of the question. Pete took three-fourths of the bed, and Hannah took all
of his thoughts. So he lay, and looked out through the cracks in the
"clapboards" (as they call rough shingles in the old West) at the stars.
For the clouds had now broken away. And he lay thus recounting to
himself, as a miser counts the pieces that compose his hoard, every step
of that road from the time he had overtaken Hannah in the hollow to the
fence. Then he imagined again the pleasure of helping her over, and then
he retraced the ground to the box-elder tree at the spring, and repeated
to himself the conversation until he came to the part in which she said
that only time and God could help her. What did she mean? What was the
hidden part of her life? What was the connection between her and Shocky?

Hours wore on, and still the mind of Ralph Hartsook went back and
traveled the same road, over the fence, past the box-elder, up to the
inexplicable part of the conversation, and stood bewildered with the
same puzzling questions about the bound girl's life.

At last he got up, drew on his clothes, and sat down on the top of the
ladder, looking down over the blue-grass pasture which lay on the border
between the land of Jones and the land of Means. The earth was white
with moonlight. He could not sleep. Why not walk? It might enable him to
sleep. And once determined on walking, he did not hesitate a moment as
to the direction in which he should walk. The blue-grass pasture (was it
not like unto the garden of Eden?) lay right before him. That box-elder
stood just in sight. To spring over the fence and take the path down the
hill and over the brook was as quickly done as decided upon. To stand
again under the box-elder, to climb again over the farther fence, and to
walk down the road toward the school-house was so easy and so delightful
that it was done without thought. For Ralph was an eager man--when he
saw no wrong in anything that proposed itself, he was wont to follow his
impulse without deliberation. And this keeping company with the stars,
and the memory of a delightful walk, were so much better than the
commonplace Flat Creek life that he threw himself into his night
excursion with enthusiasm.

At last he stood in the little hollow where he had joined Hannah. It was
the very spot at which Shocky, too, had met him a few mornings before.
He leaned against the fence and tried again to solve the puzzle of
Hannah's troubles. For that she had tr