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Delane, looking out from the dark stable, had been able to watch him through the dusk, keeping an eye the while to the opposite door opening on the farm-yard. But the labourer disappeared, and in the dark roomy stable, with its beamed roof, nothing could be heard but the champing and slow tramping movements of the splendid cart-horses. Rachel's horses!
"You can't see her," said Rachel in a low tone, trembling. "But but " Thomas Batchgrew spluttered, ineffectively. "D'you know I'm her trustee, miss? Let me come in." Rachel would not take her hand off the inner knob. There was the thin, far-off sound of an electric bell, breaking the silence of the house. It was the bell in Rachel's bedroom, rung from Mrs. Maldon's bedroom.
"Look you here, Dan Duff," said he, by and by, holding the shaking boy by the shoulder. "You just breathe that name again to living mortal, and see if you don't get hung up by the neck for it. 'Twas nothing but Rachel's ghost. Them ghosts takes the form of anything that it pleases, 'em to take; whether it's a dead man's, or whether it's a woman's, what do they care?
Rachel spoke of advice. "What you, Rachel! you who despised allopathy!" "I have learnt not to despise advice." And Bessie would not trench on Rachel's experiences. "There's some old Scotch doctor to whom his faith is given, and that I don't half believe in. If he would see our own Mr.
Babylon shall do homage on the right hand and Egypt upon the left, and the straight smoke from Jehovah's altar will rise from the center unfailing by day or by night." They had reached the ledge and Kenkenes sat down on it, leaning on one hand across Rachel's way. She paused near him. Even in the dark he could see the light in her eyes, and the joy of anticipation was in her voice.
Here the road forks, one branch of it passing Bet Jala and going on to Hebron; the other, bearing off to the left, leads directly to Bethlehem, which we passed, intending to stop there as we returned in the evening. At this place we saw the monument erected to mark the location of Rachel's tomb, a location, like many others, in dispute.
I'm afraid there ain't very much left," he added, with rueful eyes on the sandwiches. "No, I should say not!" vouchsafed Rachel, her voice firm now that the size of the "burglar" was declared. Tabitha only gasped. The small boy placed the food upon the empty plates, and Rachel's lips twitched as she saw that he clumsily tried to arrange it in an orderly fashion.
Herod's massacre had, after all, a certain mercy in it: there were no lingering tortures. The slayers of children went about with naked and bloody swords, which mothers could see, and might at least make effort to flee from. Into Rachel's refusal to be comforted there need enter no bitter agonies of remorse. But Herod's death, it seems, did not make Judea a safe place for babies.
Eh?" she cried out, sharply, turning to Viola. "I did not speak, mother." A look of awe came to Rachel's eyes. "I was sure I heard " she began, and then, after a short pause, laughed throatily. "I guess it was the wind. Come in. I want to lock the door." Viola was a long time in going to sleep.
He slipped quietly down-stairs, and, leaving the door ajar, walked quickly along the darkened road, bearing poor Rachel's long-lost letter with him; but his journey, as he might have expected, ended in blank disappointment. Fuller's house was dark.
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