Page:Joan, the curate.djvu/228

222 "Sh-sh!" said her father, raising his hand to enforce silence.

In the pause which followed, both Joan and Tregenna were aware of a loud, rumbling noise in the village street below, coming gradually nearer. And in a few minutes, during which they all stood silent and wondering, without exchanging a word, they perceived a huge black mass, dim, shadowy, like some mammoth beast whose bulk makes rapid motion impossible, creeping slowly by in the obscurity of the trees at the bottom of the hill.

Slow, phantom-like, it crept along with no sound but the rumbling and creaking that had at first arrested the vicar's attention.

Tregenna, on the alert at once, would have descended the hill to find out what the monster was. But at a sign from his daughter, Parson Langney laid a restraining hand upon the young man's arm.

"What can you do—alone?" said he, warningly. "Keep your heart in your breast for to-night, at least. In the morning—why, you must do your duty. Come, a tankard will do you no harm. You shall drink 'confusion to free-traders' if you will. And, egad, I'm in-