The Burglar and the Blizzard: A Christmas Story | Page 4

out on their five-mile drive.
"Guess you come up to see about Mr. May's house being robbed?" Harris hazarded before they had gone far.
"You're a nice lot, aren't you?" returned Geoffrey. "Five robberies and not a motion to catch the thief!"
"Oh, I dunno, I dunno, there is a big reward out to-day," said Harris, divided between pride in the notoriety and shame at the lawlessness of his native town.
"Yes, but not by any of you."
"Well, the boys did talk some of a vigilance committee, if any more houses was robbed."
"They are going to wait for him to make up his half dozen."
"Well, to tell the truth," said Harris, "it seems like he only went for you city folks, and I guess the boys thought you could better afford to lose a few things than they could to lose their sleep. That's about the size of it."
Geoffrey could not but laugh. "That's a fine spirited way to look at it, I must say."
"Well," returned Harris, who appeared to have need of the monosyllable in order to collect and arrange his ideas. "'Tain't lack of sand exactly, either, for most of the fellows about here thinks it is a woman."
"A woman?" cried Geoffrey, remembering the lady in Boston.
"Yes, sir," said Harris, "a young woman. Look at the things took. What burglar would want sheets and a lady's coat? Besides just before the first one happened, Will Brown, he was driving along up your way and a young woman, pretty as a picter, Will said, slips out of the wood and asks for a lift. Well, Will takes her some two miles, and when they got to that piece of woods at the back of your place she says of a sudden that she guesses she wants exercise, and will walk the rest of the way, and out she gets, and no one has seen her since. Seems kinder strange, no house but yours within six miles, and you away."
"It would have seemed quite as strange if I had been at home," returned Geoffrey, amused at his imputation.
"Well," Harris went on imperturbably, "you can't tell the rights of them stories. Will Brown, he's a liar, just like all the Browns; still this time he seemed to think he was telling the truth. Looks like we were going to have a blizzard, don't it?"
When they reached the McFarlane cottage, Mrs. McFarlane appeared bobbing on the threshold. She was an old Scotch woman and covered all occasions with courtesy. It appeared that Holland's telegram had been duly telephoned from the office, but that her husband was down with rheumatism, the second gardener dismissed, and the "boy" allowed to go home to spend Christmas, so that there had been no one to send. Geoffrey suggested that she might have telephoned to the local livery-stable, and she was at once so overcome at her own stupidity that she could do nothing but bob and murmur, until Geoffrey sent her away to get him something to eat.
It was about ten o'clock, when he determined to take a turn about his house. The next day he intended removing all valuables to the vaults of the Hillsborough bank.
It was a long walk from the cottage, and Geoffrey, as he trudged up hill against the wind, was surprised to find how much snow had already fallen. He had expected to return to New York the next day, but now a fair prospect of being stalled on the way presented itself. It took him so much longer to reach the house than he had supposed, that he abandoned all idea of entering it. It stood before him grimly like a mountain of grey stone, its face plastered with snow. He walked round it, feeling each door and window to be sure of the fastenings. Once past the corner, the house sheltered him from the wind. He was conscious of that exhilaration snow storms so often bring, while at the same time the atmosphere of desolation that surrounds all shut up houses, even one's own, took hold of him. Unconsciously he stopped and felt in his pocket for his revolver, and at the same moment, faintly, in the interior of the house, he heard a clock strike.
The sound was not perhaps alarming in itself, yet it sounded ominously in Geoffrey's ears. He recognised, or thought he recognised, the bell. It was that of an old French clock he had bought, and had never had put in order. He had never been able to make it go, but once touching it inadvertently he had aroused in it a breath of life so that it had struck one,--this same sweet piercing note. Who, he wondered, was touching it now?
Geoffrey was one of those who act best and naturally without delay. Now he hesitated not at all.