Billy grinned, as if slightly embarrassed. "Just face--that's all."
"A--man's face?"
He shrugged again.
"Don't know--maybe. It there! It gone!"
Miss Cornelia did not want to believe him--but she did. "Did you
go out after it?" she persisted.
Billy's yellow grin grew wider. "No thanks," he said cheerfully
with ideal succinctness.
Lizzie, meanwhile, had stood first on one foot and then on the
other during the interrogation, terror and morbid interest fighting
in her for mastery. Now she could hold herself in no longer.
"Oh, Miss Neily!" she exploded in a graveyard moan, "last night
when the lights went out I had a token! My oil lamp was full of
oil but, do what I would, it kept going out, too--the minute I
shut my eyes out that lamp would go. There ain't a surer token
of death! The Bible says, 'Let your light shine'--and when a
hand you can't see puts your lights out--good night!"
She ended in a hushed whisper and even Billy looked a trifle
uncomfortable after her climax.
"Well, now that you've cheered us up," began Miss Cornelia
undauntedly, but a long, ominous roll of thunder that rattled the
panes in the French windows drowned out the end of her sentence.
Nevertheless she welcomed the thunder as a diversion. At least
its menace was a physical one--to be guarded against by physical
means.
She rose and went over to the French windows. That flimsy bolt!
She parted the curtains and looked out--a flicker of lightning
stabbed the night--the storm must be almost upon them.
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