“Now, don't ye mind, don't ye mind;” which set me to swallowing lumps in my throat suddenly. It had not occurred to me those many days to be homesick, and it was a poor time to begin. She touched my hair with dry, bony fingers, and I remembered having seen a queer black and white drawing over the mantelpiece in the next room, of a medium-sized boy in a short jacket. It could not have been a good drawing, for he looked very flattened out. I sat up quickly to stop the homesickness, and asked: “Is he your son, in the drawing?” “He's dead,” she answered gruffly, and then in a moment repeated quite softly: “Don't ye mind, don't ye mind.” By and by the great kitchen, or living room, was full of men, snoring and wheezing in the dark. Before the lamp was put out I saw Calhoun in a rocking-chair, with his feet under the stove. I lay still, and looked at the two windows which glimmered with the dim moonlight outdoors, and that waiting seemed to be something endless and ghostly. I did not hear Calhoun till he lay beside me, nor did I hear him open the pantry door, so softly and slowly he moved. But we went through the door, and closed it. The moonlight shone in the pantry window. I remember taking things from a tin pan and putting them in my pockets. They were a sort of sweet, crusty biscuit. Calhoun put a piece of silver where were no more biscuits, and we slid through the window, and crept along in the shadow of the house. “Hiop!” said someone close by and softly, through the crack of a window next the pantry. “Hol' on.” We stopped short.. The window went up slowly, and Mr. Todd leaned out in his shirt. “Where you goin' th'ough my window?” “Going to cut and run,” said Calhoun despondently, “if you don't object. If you do, we yield the point. You needn't make a row.” “Wha' for you goin'?” “Captain's down on us.” “Jemima! But I bet you chaps is Yanks, both of ye. Tell ye how I guess it----” Mrs. Todd appeared as a white outline further back in the room, and said something. “Hey?” said Mr. Todd. “Let 'em alone,” she whispered angrily. “Hey? Wha' for?” “You let 'em alone.” “Well,” said he, grumbling and hesitating, “I don' know as there's anythin' in it for me. Hol' on now----” She pulled him back and closed the window softly, and so we came away from the house of Tommy Todd. It was cold, with a thin slip of moon shivering over the sea. We struck to the rear of the house, through a great pine wood, where the trunks had been scraped for turpentine, and looked like rows of tombstones filing to right and left; and at the end of a mile we fell upon a fair travelled highway, leading a little westward of the pole star.