It could not have been far from midnight when I came beneath
Hollingsworth's window, and, finding it open, flung in a tuft of grass
with earth at the roots, and heard it fall upon the floor. He was
either awake or sleeping very lightly; for scarcely a moment had gone
by before he looked out and discerned me standing in the moonlight.
"Is it you, Coverdale?" he asked. "What is the matter?"
"Come down to me, Hollingsworth!" I answered. "I am anxious to speak
with you."
The strange tone of my own voice startled me, and him, probably, no
less. He lost no time, and soon issued from the house-door, with his
dress half arranged.
"Again, what is the matter?" he asked impatiently.
"Have you seen Zenobia," said I, "since you parted from her at Eliot's
pulpit?"
"No," answered Hollingsworth; "nor did I expect it."
His voice was deep, but had a tremor in it, Hardly had he spoken, when Silas Foster thrust his head, done up in a
cotton handkerchief, out of another window, and took what he called as
it literally was--a squint at us.
"Well, folks, what are ye about here?" he demanded. "Aha! are you
there, Miles Coverdale? You have been turning night into day since you
left us, I reckon; and so you find it quite natural to come prowling
about the house at this time o' night, frightening my old woman out of
her wits, and making her disturb a tired man out of his best nap. In
with you, you vagabond, and to bed!"
"Dress yourself quickly, Foster," said I. "We want your assistance."
I could not, for the life of me, keep that strange tone out of my
voice. Silas Foster, obtuse as were his sensibilities, seemed to feel
the ghastly earnestness that was conveyed in it as well as
Hollingsworth did. He immediately withdrew his head, and I heard him
yawning, muttering to his wife, and again yawning heavily, while he
hurried on his clothes. Meanwhile I showed Hollingsworth a delicate
handkerchief, marked with a well-known cipher, and told where I had
found it, and other circumstances, which had filled me with a suspicion
so terrible that I left him, if he dared, to shape it out for himself.
By the time my brief explanation was finished, we were joined by Silas
Foster in his blue woollen frock.
"Well, boys," cried he peevishly, "what is to pay now?"
"Tell him, Hollingsworth," said I.
Hollingsworth shivered perceptibly, and drew in a hard breath betwixt
his teeth. He steadied himself, however, and, looking the matter more
firmly in the face than I had done, explained to Foster my suspicions,
and the grounds of them, with a distinctness from which, in spite of my
utmost efforts, my words had swerved aside. The tough-nerved yeoman,
in his comment, put a finish on the business, and brought out the
hideous idea in its full terror, as if he were removing the napkin from
the face of a corpse.