"Where is my uncle?" "He is gone to--town, William. Ach, sit down once!" "No," said William curtly. "I'll come back after a while for Albert." And he was gone, his straight young shoulders bent. He had suffered hardship and disappointment, but nothing had torn his heart like this. They must have written, they could not have been so cruel as to have forgotten him. It was a common thing for letters to be lost. He read Sarah's letter once more as he strode along. She said that Uncle Daniel was after them, and that she had chased Jacob Kalb off with a gun. He knew Uncle Daniel's stern determination to have his own way, he knew how he coveted the farm, he knew Jacob's meanness. After that he ran until he came to the schoolhouse door. That, he found, was closed. He rapped heavily; there was no answer. Then he looked in the window. The room was empty. As he was turning away in despair, he heard some one calling him. "The school is closed. It won't be open till to-morrow. Miss Miflin went away." It was the woman who lived in the next house. She had been a schoolmate of his when he was a little boy. "Miss Miflin?" he repeated slowly. "Is she here yet? Don't you know me, Sallie?" "No," answered the woman. "I--Why, _William_!" She had both his hands in hers, and could only stare at him speechlessly. "Why, William! What am I so glad to--" Then she, too, began to cry. "I can't help it, William. I am so sorry for you. I--" "Do you know anything about my little sister?" asked William. "They said she had come over here." "Yes, and she was crying, and she talked to teacher, and they went away, and Ellie and Weezy. They went to town. It was something about a guardian. I heard them talking. But I don't believe they could catch the nine o'clock train. Perhaps they are yet at the station. It is another train at eleven." She finished her sentence in a loud shriek as William, after glancing at his watch, ran down the road. "Come soon to see us, William." She watched him until he vanished at the turn of the road, then she ran out to the field to tell her husband. * * * * * Sarah had often pictured to herself what she would do when William came home. Sometimes she seemed to see him coming up the lane, and herself flying down to meet him. Sometimes he opened the door and came into the kitchen and surprised her. Sometimes she imagined that she would cry; at other times, after she had been reading, for ten or fifteen minutes at a time, "Thaddeus of Warsaw," the one novel which the Wenners possessed, she was sure that she should faint. But in all her imaginings, she never dreamed that she should not know him. She, too, saw the tall, broad-shouldered young man come into the court-room; she even looked absently straight into his eyes, with her frightened stare. Then she looked away. "Stealing," Jacob Kalb was saying, "is stealing."