Mrs. Smith; and in yours, Mrs. Goodman, and in yours, Mr. Badman;
maybe it is upon the sea, or in the woods, or among the noises of some
great city--but it is That Day. And no other day of all the thousands
that have come to you is like it.

Why should he remember the ugly farm-yard, the hard faces of the men,
the straw-covered frame they called a barn, and the unpainted house?
All these things passed by him unrecorded, as did the miserable fare
of the table, the hard bed at night, and the worry that must have
gnawed at his nerves to know that perhaps the town was thinking him
false to it, or that his mother, guessing the truth, was in pain with
terror, or to feel that a rescuing party coming at the wrong time
would bring on a fight in which the girls would be killed. Only the
picture of Jane Mason, fine and lithe and strong, with the pink cheeks
of twenty, and the soft curves of childhood still playing about her
chin and throat as he saw it from the ground at her feet,--that
picture was etched into his heart, and with it the recollection of her
eyes when she said, "John,--you don't think I--I knew of
this--beforehand, do you?" Just that sentence--those were the only
words left in his memory of a day's happiness. And he never heard a
locust whirring in a tree that it did not bring back the memory of the
spreading tree and the touch--the soft, quick, shy touch of her
fingers in his hair, and the fire that was in her eyes.

It was in the dusk of Tuesday evening that Jake Dolan's dog came into
the yard where the captives were, and Jake disowned him, and joined
the men who stoned the faithful creature out to the main road. But the
prisoners knew that their rescuers would follow the dog, so at supper
the three men from the Ridge sat together on a bench at the table
while Mrs. Carnine and the girls waited on the men--after the fashion