He had talked to the horse in this way, as to a human being, ever since he could remember. To him there was nothing absurd in it. Charlie, recognizing his young master, pushed his nose forward and rubbed it against Joe’s breast. “I’m going away,” repeated the boy, “an’ it isn’t likely we’ll ever see each other again.” He leaned over the manger, pulled the horse’s head down to his breast, and laid his cheek against it for a moment. Then he went out at the stable door, shut and latched it, hurried across the barnyard and out upon the grassy expanse at the side of the highway. At the turn in the road Joe looked back. He could see the white front of the old homestead showing dimly against the dark shadows where night lingered. It looked so serene, so quiet, so comfortable! He brushed away the tears that started to his eyes, choked down the sob that rose in his throat, and turning once more, walked rapidly away toward the east. Almost before Joe had turned into the road from the bars, a man crept cautiously from the shadows behind the barn, and advanced to the stable door. He was short and thickly built, and very bow-legged. “Close call for me, that there was,” he said to himself. “Another minute, an’ I’d ’a’ been inside o’ that there stable door, an’ ’e’d ’a’ come plump onto me; that’s w’at ’e’d ’a’ done. Queer thing, anyway. W’y didn’t ’e take the ’oss, I want to know, an’ not be scarin’ honest folk out o’ their seving senses that way for nothink?” The man unlatched the stable door, opened it noiselessly, and went in. It was not many minutes before he came out again, leading Old Charlie, and stroking him in order to keep him quiet. The horse was bridled, and a blanket was strapped over his back in lieu of a saddle. The animal was evidently suspicious and frightened, and moved about nervously, snorting a little, and with ears pricked up and eyes wide open. Once he snorted so loudly that the bow-legged man, glancing uneasily toward the farmhouse, made haste to close the stable door and lead the horse to the bars, where he could more readily mount him. “Nothing venture, nothing ’ave,” he said, as he leaped clumsily to the beast’s back. Then, having walked the horse for a few rods, he struck Charlie with his hand, and rode away rapidly in the direction which Joe had taken. Very soon, however, he turned the horse’s head into a grassy cart-road leading into the woods which he had carefully explored the previous day. This he followed--Old Charlie’s smooth-shod feet leaving no track on the turf--until it brought him out upon a little-travelled highway about a mile distant. Here the thief cut a sharp little stick from a tree, and urging Old Charlie to a rapid gait, galloped on ten miles or more, until daylight had fully broken. Then he took refuge once more in the woods, and breakfasted out of a little bag of plunder which he had brought from the Gaston farm.