Outside the yard the street was quite empty, for the colonists were all at their morning meal. Miles trudged slowly through the sand up the hillside, and then turned down the path to the spring, which he judged at that hour would be deserted. Sure enough, the only moving things beneath the high bluff were the leaping waters of the living well, and the sunbeams that sifted through the branches of the encroaching alders, and sprinkled the trodden turf.
Casting himself down on the margin, Miles took a long drink of the water, that might have been brackish and hot for any good taste he had of it, then sat up and leaned against Trug, with one arm about the dog's neck. He had thought, so soon as he was thus by himself, he would cry, but he felt all choked inside; his wickedness was too deep even for tears.
Suddenly two hands were clapped over his face. "Guess who 'tis," piped a treble voice, and, uncovering his eyes, Miles thrust up one hand and dragged Dolly down beside him,—a very brave Dolly, in a clean apron, with her scarlet poppet hugged under one arm. "I ran to the spring for Mistress Brewster," she explained, "but I cast away my jug when I saw you. Why are you here, Miles?"
"Oh, Dolly," Miles burst out, "I have been uncommon wicked and helped fight a duel, and they are going to flog me through the streets, and maybe they'll hang me, and I would my mother were here." He mastered the inclination to screw his knuckles into his eyes, and, as he sat scowling at the hill across the brook, and blinking bravely, to keep a good showing before the little girl, a mighty new idea popped into his head and made him happy again. "But I shan't let them flog me," he said, grandly as Ned Lister himself. "You tell it to no one, Dolly, but I have it in mind to run away."
"Whither, Miles?" the damsel asked, with interest, but no great amazement.
"I shall go into the woods and live with the Indians," Miles said slowly, forming his plan as he spoke. "They're good, pleasant folk; and I'll build me a house of branches, and eat raspberries, and maybe kill birds with a sling, and I'll have Trug at night." It occurred to him that Trug would not be the liveliest of company. "Why, Dolly, say you come too," he cried. "We'll keep the house together, as I thought they'd let us when father died."
Dolly's face dimpled at the prospect, then grew sober. "But if we live in the woods, Miles, we cannot go to meeting of a Sunday, and that would never do. Let's build our house just over the brook—"
"Pshaw!" said Miles, contemptuously, "I might as well go back and let them whip me now. I'm going away into the forest. Will you come?" He rose and walked manfully toward the stepping-stones, but Dolly still sat hugging her poppet in her arms. "If you've no wish to—" Miles said, feeling brave and important, no longer a poor, trembling, little culprit. Then he turned his back on her, and gave his attention to leading Trug safely from stone to stone across the brook.
But, as he gained the opposite bank, he heard a cry behind him: "Wait, oh, wait, Miles!" Dolly, with the poppet in her arms, came slipping and scrambling across the stepping-stones and caught his hand. "Love Brewster says he does not like girls and went away to play with Harry Samson," she panted. "And you are the only brother I have, Miles, and I love you, and methinks I'd liefer go with you and be an Indian."