Page:Cornelia Meigs-The Pirate of Jasper Peak.djvu/29

 one noticed them except himself, Hugh felt certain, since every face was turned northward to the wooded rocky hill that overhung the town. Puffs of white steam rose here and there among the trees, showing the mine buildings or the lumber mills from which the whistling came.

This was no ordinary blowing of signals to mark the noon hour: the excitement, the anxious  faces, the hideous insistence of the noise all told  him that. Just at the instant that he felt he could not endure the tumult longer, silence fell.

“What is it, what is it?” he gasped his inquiry, and one of the men standing by the steps, the one  who had spoken of Laughing Mary, began to  explain.

“You see—about four days ago—” The words were cut off by a new outbreak of the  clamor. It rose higher this time and lasted longer, it rolled back from the hills and seemed  to echo from the ground itself. Twice it fell and twice broke out once more, a long fifteen minutes of unendurable bedlam. The man, undismayed, called his explanations into Hugh’s ear,