It was cold and dark and dreary; one of those miserable, shivery mornings when you hate to stir out of bed. But I got up, for I agreed with Addison that we ought to look for Halstead. After dabbling our faces in ice-cold water and dressing we tiptoed downstairs. Going to the kitchen, we kindled a fire in order to get a bit of breakfast before we started. Theodora had heard us and came hastily down to bear a hand. She guessed what we meant to do. "I'm glad you're going," said she as she began to make coffee and to warm some food. It was partly the bitter weather, I think, but Addison and I felt so cross that we could hardly trust ourselves to speak. "I'll put you up a nice, big lunch," Theodora said, trying to cheer us. "And I do hope that you will find him at the Old Slave's Farm, or over at Adger's camp. If you do, you may all be back by night." She stole up to her room to get a pair of new double mittens that she had just finished knitting for Addison; and for me she brought down a woolen neck muffler that grandmother had knitted for her. Life brightens up, even in a Maine winter, with a girl like that round. Addison took his shotgun, and I carried the basket of luncheon. No snow had come since Halstead and Alfred left, and we could still see along the old lumber road the faint marks of their hand-sled runners. In the hollows where the film of snow was a little deeper, two boot tracks were visible. "Halse wouldn't go off far into the woods alone, after Alf left him," said I. "No, he is too big a coward," said Addison. It was thirteen miles up to the Old Slave's Farm, where the negro--who called himself Pinkney Doman--had lived for so many years before the Civil War. "We can make it in three hours!" Addison exclaimed. "If we find him there, we shall be back before dark. And we had better hurry," he added, with a glance at the sky. "For I guess there's a storm coming; feels like it." In a yellow-birch top at a little opening near the old road we saw two partridges eating buds; Addison shot one of them and took it along, slung to his gun barrel. The faint trail of the sled continued along the old winter road all the way up to the clearing where the negro had lived, and by ten o'clock we came into view of the two log cabins. Very still and solitary they looked under that cold gray sky. "No smoke," Addison said. "But we'll soon know." He called once. We then hurried forward and pushed open the door of the larger cabin. No one was there. But clearly the two truants had stopped there, for the sled track led directly to the door of the cabin. There had been a fire in the stone fireplace. Beside a log at the door, too, Addison espied a hatchet that a while before we had missed from the tool bench in the wagon-house. "Well, if that isn't like their carelessness!" he exclaimed, laughing. "I'll take this along." But the runaways had not tarried long. We found the sled track again, leading into the woods at the northwest of the clearing.