wed constantly.
Sometimes it darted ahead and waited until she came up, but it did not
seem willing to be carried in her arms.

When Ann Mary reached her own house the lonesome look of it sent a chill
all over her; she was afraid to go in. She made up her mind to go down
to Sarah Bean's and ask whether she could not stay all night there.

So she kept on, and Loretta's white cat still followed her. There was no
light in Sarah Bean's house. Ann Mary knocked and pounded, but it was of
no use; the old woman had gone to bed, and she could not make her hear.

Ann Mary turned about and went home; the tears were running down her
cold red cheeks. The cat mewed louder than ever. When she got home she
took the cat up and carried it into the house. She determined to keep it
for company, anyway. She was sure, now, that she would have to stay
alone all night; the Adamses and Sarah Bean were the only neighbors, and
it was so late now that she had no hope of her grandparents' return. Ann
Mary was timid and nervous, but she had a vein of philosophy, and she
generally grasped the situation with all the strength she had, when she
became convinced that she must. She had laid her plans while walking
home through the keen winter air, even as the tears were streaming over
her cheeks, and she proceeded to carry them into execution. She gave
Loretta's cat its supper, and she ate a piece of mince-pie herself; then
she fixed the kitchen and the sitting-room fires, and locked up the
house very thoroughly. Next, she took the cat and the lamp and went into
the dark bedroom and locked the door; then she and the cat were as safe
as she knew how to make them. The dark bedroom was in the very middle of
the house, the centre of a nest of rooms. It was small and square, had
no windows, and only one door. It was a sort of fastness. Ann Mary made
up her mind that she would not undress herself, and that she would keep
the lamp burning all night. She climbed into the big yellow-posted
bedstead, and the cat cuddled up to her and purred.

Ann Mary lay in bed and stared at the white satin scrolls on the
wall-paper, and listened for noises. She heard a great many, but they
were all mysterious and indefinable, till about ten o'clock. Then she
sat straight up in bed and her heart beat fast. She certainly heard
sleigh-bells; the sound penetrated even to the dark bedroom. Then came a
jarring pounding on the side door. Ann Mary got up, unfastened the
bedroom door,