He retraced his steps and looked through
the barn and the hayloft. Then he went out to the road, where he
took the foot-path along the outside of the orchard hedge. The
hedge was twice as tall as Frank himself, and so dense that one
could see through it only by peering closely between the leaves.
He could see the empty path a long way in the moonlight. His mind
traveled ahead to the stile, which he always thought of as haunted
by Emil Bergson. But why had he left his horse?
At the wheatfield corner, where the orchard hedge ended and the
path led across the pasture to the Bergsons', Frank stopped. In
the warm, breathless night air he heard a murmuring sound, perfectly
inarticulate, as low as the sound of water coming from a spring,
where there is no fall, and where there are no stones to fret it.
Frank strained his ears. It ceased. He held his breath and began
to tremble. Resting the butt of his gun on the ground, he parted
the mulberry leaves softly with his fingers and peered through
the hedge at the dark figures on the grass, in the shadow of the
mulberry tree.
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