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Page 35
"Miss Humdrum," said Keturah, "I cannot, in justice to myself, answer
such insinuations, further than to say that Amram _never_ allows the gun
to go out of his own room. The cannon we keep in the cellar."
"Oh!" said Miss Humdrum, with horrible suspicion in her eyes. "Well, I
hope you haven't it on your conscience, I'm sure. _Good_ morning."
It had been the ambition of Keturah's life to see a burglar. The second
of the memorable nights referred to crowned this ambition by not only
one burglar, but two. She it was who discovered them, she who frightened
them away, and nobody but she ever saw them. She confesses to a natural
and unconquerable pride in them. It came about on this wise:--
It was one of Keturah's wide-awake nights, and she had been wandering
off into the fields at the foot of the garden, where it was safe and
still. There is, by the way, a peculiar awe in the utter hush of the
earliest morning hours, of which no one can know who has not
familiarized himself with it in all its moods. A solitary walk in a
solitary place, with the great world sleeping about you, and the great
skies throbbing above you, and the long unrest of the panting summer
night, fading into the cool of dews, and pure gray dawns, has in it
something of what Mr. Robertson calls "God's silence."
Once, on one of these lonely rambles, Keturah found away in the fields,
under the shadow of an old stone-wall, a baby's grave. It had no
headstone to tell its story, and the weeds and brambles of many years
had overgrown it. Keturah is not of a romantic disposition, especially
on her midnight tramps, but she sat down by the little nameless thing,
and looked from it to the arch of eternal stars that, summer and winter,
seed-time and harvest, kept steadfast watch over it, and was very still.
It is one of the standing grievances of her life that Amram, while never
taking the trouble to go and look, insists upon it that was nothing but
somebody's pet dog. She knows better.
On this particular night, Keturah, in coming up from the garden to
return to the house, had a dim impression that something crossed the
walk in front of her and disappeared among the rustling trees. The
impression was sufficiently strong to keep her sitting up for half an
hour at her window, under the feeling that an ounce of prevention was
worth a pound of cure. She has indeed been asked why she did not
reconnoitre the rustling trees upon the spot. She considers that would
have been an exceedingly poor stroke of policy, and of an impolitic
thing Keturah is not capable. She sees far and plans deep. Supposing she
had gone and been shot through the head, where would have been the fun
of her burglars? To yield a life-long aspiration at the very moment that
it is within grasp, was too much to ask even of Keturah.
Words cannot describe the sensations of the moment, when that half-hour
was rewarded by the sight of two stealthy, cat-like figures, creeping
out from among the trees. A tall man and a little man, and both with
very unbanditti-like straw-hats on.
Now, if Keturah has a horror in this world, it is that delicate play of
the emotions commonly known as "woman's nonsense." And therefore did she
sit still for three mortal minutes, with her burglars making tracks for
the kitchen window under her very eyes, in order to prove to herself and
an incredulous public, beyond all shadow of doubt or suspicion, that
they were robbers and not dreams; actual flesh and blood, not
nightmares; unmistakable hats and coats in a place where hats and coats
ought not to be, not clothes-lines and pumps. She tried hard to make
Amram and the Paterfamilias out of them. Who knew but they also, by some
unheard-of revolution in all the laws of nature, were on an exploring
expedition after truant sleep? She struggled manfully after the
conviction that they were innocent and unimpeachable neighbors, cutting
the short way home across the fields from some remarkably late
prayer-meeting. She agonized after the belief that they were two of
Patsy's sweethearts, come for the commendable purpose of serenading her.
In fact they were almost in the house before this remarkable female was
prepared to trust the evidence of her own senses.
But when suspense gloomed into certainty, Keturah is happy to say that
she was grandly equal to the occasion. She slammed open her blinds with
an emphasis, and lighted her lamp with a burnt match.
The men jumped, and dodged, and ran, and hid behind the trees, in the
most approved manner of burglars, who flee when no woman pursueth; and
Keturah, being of far too generous a disposition to enjoy the pleasure
of their capture unshared, lost no time in hammering at Amram's door.
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