The Adventures of Ann Part 5

The alarm spread; other men went too. The minister paused, and the women waited. Finally the men returned, all but a few who were detailed to watch the horses through the remainder of the services, and the meeting proceeded.

Phineas sent the whisper along the pew, that John had got out in time to save Red Robin; but the robber had escaped. Somehow, he had taken alarm before John got there. Red Robin was standing in the stable untied; but the robber had disappeared.

After meeting the people all came and questioned Ann. "He was a very tall man, in a gray cloak," said she. "He turned his face, or I saw it, just for one second, when I looked. He had black eyes and a dark curling beard."

It seemed very extraordinary. If it had not been for Red Robin's being untied, they would almost have doubted if Ann had seen rightly.

The thief had disappeared so suddenly and utterly, it almost seemed impossible that he could have been there at all.

There was much talk over it after meeting. "Are you _sure_ you saw him, Ann?" Mrs. Polly asked.

"Yes; I am _sure_," Ann would reply. She began to feel rather uncomfortable over it. She feared people would think she had been napping and dreaming although Red Robin _was_ untied.

That night the family were all in bed at nine o'clock, as usual; but Ann up in her snug feather-bed in her little western chamber, could not sleep. She kept thinking about the horse-thief, and grew more and more nervous. Finally she thought of some fine linen cloth she and Mrs. Polly had left out in the snowy field south of the house to bleach, and she worried about that. A web of linen cloth and a horse were very dissimilar booty; but a thief was a thief. Suppose anything should happen to the linen they had worked so hard over!

At last, she could not endure it any longer. Up she got, put on her clothes hurriedly, crept softly down stairs and out doors. There was a full moon and it was almost as light as day. The snow looked like a vast sheet of silver stretching far away over the fields.

Ann was hastening along the path between two high s...o...b..nks when all of a sudden she stopped, and gave a choked kind of a scream. No one with nerves could have helped it. Right in the path before her stood the horse-thief, gray cloak and all.

Ann turned, after her scream and first wild stare, and ran. But the man caught her before she had taken three steps. "Don't scream," he said in a terrible, anxious whisper. "Don't make a noise, for G.o.d's sake! They're after me! Can't you hide me?"

"No," said Ann, white and trembling all over but on her mettle, "I won't. You are a sinful man, and you ought to be punished. I won't do a thing to help you!"

The man's face bending over her was ghastly in the moonlight. He went on pleading. "If you will hide me somewhere about your place, they will not find me," said he, still in that sharp agonized whisper.

"They are after me--can't you hear them?"

Ann could, listening, hear distant voices on the night air.

"I was just going to hide in your barn," said the thief, "when I met you. O let me in there, now! don't betray me!"

Great tears were rolling down his bearded cheeks. Ann began to waver.

"They might look in the barn," said she hesitatingly.

The man followed up his advantages. "Then hide me in the house," said he. "I have a daughter at home, about your age. She's waiting for me, and it's long she'll wait, and sad news she'll get at the end of the waiting, if you don't help me. She hasn't any mother, she's a little tender thing--it'll kill her!" He groaned as he said it.

The voices came nearer. Ann hesitated no longer. "Come," said she, "quick!"

Then she fled into the house, the man following. Inside, she bolted the door, and made her unwelcome guest take off his boots in the kitchen, and follow her softly up stairs with them in his hand.

Ann's terror, leading him up, almost overwhelmed her. What if anybody should wake! Nabby slept near the head of the stairs. Luckily, she was a little deaf, and Ann counted on that.

She conducted the man across a little entry into a back, unfurnished chamber, where, among other things, were stored some chests of grain.

The moon shone directly in the window of the attic-chamber, so it was light enough to distinguish objects quite plainly.

Ann tiptoed softly from one grain-chest to another. There were three of them. Two were quite full; the third was nearly empty.

"Get in here," said Ann. "Don't make any noise."

He climbed in obediently, and Ann closed the lid. The chest was a rickety old affair and full of cracks--there was no danger but he would have air enough. She heard the voices out in the yard, as she shut the lid. Back she crept softly into her own room, undressed and got into bed. She could hear the men out in the yard quite plainly.

"We've lost him again," she heard one of them say.

Presently Phineas Adams opened a window, and shouted out, to know what was the matter.

"Seen anything of the horse-thief?" queried a voice from the yard.

"No!" said Phineas. "I have been asleep these three hours. You just waked me up."

