That morning Virginia quietly slipped over to Ann Boyd’s and confided the new phase of the situation to her sympathetic friend, but Ann could not account for Jane’s strange conduct, and Virginia returned home no wiser than she had left. However, at the fence she met Sam. His face was aglow with excitement. "What you reckon?" he said. "The bird has flown." "Mother, you mean?" "Yes, she’s skipped clean out. It was this way: Pete Denslow drove past about twenty minutes ago in his empty two-horse wagon, and I hollered out to him and asked him where-away. He pulled up at the gate and said he was going over the mountain to Gilmer after a load of ginseng to fetch back to Darley. Well, sir, no sooner had he said that than your mammy piped up from her dungeon, where she stood listening at a crack, and said, said she, sorter sheepish-like: ’Sam, ask him if he will let me go with him; I promised to go see Sally Maud Pincher over there the first time any wagon was passing, and I want to go.’ Well, I told Pete, and he looked at the sun and wanted to know how long it would take her to get ready. She heard him, and yelled out from the door that she’d be out in five minutes, and, bless you, she was on the seat beside him in less time in her best clothes and carpet-bag in hand. She was as white in the face as a convict out taking a sunning, and her gingham looked like it was hanging from a hook on her neck, she was that thin. She never said a word to me as she went by. At first I thought she was plumb crazy, but she had the clearest eye in her head I ever saw, and she was chattering away to Pete about the weather as if he was an unmarried man and she was on the carpet." "Oh, uncle, what do you think it means?" Virginia sighed, deeply worried. "Why, I think it’s a fine sign, myself," said Sam. "I’m not as good a judge of women as I am of mules—though a body ought to know as much of one as the other—but I think she’s perhaps been wanting to get a breath of fresh air for some time and didn’t like to acknowledge she was tired of cave-life. Over there at Pincher’s, you see, she can slide back into her old ways without attracting attention by it." "And she didn’t leave a word of directions to me?" the girl said, sadly. "Not a word," was the droll reply. "I didn’t say good-bye to her myself. To tell the truth, I had noticed that she’d forgot to put up a snack for her and Pete to eat on the way, and I was afraid she might remember it at the last minute and take what little there was left for you and me."