buttoned their coats tightly, and sank down to wait, with
bounding hearts and tingling nerves, the arrival of the
abductors, mutely praying that they were at the right gate.




IX

THE EXPLOIT OF LORRY AND ANGUISH


During the half hour spent in the grassy ditch or gutter, they
spoke not more than half a dozen times and in the faintest of
whispers. They could hear the guard pacing the driveway inside
the ponderous gate, but aside from his footsteps no sound was
distinguishable. A sense of oppression came over the two
watchers as the minutes grew longer and more deathlike in their
stillness. Each found himself wondering why the leaves did not
stir in the trees, why there were no nightbirds, no crickets, no
croaking frogs, no sign of life save that steady, clocklike tread
inside the wall. So dark was it that the wall itself was but a
deeper shadow against the almost opaque blackness beyond. No
night, it seemed to them, had ever been so dark, so still. After
the oppression came the strange feeling of dread, the result of
an enforced contemplation of the affair in which they were to
take a hand, ignorant of everything except the general plan.

They knew nothing of the surroundings. If they failed, there was
the danger of being shot by the guards before an explanation