old, out there."

Pony did not say anything, but he came into the kitchen and sat in a
corner beyond the stove and watched his mother getting the supper. In the
dining-room his sisters were setting the table and his father was reading
by the lamp there. Pony would have given almost anything if something had
happened just to make him tell what he was going to do, so that he could
have been kept from doing it. He saw that his mother was watching him all
the time, and she said: "What makes you so quiet, child?"

Pony said, "Oh, nothing," and his mother asked, "Have you been falling out
with Jim Leonard?"

Pony said no, and then she said, "I almost wish you had, then. I don't
think he's a bad boy, but he's a crazy fool, and I wish you wouldn't go
with him so much. I don't like him."

All of a sudden Pony felt that he did not like Jim Leonard very much
himself. It seemed to him that Jim Leonard had not used him very well, but
he could not have told how.

After supper the great thing was how to get out to the barn without any
one's noticing. Pony went to the woodshed door two or three times to look
out. There were plenty of stars in the sky, but it seemed very dark, and
he knew that it would be as black as pitch in the barn, and he did not see
how he could ever dare to go out to it, much less into it. Every time he
came back from looking he brought an armload of wood into the kitchen so
that his mother would not notice.

The last time she said, "Why, you dear, good boy, what a lot of wood
you're bringing for your mother," for usually Pony had to be told two or
three times before he would get a single armload of wood.

When his mother praised him he was ashamed to look at her, and so he
looked round, and he saw the lantern hanging by the mantel-piece. When he
saw that lantern he almost wished that he had not seen it, for now he knew
that his last excuse was gone, and he would really have to run off. If it
had not been for the lantern he could have told Jim Leonard that he was
afraid to go out to the barn on account of ghosts, for anybody would be
afraid of ghosts; Jim Leonard said he was afraid of them himself. But now
Pony could easily get the lantern and take it out to the barn with him,
and if it was not dark the ghosts would not dare to touch you.

He tried to think back to the beginning of the time when he first intended
to run off, and find out if there was not some way of not doing it; but he
could not, and if J