He
took off his hat and pushed back the thick, white hair from his forehead.
"Nothing to do but wait. Might as well go home for that. Blast it!" he
exclaimed, impatiently. "I don't want to go there. It's too hard on the
little girl. If she hadn't come till next week she'd never have known John
Harkless."
CHAPTER XI
JOHN BROWN'S BODY
All morning horsemen had been galloping through Six-Cross-Roads, sometimes
singly, oftener in company. At one-o'clock the last posse passed through
on its return to the county-seat, and after that there was a long,
complete silence, while the miry corners were undisturbed by a single
hoof-beat. No unkempt colt nickered from his musty stall; the sparse young
corn that was used to rasp and chuckle greenly stood rigid in the fields.
Up the Plattville pike despairingly cackled one old hen, with her wabbling
sailor run, smit with a superstitious horror of nothing, in the stillness;
she hid herself in the shadow underneath a rickety barn, and her shrieking
ceased.
Only on the Wimby farm were there signs of life. The old lady who had sent
Harkless roses sat by the window all morning and wiped her eyes, watching
the horsemen ride by; sometimes they would hail her and tell her there was
nothing yet. About two-o'clock, her husband rattled up in a buckboard, and
got out the late, and more authentic, Mr.
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