orribly afraid, but
she was also horribly homesick, and homesickness will urge to
desperate deeds.

That night, also, Captain John Hopkins and his wife went to visit the
sick neighbor, and, after the younger sisters were in bed, Letitia
was left alone with her great-great-grandmother, who was sleepy.
Letitia did not talk; she knitted, with a shrewd eye upon the elder
Letitia, who presently fell fast asleep. Then Letitia rose softly,
and laid down her knitting work. It might be her chance for nobody
knew how long, and Josephus might even now be entering his book. She
pulled off her shoes, tiptoed in her thick yarn stockings up to the
loft, got her own clothes out of the chest, and put them on. The
little great-great-aunts did not stir. Letitia blew a kiss to them.
Then she tiptoed down, got the key out of the secret drawer, blew
another farewell kiss to her sleeping great-great-grandmother and was
out of the house.

It was broad moonlight outside. She ran around to the north side of
the house, and there was the little green door hidden under the low
branches of the spruce tree. Letitia gave a sob of fear and
thankfulness. She fitted the key in the lock, turned it, opened the
door, and there she was back in her great-aunt's cheese-room.

She shut the door hard, locked it, and carried the key back to its
place in the satin-wood box. Then she looked out of the window, and
there was her great-aunt Peggy, and the old maid-servant just coming
home from meeting.

Letitia confessed what she had done, and her aunt listened gravely.
Letitia did not say anything about Josephus Peabody.

She was not sure that he had made his escape, and if he had his
grandmother might punish him, and she considered that he had probably
suffered enough at the hands of Goodman Cephas Holbrook.

Letitia's aunt listened gravely. "You were disobedient," said she
when Letitia had finished, "but I think your disobediance has brought
its own punishment, and I hope now that you will be more contented."

"Oh, Aunt Peggy," sobbed Letitia, "everything I've got is so
beautiful, and I love to study and crochet and go to church."

"Well, it was a hard lesson to learn, and I hoped to spare you from
it, but perhaps it was for the best," said her great-aunt Peggy.

"I was there a whole winter," said Letitia, "but when I got back you
were just coming home from church."

"It doesn't take as long to visit the past as it did to live in it,"
replied her aunt.