He rose,
went down-stairs, walked aimlessly about in the stable, and then went
up the street towards Bradley's. He wondered if Harriet had returned,
but as he passed the hotel he had not the courage to look in.
Every door of the Bradley house was closed. He tried all the windows,
but they were held down by sticks placed over the sashes on the inside.
Even the chickens and ducks in the back yard seemed to have fallen
under the spell of the unwonted silence. The scare-crow in the
cornfield beyond the staked-and-ridered rail fence looked like the
corpse of a human being flattened against the yellow sky.
He went out at the gate and turned up the Hawkbill road till he was
high enough to see the village street above the trees. Later he
noticed the vehicles beginning to come back from the camp-ground, and
he returned home by a short path through the fields. He reached the
Bradleys' just as Luke was helping his wife out of the spring-wagon at
the gate.
"We didn't fetch Mis' Dawson back," explained Mrs. Bradley. "She met
some old acquaintances--the Hambrights--an' they made 'er go home with
'em.
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