For a few minutes Christopher stood looking abstractedly at the closed door. Then shaking his head, as if to rid himself of an accusing thought, he turned away and began rapidly to undress. He had thrown off his coat, and was stooping to remove his boots, when a slight noise at the window startled him, and straightening himself instantly he awaited attentively a repetition of the sound. In a moment it came again, and hastily crossing the room and raising the sash, he looked out into the full moonlight and saw Will Fletcher standing in the gravelled path below. At the first glance surprise held him motionless, but as the boy waved to him he responded to the signal, and, catching up his coat from the bed, ran down the staircase and out into the yard. "What in the devil's name--" he exclaimed, aghast. Will was trembling from exhaustion, and his face glimmered like a pallid blotch under the shadow of the aspen. When the turkeys stirred on an overhanging bough above him he started nervously and sucked in his breath with a hissing sound. He was run to death; this Christopher saw at the first anxious look. "Get me something to eat," said the boy; "I'm half starved--but bring it to the barn, for I'm too dead tired to stand a moment. Yes, I ran away, of course," he finished irritably. "Do I look as if I'd come in grandpa's carriage?" With a last spurt of energy he disappeared into the shadows behind the house, and Christopher, going into the kitchen, began searching the tin safe for the chance remains of supper. On the table was the bowl of buckwheat which Cynthia had been preparing when she was called away by some imperious demand of her mother's, and near it he saw the open prayer-book from which she had been reading. From the adjoining room he heard Tucker's voice--those rich, pleasant tones that translated into sound the courageous manliness of the old soldier's face--and for an instant he yearned toward the cheerful group sitting in the firelight beyond the whitewashed wall--toward the blind woman in her old oak chair, listening to the evening chapter from the Scriptures. Then the feeling passed as quickly as it had come, and securing a plate of bread and a dried ham-bone, he filled a glass with fresh milk, and, picking up his lantern, went out of doors and along the little straggling path to the barn. The yard was frosted over with moonlight, but when he reached the rude building where the farm implements and cattle fodder were sheltered he saw that it was quite dark inside, only a few scattered moonbeams crawling through the narrow doorway. To his first call there was no answer, and it was only after he had lighted his lantern and swung it round in the darkness that he discovered Will lying fast asleep upon a pile of straw. As the light struck him full in the face the boy opened his eyes and sprang up. "Why, it's you," he said in a relieved voice. "I thought it was grandpa. If he comes you've got to keep him out, you know!"