It was the sound of hammering.
What is there in a rat-tat-tat in the dead of night which rouses
the imagination and fills the mind with suggestions which we had
rather not harbour when in the dark and alone? Deborah Scoville
was not superstitious, but she had keen senses and mercurial
spirits and was easily moved by suggestion.
Hearing this sound and locating it where she did, she remembered,
with a quick inner disturbance, that the judge's house held a
secret; a secret of such import to its owner that the dying Bela
had sought to preserve it at the cost of his life.
Oh, she had heard all about that! The gossip at Claymore Inn had
been great, and nothing had been spared her curiosity. There was
something in this house which it behooved the judge to secrete
from sight yet more completely before her own and Reuther's
entrance, and he was at work upon it now, hammering with his own
hand while other persons slept! No wonder she edged her way along
the fence with a shrinking, yet persistent, step. She was circling
her future home and that house held a mystery.
And yet, like any other imaginative person under a stress of
aroused feeling, she might very easily be magnifying some
commonplace act into one of terrifying possibilities. One can
hammer very innocently in his own house, even at night, when
making preparations to receive fresh inmates after many years of
household neglect.
She recognised her folly before reaching the adjoining field.
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