with her own--a touch that went
tingling through the school-master's nerves. But she had hardly said the
words until she was gone down the brookside path and over into the
pasture. A few minutes afterward she drove the cows up into the lot and
meekly took her scolding from Mrs. Means for being gone sech an awful
long time, like a lazy, good-fer-nothin piece of goods that she was.

Ralph opened the thumb-paper note, written on & page torn from an old
copy-book, in Bud's "hand-write" and running:

"Mr. Heartsook

"deer Sur:

"I Put in my best licks, taint no use. Run fer yore life. A plans on
foot to tar an fether or wuss to-night. Go rite off. Things is awful
juberous[27].

"BUD."

The first question with Ralph was whether he could depend on Bud. But he
soon made up his mind that treachery of any sort was not one of his
traits. He had mourned over the destruction of Bud's good resolutions by
Martha Hawkins's refusal, and being a disinterested party he could have
comforted Bud by explaining Martha's "mitten." But he felt sure that Bud
was not treacherous. It was a relief, then, as he stood there to know
that the false truce was over, and worst had come to worst.

His first impulse was to stay and fight. But his nerves were not strong
enough to execute so foolhardy a resolution. He seemed to see a man
behind every maple-trunk. Darkness was fast coming on, and he knew that
his absence from supper at his boarding-place could not fail to excite
suspicion. There was no time to be lost. So he started.

Once run from a danger, and panic is apt to ensue. The forest; the
stalk-fields, the dark hollows through which he passed, seemed to be
peopled with terrors. He knew Small and Jones well enough to know that
every avenue of escape would be carefully picketed. So there was nothing
to do but to take the shortest path to the old trysting place, the
Spring-in-rock.

Here he sat and shook with terror. Angry with himself, he inly denounced
himself for a coward. But the effect was really a physical one. The
chill and panic now were the reaction from the previous strain.

For when the sound of his pursuers' voices broke upon his ears early in
the evening, Ralph shook no more; the warm blood set back again toward
the extremities, and his self-control returned when he needed it. He
gathered some stones about him, as the only weapons of defense at hand.
The mob was on the cliff above. But he thought that he heard f