'm really only just beginning to get used to them now. Bessie,
it's getting pretty dark. Won't the moon be up soon?"

"Not for an hour or two yet, Zara. But it is dark now--we'd better begin
walking toward your house. We want to get there while it stays dark, and
before the old moon does get up. It'll be just as bright as daylight
then, and they'd be able to see us. I tell you what--we want to keep off
the road. We'll go through the woods till we get a chance to cut through
Farmer Weeks' cornfield. That'll bring us out behind your place, and we
can steal up quietly."

"You'd think we'd been doing something wrong, Bessie. It seems mighty
mean for us to have to sneak around that way."

"It's all right as long as we know we haven't done anything that isn't
right, Zara. That's the chief thing. If you do right, people will find
it out sooner or later, even if they think at first that you're bad.
Sometimes it takes a long time, but Paw Hoover says he's never known it
to fail that a bad man gets found out sooner or later."

"Then Jake Hoover'd better look out," said Zara, viciously. "He's lied
so much, and done so many mean things that you've got the blame for,
that he'll have an awful lot to make up for when he starts in. What
would Paw Hoover do to him if he knew he'd set the woodshed on fire,
Bessie?"

"I don't know. He'd be awful mad. He hasn't got so awful much money, you
know, and he needs it all for the farm. But Maw Hoover thinks Jake's all
right. She'd find some excuse for him. She always does when he does get
found out. That happens sometimes, you know. He can't always make them
think I've done it."

"I guess maybe that's why he's so mean, Bessie. Don't you think so?"

"Shouldn't wonder, Zara. I don't believe he stops to think half the
time. Here we are! We'll cut through the fence. Careful as we go
through--keep to the lanes between the stalks. We mustn't hurt the
corn, you know."

"I'd like to pull up every stalk! These people 'round here have been
mean and ugly to my father ever since we came here."

"That isn't right, though, Zara. It won't do you any good to hurt them
in return. If you do wrong, too, just because they have, you'll be just
as bad as they are."

"Oh, I know, but they've said all sorts of awful things, and if they've
put him in prison now--" She stopped, with a sob, and Bessie took her
hand.

"Cheer up, Zara. We don't know that anything of that sort has happened
yet, and, even if it h