d waited a moment in the taunting stillness, she
withdrew a little, that her voice should reach him, wherever he might
be.

"I know all about it. You've took my silver tea-set an' you've got it in
there now. Other folks knows it, too, an' about moonrise they're comin'
here an' surround the house an' make you give it up." She paused for an
eager breath. The futility of the moment choked her. "You hear to me,"
she called again, in her strained, beseeching voice. "'Twon't do ye no
good to hide, for they know you're there. An' 'twon't do ye no good to
fight, for there's a whole b'ilin' of 'em, an' like 's not they've got
guns. Now when I'm gone--I'm goin' right off home now--you slip out the
back o' the house an' go as straight as you can cut, right acrost the
pastur'. That'll bring ye to a lane. You turn to your right an' foller
it, an' it'll take ye onto the high-road. Then you take that an' keep to
your left. T'others'll come from the right. An' if you find a good
hidin'-place, you better clap the tea-set into it, under some brush or
suthin', an' come back arter it some other time. Ye see, they've started
up the sheriff an' I dunno what all. Mis' John C.'s puttin' on 't
through, an' mebbe they've telegraphed over the country by this time.
'Tain't any small matter, takin' a silver tea-set so. I'm terrible
worried about ye. There! Now I'm goin'. You wait a minute, if ye don't
want me to see ye. Then you can put."

But when she had taken a dozen steps on her homeward way, she returned
as hastily. Her voice broke again upon the stillness, with a thrill in
it of renewed beseeching. "Look here, you! One thing you do, fust thing
arter you git away from here. You see 'f you can't find some work an'
you do it." The present experience seemed to have fallen away from her.
She might have been addressing the boy who also had been wild in those
years so long ago. "You keep on this way an' you'll end in jail an' I
dunno but suthin' that's wuss. Mebbe nobody won't ketch ye this
time,--you better melt the tea-set up soon as ever you can,--but some
time they will. Now you mind what I tell ye."

This time she did turn away, and with her light and knowing step plunged
into the woods. Once there, as she remembered afterwards, her knees
seemed to fail her, but she went weakly on, until, at a good distance
from the house, she sat down on a bank under the sighing pines and
leaned against a tree to let the cool air touch her face. "My suz!" sh