"Hist! he! he!"
It was like the lowest hiss of a serpent, the sound with which Tom warned his allies, and signified that all was ready.
Mrs. Allen lifted her daughter in both arms, held her one moment in a clinging embrace, then passed her through the window, and leaned out till Jube stood with her at the foot of the ladder. After that, she followed, while Paul and Tom crept after, noiselessly as shadows.
"Come this way," said Tom. "It's a glare of ice all around, but I scattered ashes along here, so keep straight ahead, while I take a peep, and see if them old chaps are sleeping yet."
The little group drew close together, and moved quickly along the path which Tom had made safe with wood ashes. Directly that youngster joined them, chuckling to himself, and rubbing his yarn mittens gleefully together.
"They're in for it! Oh, Miss Allen, that cider of your'n must be scrumptious stuff. They've drunk up the hull bilin of it, and there the great pewter mug lies atween 'em, upsot on the harth, a little gingery stream a running and a hissing from it into the fire. There they set, each of 'em, with his legs half way across the harth, and the toes of his boot a sticking up, sliding off from them chairs till their boots eenamost touch, and each on 'em has got his head pitched forward and his face hid in his bosom, and snoring like all nature. Oh, Paul, I'd a gin the world to have boo-hood right out as loud as I wanted to."
All this was said in a loud whisper that sounded sharp and distinct on the frosty air, but no one heeded it. The two women hurried forward in dead silence; Paul and Jube went before, making a path, for they had turned into the field, and had instinctively crept within the shadow of the stone wall which Katharine had fled along on that fearful day. They were fast approaching the old butternut tree, when Katharine, whose breath had come quick and short with each step, reeled and fell back against the wall.
"I can't go this road," she gasped, pointing to the butternut tree, which flung its gaunt skeleton shadow far out on the snow. "Take me any road but this."
Tom, who had been running along in the moonlight, came up, speaking for the first time in his full voice.
"That's right; we may as well stop and make up our minds what to do next, as Robinson Crusoe did when he reached that ere uninhabited island; for the old soger warn't much wuss off than we are, I reckon, 'specially now that we've got another woman 'tached onto the consarn."