Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/262



T was after Reba had walked a mile or two more, along the unfamiliar state-road, that her teeth again began to chatter. Another automobile had slowed down beside her, and this time not one masculine voice from its dark interior had addressed her, but two and three, and in a manner less civil than the first man's upon the country road. It was very late—almost twelve now, and very dark. A rain-drop fell on Reba's cheek soon after the carful of urging men had disappeared. There was nothing frightful in a rain-drop, of course, but it started her foolishly hurrying and stumbling again. Her breath came with difficulty in little gasps, and when in the distance she saw approaching a reeling man harmlessly drunk, she thought she should scream with the horror of the place and the hour, and the rain, and she, all unprotected stumbling on blindly, she knew not where, possibly into even worse terrors than she had left behind.

It was soon after the drunken man had passed Reba, with the width of the road between them, and with never as much as a word to her, that she came upon what, in the day time, might prove to be a town. She decided then that she must seek shelter under a roof somewhere, or go mad; and she began to search for a house that presented a friendly front. All the houses were dark and apparently deep in sleep, and as she proceeded she despaired of finding a single spark of life in the part of the town along the state-road.