sneaking down the road. So the boys were anticipating high
times. Sawed-Off would certainly be along to prevent the elopement,
and they had determined to be on the watch, and miss none of the sport.
And here, like two chivalrous knights, at the request of a distressed
damsel, they had pledged themselves to help the lovers! Elsie was
evidently in the plot with Ella Anne, and evidently neither girl
guessed at Sawed-Off's perfidy. Tim jumped up in excitement and began
to swagger up and down, his hands in his pockets. It was as good as
Daring Dick's dilemmas, this situation. Elsie would certainly admire
him, and consider him the cleverest young man in the village. They
must perform some glorious deed that very night.

"What'll we do?" asked Davy. He was a ready helper when Tim was on the
warpath, but the orphan's more fertile brain always supplied the
material for their misdeeds.

Tim's eyes grew luminous. "Say! he's scared stiff about the banshee
that yells down in the Drowned Lands. He'll be comin' up that way
soon's it gets dark. If he seen a ghost there, he'd cut an' run, an'
never come back."

Davy's languor dropped from him like a garment. "Come on!" he
whispered, his eyes shining. "You scoot home an' git that last year's
punkin skin, an' I'll sneak some white duds out o' maw's bureau.
Golly! Ella Anne an' her feller'll be back from their weddin' tower
'fore Sawed-Off quits runnin'!"

Meanwhile, in a little house farther up the street, the three people
concerned in another runaway match were sitting in the twilight. No
one would have guessed that the forlorn, drooping little figure by the
window was the bride of the morrow, and the idea of an elopement was as
far removed from her as from a Jenny Wren. For, as the crucial moment
approached, poor Miss Arabella's small courage had dwindled away. To
get married would have been a tremendous undertaking in itself, but to
elope! For the first time, she realized the magnitude of the
enterprise. To get away from Susan's rule back into the joy of
girlhood dreams, had seemed, at first sight, like escaping from prison;
but now Susan and her laws seemed her only support, and Martin seemed
strange and far away.

"I don't know what makes me feel so queer," she faltered, "but ever
since that dress was finished I feel jist as if I'd been finished, too."

"Oh, you're jist nervous, Arabella," said Mrs. Munn, while Elsie patted
her hand soothingly. "It ain't n