Quills Window | Page 9

in the middle of the room. The rapping was repeated, louder, heavier than before. He turned slowly, retraced his steps to the fireplace and took from its rack in the corner a great iron poker. His face was ashen grey, his eyes were wide and staring and terrible. Then he strode toward the door, absolutely unconscious of the glad, prancing dog at his side.
In the poor shelter of the little porch stood Alix, bent and shivering, and, behind her, Edward Crown, at whose feet rested two huge "telescope satchels." The light from within fell dimly upon the white, upturned face of the girl. She held out her hands to the man who towered above her on the doorstep.
"Daddy! Daddy!" she cried brokenly. "Oh, my daddy! Let me come in--let me,--I--I am freezing."
But David Windom was peering over her head at the indistinct face of the man beyond. He wanted to be sure. Lifting his powerful arm, he struck.
Edward Crown, stiff and numb with cold and weak from an illness of some duration, did not raise an arm to ward off the blow, nor was he even prepared to dodge. The iron rod crashed down upon his head. His legs crumpled up; he dropped in a heap at the top of the steps and rolled heavily to the bottom, sprawling out on the snow-covered brick walk.
The long night wore on. Windom had carried his daughter into the sitting-room, where he placed her on a lounge drawn up before the fire. She had fainted. After an hour he left her and went out into the night. The body of Edward Crown was lying where it had fallen. It was covered by a thin blanket of snow. For a long time he stood gazing down upon the lifeless shape. The snow cut his face, the wind threshed about his coatless figure, but he heeded them not. He was muttering to himself. At last he turned to re-enter the house. His daughter was standing in the open doorway.
"Is--is that Edward down there?" she asked, in weak, lifeless tones. She seemed dull, witless, utterly without realization.
"Go back in the house," he whispered, as he drew back from her in a sort of horror,--horror that had not struck him in the presence of the dead.
"Is that Edward?" she insisted, her voice rising to a queer, monotonous wail.
"I told you to stay in the house," he said. "I told you I would look after him, didn't I? Go back, Alix,--that's a good girl. Your--your daddy will--Oh, my God! Don't look at me like that!"
"Is he dead?" she whispered, still standing very straight in the middle of the doorway. She was not looking at the inert thing on the walk below, but into her father's eyes. He did not, could not answer. He seemed frozen stiff. She went on in the same dull, whispered monotone. "I begged him to let me come alone. I begged him to let me see you first. But he would come. He brought me all the way from the West and he--he was not afraid of you. You have done what you said you would do. You did not give him a chance. And always,--always I have loved you so. You will never know how I longed to come back and have you kiss me, and pet me, and call me those silly names you used--"
"What's done, is done," he broke in heavily. "He is dead. It had to be. I was insane,--mad with all these months of hatred. It is done. Come,--there is nothing you can do. Come back into the house. I will carry him in--and wake somebody. Tomorrow they will come and take me away. They will hang me. I am ready. Let them come. You must not stand there in the cold, my child."
She toppled forward into his arms, and he lifted her as if she were a babe and carried her into the house. The collie was whining in the corner. Windom sat down in the big armchair before the fire, still holding the girl in his arms. She was moaning weakly. Suddenly a great, overwhelming fear seized him,--the fear of being hanged!
A long time afterward,--it was after two,--he arose from his knees beside the lounge and prepared to go out into the night once more. Alix had promised not to send her father to the gallows. She was almost in a stupor after the complete physical and mental collapse, but she knew what she was doing, she realized what she was promising in return for the blow that had robbed her of the man she loved.
No one will ever know just what took place in that darkened sitting-room, for the story as afterwards related was significantly lacking in details. The light had been extinguished and the doors