us follow the water to the
river."

"It never gets there. It runs into Lonesome Man's swamp, and that's the
end of him."

"Who, Lonesome Man or the spring? And who was Lonesome Man?"

"Nobody knows. What does it matter?"

He watched her toy with the new-born rill, a mere thread of water, build
a Lilliputian dam, and muddle the clear outflow as it broke, and then
build again. He had the thought that she had suddenly become younger,
more like a child, and he himself older.

"Why don't you talk, John?" she said.

"I can't. I am wondering about that Lonesome Man and what the trees are
thinking. Don't you feel how still it is? It's disrespectful to gabble
before your betters." He felt it and said it without affectation, but as
usual his mood of wandering thought failed to interest Leila.

"I hate it when it's quiet! I like to hear the wind howl in the pines--"

He expressed his annoyance. "You never want to talk anything but horses
and swimming. Wait till you come back next spring with long skirts--such
a nice well-behaved Miss Grey." He was, in familiar phrase, out of sorts,
with a bit of will to annoy a disappointing companion. His mild effort
had no success.

"Oh, John, it's awful! You ought to be sorry for me. The more you grow up
the more your skirts grow down. Bother their manners! Who cares! Let's go
home. It feels just as if it was Sunday."

"It is, in the woods. Well, come along." He walked on in the silence, she
thinking of that alarming prospect of school, and he of the escaped
slave's secret and, what struck the boy most--the hawk. Never before had
he been told anything which was to be sacredly guarded from others. It
gave him now a pleasant feeling of having been trusted. Suppose Leila had
been told such a thing, how would she feel, and Aunt Ann? He was like a
man who has too large a deposit in a doubtful bank. He was vaguely uneasy
lest he might tell or in some way betray his sense of possessing a
person's confidence.

As they came near the house, Leila said, "Catch me, I'll run you home."

"Tag," he cried.

As they came to the side porch, Ann Penhallow said, "Finish that
handkerchief--now, at once. It is time you were taught other than tom-boy
ways."

John went by into the house. After dinner the Squire had his usual game
of whist, always to the dissatisfaction of Leila, whose thoughts wandered
like birds on the wing, from twig to twig. John usually played far
better, but just now worse than