tter again
and be alone with my trouble. Billow after billow of the blackest misery
broke over me. I went out into the garden, then around to the back side
of the west barn; the darkening landscape was not more somber than my
heart. How unspeakably dreary the dim, weathered old barn, the shadowy
hills and forests looked to me! Not less dreary seemed my whole future.
I felt exiled. It appeared to me that I should never know another happy
moment, that I never could, by any possibility, enjoy myself again. I
sat down on a stone, in the dark, put my head in my hands, and gave
myself up to the most somber reflections. Cold despair crept into me at
every pore. A fever of tears then filled my eyes. I laid wild plans to
escape; I would run away that very night and go home. The distance, as I
knew, was about five hundred miles; but I was sure that I could walk
twenty miles per day, perhaps thirty. In twenty days I could reach home.
I did not think much about food by the way; it did not appear to me that
I should want to touch a mouthful of anything eatable till I reached
home. If I did so far desire, I fancied that I might gather a few
berries by the wayside. Then I began to plan the details of setting off.
I would go indoors and put on my other suit of clothes, after the family
were asleep; and not to be too mean and cause too much anxiety, I
determined to write a few words on a bit of paper and slip it under
Theodora's door, advising them all not to worry about me, as I had gone
home, "for a time." These latter words I concluded to add, by way of
breaking it a little more gently to them, not that I had the slightest
intention of ever returning.

As I sat there with my hands over my face, planning, and brewing hot
tears, I heard a step in the grass, and looking up, saw a tall, shadowy
figure which I knew must be the Old Squire.

"Is that you, 'Edmund?'" he said, as I jumped up off the stone. He still
called me that sometimes. "It is a close night, I declare," he
continued. "I had about as lief be out here in the cool myself, as in
the house abed. But the mosquitoes bite a little, don't they?".

I had neither noticed that the evening was hot, nor yet that there were
any mosquitoes; I was quite insensible to ordinary physical influences.

The old gentleman lay down on the grass beside me. "Let's lay and talk a
spell," said he. "I never come round back of the barn here, but that I
think of the fox I shot when I was a young man.