Its loud alarm beat increasingly into men's
hearts and quickened their throbbing to the rapid measure of its own.
Vague forms loomed in the gloaming. A horse, wildly ridden, splashed
through the town. There were shouts; voices called hoarsely. Lamps began
to gleam in the windows. Half-clad people emerged from their houses, men
slapping their braces on their shoulders as they ran out of doors.
Questions were shouted into the dimness.
Then the news went over the town.
It was cried from yard to yard, from group to group, from gate to gate,
and reached the furthermost confines. Runners shouted it as they sped by;
boys panted it, breathless; women with loosened hair stumbled into
darkling chambers and faltered it out to new-wakened sleepers; pale girls
clutching wraps at their throats whispered it across fences; the sick,
tossing on their hard beds, heard it. The bell clamored it far and near;
it spread over the country-side; it flew over the wires to distant cities.
The White-Caps had got Mr. Harkless!
Lige Willetts had lost track of him out near Briscoes', it was said, and
had come in at midnight seeking him. He had found Parker, the "Herald"
foreman, and Ross Schofield, the typesetter, and Bud Tipworthy, the devil,
at work in the printing-room, but no sign of Harkless, there or in the
cottage. Together these had sought for him and had roused others, who had
inquired at every house where he might have gone for shelter, and they had
heard nothing.
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