"What's this ?" he said sharply.
"I ought to have told you before, but we were so frightened, and--and you went off in such a rush after Mr.Wiley was here.

I never dreamed everybody wouldn't know it was the Cross-Roads; that they would _think_ of any one else.

And I looked for the scarecrow as soon as it was light and it was 'way off from where we saw them, and wasn't blown down at all, and Helen saw them in the field besides--saw all of them----" He interrupted her.

"What do you mean?
Try to tell me about it quietly, child." He laid his hand on her shoulder.
She told him breathlessly (while he grew more and more visibly perturbed and uneasy, biting his cigar to pieces and groaning at intervals) what she and Helen had seen in the storm.

When she finished he took a few quick turns about the room with his hands thrust deep in his coat pockets, and then, charging her to repeat the story to no one, left the house, and, forgetting his fatigue, rapidly crossed the fields to the point where the bizarre figures of the night had shown themselves to the two girls at the window.
The soft ground had been trampled by many feet.