ht the girl's guiding hand firmly in her own, called to
Susanna in the kitchen, and on the brief journey to the "further barn"
learned the main facts of the affair.

Two hours later Katharine and Montgomery sat down in the kitchen to a
dinner of bread and milk, while over the rest of the house hung a
strange silence which made even its former quietude seem noisy by
contrast. Aunt Eunice had gone to lie down, being greatly shaken by the
sad accident, which, while being much less tragic than the death
Katharine had reported, was trouble sufficiently serious. In the kitchen
chamber above, Moses' own room, they could hear Susanna softly stepping
about in list slippers, only the jar of the floor beams betraying her
movements, and occasionally a muffled voice, strangely unlike the gruff
tones of the hired man, would float down to them. Sir Philip lay purring
himself to sleep, after a strenuous season of unrest, during which
nobody had had time to protect him from mischievous Punch. As for the
latter, he had been fatigued by his trip to and from the forest, as well
as his manoeuvres with the Angora, and now took his own rest by
sleeping with one eye open.

The children themselves were weary. Katharine from the excitement of the
morning, and Montgomery from physical exercise. He had never done so
many useful things in his life as he had crowded into the space of two
short hours. It was he who had summoned the doctor, run back and forth
between that gentleman's office and Miss Maitland's house, carried a
plain statement of facts to Madam Sturtevant, as well as a highly
furbished one to every householder between the two mansions, and had
manfully attended to Mr. Jones's noon "chores." He had, indeed, already
a wild ambition to be engaged in the hired man's place, since the doctor
said that that sufferer would be laid up in bed for at least three
months.

"I'd r-r-rather do chores any day than go to s-s-school," he announced
to his companion, swallowing a large bit of bread at the same time, and
thereby causing that young person to tilt her nose upwards,
disdainfully.

"You ought to be as nice in your manners out here alone with me as you
would be in the real dining-room with Aunt Eunice and grown-up company,"
she reproved, daintily balancing her own spoon with an ease which the
other would scarcely admit to himself that he admired.

"F-f-fudge. You ain't c-c-com--pany no more. You belong, don't you?"

"I--I guess so. I beg