Thyra could not sleep that night. When the gale came shrieking
up the river, and struck the house, she got out of bed and
dressed herself. The wind screamed like a ravening beast at her
window. All night she wandered to and fro in the house, going
from room to room, now wringing her hands with loud outcries, now
praying below her breath with white lips, now listening in dumb
misery to the fury of the storm.
The wind raged all the next day; but spent itself in the
following night, and the second morning was calm and fair. The
eastern sky was a great arc of crystal, smitten through with
auroral crimsonings. Thyra, looking from her kitchen window, saw
a group of men on the bridge. They were talking to Carl White,
with looks and gestures directed towards the Carewe house.
She went out and down to them. None of these who saw her white,
rigid face that day ever forgot the sight.
"You have news for me," she said.
They looked at each other, each man mutely imploring his neighbor
to speak.
"You need not fear to tell me," said Thyra calmly. "I know what
you have come to say. My son is drowned."
"We don't know THAT, Mrs. Carewe," said Abel Blair quickly. "We
haven't got the worst to tell you--there's hope yet. But Joe
Raymond's boat was found last night, stranded bottom up, on the
Blue Point sand shore, forty miles down the coast."
"Don't look like that, Thyra," said Carl White pityingly.
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