"He was hiding under the meeting-house," said the voice, "must have slipped in there this morning, when we missed him. We went down there and watched to-night, and almost caught him. But he disappeared a little below here, and we've lost him again. It's my opinion he's an evil spirit in disguise. He ran like the wind, in amongst the trees, where we couldn't follow with the horses. Are you sure he did not skulk in here somewhere? Sim White thinks he did."

"I knew I saw him turn the corner of the lane," chimed in another voice, "and we've scoured the woods."

"I think we'd better search the barn, anyhow," some one else said, and a good many murmured a.s.sent.

"Wait a minute, I'll be down," said Phineas, shutting his window.

How long poor Ann lay there shaking, she never knew. It seemed hours.

She heard Phineas go down stairs, and unlock the door. She heard them tramp into the barn. "O, if I had hidden him there!" she thought.

After a while, she heard them out in the yard again. "He could _not_ have gotten into the house, in any way," she heard one man remark speculatively. How she waited for the response. It came in Phineas Adams' slow, sensible tones: "How could he? Didn't you hear me unbolt the door when I came out? The doors are all fastened, I saw to it myself."

"Well, of course he didn't," agreed the voice.

At last, Phineas came in, and Ann heard them go. She was so thankful.

However, the future perplexities, which lay before her, were enough to keep her awake for the rest of the night. In the morning, a new anxiety beset her. The poor thief must have some breakfast. She could easily have smuggled some dry bread up to him; but she did want him to have some of the hot Indian mush, which the family had. Ann, impulsive in this as everything, now that she had made up her mind to protect a thief, wanted to do it handsomely. She did want him to have some of that hot mush; but how could she manage it?

The family at the breakfast table discussed the matter of the horse-thief pretty thoroughly. It was a hard ordeal for poor Ann, who could not take easily to deception. She had unexpected trouble too with Nabby. Nabby _had_ waked up the preceding night.

"I didn't see anything," proclaimed Nabby; "but I heerd a noise. I think there's mice out in the grain-chist in the back chamber."

"I must go up there and look," said Mrs. Polly. "They did considerable mischief, last year."

Ann turned pale; what if she should take it into her head to look that day!

She watched her chance very narrowly for the hot mush; and after breakfast she caught a minute, when Phineas had gone to work, and Mrs. Polly was in the pantry, and Nabby down cellar. She had barely time to fill a bowl with mush, and scud.

How lightly she stepped over that back chamber floor, and how gingerly she opened the grain-chest lid. The thief looked piteously out at her from his bed of Indian corn. He was a handsome man, somewhere between forty and fifty. Indeed he came of a very good family in a town not so very far away. Horse-thiefs numbered some very respectable personages in their clan in those days sometimes.

They carried on a whispered conversation while he ate. It was arranged that Ann was to a.s.sist him off that night.

What a day poor Ann had, listening and watching in constant terror every moment, for fear something would betray her. Beside, her conscience troubled her sadly; she was far from being sure that she was doing right in hiding a thief from justice. But the poor man's tears, and the mention of his daughter, had turned the scale with her; she could not give him up.

Her greatest fear was lest Mrs. Polly should take a notion to search for mice in the grain-chests. She so hoped Nabby would not broach the subject again. But there was a peculiarity about Nabby--she had an exceedingly bitter hatred of rats and mice. Still there was no danger of her investigating the grain-chests on her own account, for she was very much afraid. She would not have lifted one of those lids, with the chance of a rat or mouse being under it, for the world. If ever a mouse was seen in the kitchen Nabby took immediate refuge on the settle or the table and left some one else to do the fighting.

So Nabby, being so const.i.tuted, could not be easy on the subject this time. All day long she heard rats and mice in the grain-chests; she stopped and listened with her broom, and she stopped and listened with her mop.

Ann went to look, indeed that was the way she smuggled the thief's dinner to him, but her report of nothing the matter with the grain did not satisfy Nabby. She had more confidence in Mrs. Polly. But Mrs. Polly did not offer to investigate herself until after supper.

They had been very busy that day, was.h.i.+ng, and now there was churning to do. Ann sat at the churn, Mrs. Polly was cutting up apples for pies; and Nabby was was.h.i.+ng dishes, when the rats and mice smote her deaf ears again.

"I knew I heerd 'em then," she said; "I don't believe but what them grain-chists is full of 'em."