hissing, "S--s--sh!"
"Girls, be still."
"Girls, do be still."
"Girls, if you won't be still, somebody will come."
"Clarice Vigo, why don't you stop your noise?"
"Why do you not stop yours, mademoiselle?"
"I haven't spoken a word but sh! I have been trying my best to quiet them all."
"So have I."
"Ellen Bond fell over me. She was scared to death by a screech-owl!"
"It was you fell over me, Miss Betsey."
"If we are going to try the charm," announced Peggy Morrison, "we must begin. You had better all get in a line behind me and do just as I do. You can't see me very well, but you can scatter the hempseed and say what I say. And it must be done soberly, or Satan may come mowing at our heels."
From a distant perch to which he had removed himself, the screech-owl again remonstrated. Silence settled like the slow fluttering downward of feathers on every throbbing figure. The stir of a slipper on the pavement, or the catching of a breath, became the only tokens of human presence in the old college. These postulants of fortune in their half-visible state once more bore some resemblance to the young ladies who had stood in decorum answering compliments between the figures of the dance the night before.
On cautious shoe leather the march began. One voice, two voices, and finally a low chorus intoned and repeated,--
"Hempseed, I sow thee,--hempseed, I sow thee; let him who is to marry me come after me and mow thee."
Peggy led her followers out of the east door towards the river; wheeling when she reached a little wind-row of rotted timbers. This chaos had once stood up in order, forming makeshift bastions for the fort, and supporting cannon. Such boards and posts as the negroes had not carried off lay now along the river brink, and the Okaw was steadily undermining that brink as it had already undermined and carried away the Jesuits' spacious landing.
Glancing over their shoulders with secret laughter for that fearful gleam of scythes which was to come, the girls marched back; and their leader's abrupt halt jarred the entire line. A man stood in the opposite entrance. They could not see him in outline, but his unmistakable hat showed against a low-lying sky.
"Who's there?" demanded Peggy Morrison.
The intruder made no answer.
They could not see a scythe about him, but to every girl he took a different form. He was Billy Edgar, or Jules Vigo, or Rice Jones, or any other gallant of Kaskaskia, according to the varying faith which beating hearts sent to the eyes that saw him.
The spell of silence did not last. A populous roost invaded by a fox never resounded with more squalling than did the old Jesuit College. The girls swished around corners and tumbled over the vegetable beds. Ang��lique groped for Maria, not daring to call her name, and caught and ran with some one until they neared the light, when she found it was the dumpy little figure of her cousin Clarice.
As soon as the girls were gone, the man who had broken up their hempseed sowing advanced a few steps on the pavement. He listened, and that darker shadow in the angle of the walls was perceptible to him.
"Are you here?"
"I am here," answered Maria.
Rice Jones's sister could not sit many minutes in the damp old building without being missed by the girls and her family. His voice trembled. She could hear his heart beating with large strokes. His presence surrounded her like an atmosphere, and in the darkness she clutched her own breast to keep the rapture from physically hurting her.
"Maria, did you know that my wife was dead?"
"Oh, James, no!"
Her whisper was more than a caress. It was surrender and peace and forgiveness. It was the snapping of a tension which had held her two years.
"Oh, James, when I saw you to-night I did not know what to do. I have not been well. You have borne it so much better than I have."
"I thought," said Dr. Dunlap, "it would be best