"What undah the sun is the mattah, honey?" she called, but Betty was far down the avenue, and never paused to look back.
Lad, turned away from home, was not so willing to run now, and Betty could hear the train whistling up the road. It was the seven o'clock mail train.
"Oh, Lad, hurry!" she urged. "Dear, good old Lad, please hurry! I'm so afraid we won't get there in time."
Lad looked around at her and stopped still in the road. The train whistled nearer. Guiding the pony to the fence, Betty stood up and broke a switch from an overhanging tree.
"I hate to do it, you poor old fellow," she said, "but I must. You must get to the post-office in time." Urged along by the switch and her tearful pleadings, Lad broke into a run and brought up at the post-office, just as the postmistress was locking the mail-bag. "Oh, Miss Mattie!" sounded an anxious little voice at the delivery window, "is it too late to send this letter? Mrs. Sherman said it must go, if possible, on this train."
"It's a close shave, my dear," said Miss Mattie, reaching out to take the letter eagerly thrust through the bars. "I'm a few minutes late, anyhow, and there's barely time to stamp it and slip it in, so!" She acted while she spoke, so that with the last word she had turned the key. A coloured porter, who stood waiting, caught up the bag and hurried across the road to the railroad station. The train came thundering down the track, and he jumped across in front of the locomotive.
Betty watched until she saw the mail-bag tossed aboard, and then gave a deep sigh of thankfulness. "Well," she exclaimed to Lad, in a relieved tone, "that's done! We're too late for the charades, but maybe we'll get back to the mill in time for the cake-walk."
It would have been quite dark by the time she reached the cross-roads again, if it had not been that the moon was beginning to rise, and cast a faint whiteness over the dusky fields. She could not remember which way to turn. The first time she passed that way she had paid no attention to direction, but had followed heedlessly after Lloyd. The second time the pony had shot by so fast that she had had no time to consider. Now he stood still, not caring which way she chose so long as he had to travel away from his stall and feed-bin.
"It must be to the left," she said, in bewilderment, after a moment's hesitation, and slowly turned in that direction. But she had taken the wrong way. She went on and on, wondering why she did not come to a gate, when the road suddenly turned into a narrow wagon track, with dark corn-fields on each side. There was not a house or a human being in sight.
The moon was not high enough yet to dispel much of the gloom of the twilight, and bullbats were circling overhead, dipping so low at times that once they almost brushed her face.