"Where do you suppose Betsey can be?" said Mrs. Dow, for the
twentieth time. "She didn't have no money. I know she ain't gone far,
if it's so that she's yet alive. She's b'en real pinched all the
spring."

"Perhaps that lady that come one day give her some," the keeper's wife
suggested mildly.

"Then Betsey would have told me," said Mrs. Dow, with injured dignity.

VI.

On the morning of her disappearance, Betsey rose even before the pewee
and the English sparrow, and dressed herself quietly, though with
trembling hands, and stole out of the kitchen door like a plunderless
thief. The old dog licked her hand and looked at her anxiously; the
tortoise-shell cat rubbed against her best gown, and trotted away up
the yard, then she turned anxiously and came after the old woman,
following faithfully until she had to be driven back. Betsey was used
to long country excursions afoot. She dearly loved the early morning;
and finding that there was no dew to trouble her, she began to follow
pasture paths and short cuts across the fields, surprising here and
there a flock of sleepy sheep, or a startled calf that rustled out
from the bushes. The birds were pecking their breakfast from bush and
turf; and hardly any of the wild inhabitants of that rural world were
enough alarmed by her presence to do more than flutter away if they
chanced to be in her path. She stepped along, light-footed and eager
as a girl, dressed in her neat old straw bonnet and black gown, and
carrying a few belongings in her best bundle-handkerchief, one that
her only brother had brought home from the East Indies fifty years
before. There was an old crow perched as sentinel on a small, dead
pine-tree, where he could warn friends who were pulling up the
sprouted corn in a field close by; but he only gave a contemptuous caw
as the adventurer appeared, and she shook her bundle at him in
revenge, and laughed to see him so clumsy as he tried to keep his
footing on the twigs.

"Yes, I be," she assured him. "I'm a-goin' to Pheladelphy, to the
Centennial, same's other folks. I'd jest as soon tell ye's not, old
crow;" and Betsey laughed aloud in pleased content with herself and
her daring, as she walked along. She had only two miles to go to the
station at South Byfleet, and she felt for the money now and then, and
found it safe enough. She took great pride in the success of her
escape, and especially in the long concealment of her wealth. Not a
night had passed s