"TOM COWARD, YOU'RE AFRAID!"
Turning abruptly away, after giving Tom a glance which he never forgot, she started resolutely and swiftly back along the pathway which she had followed in her flight to the ten-acre lot.
Tom looked after her in helpless amazement. Never before had he heard such an outburst from the gentle and even-tempered Sarah, who had been the leading spirit in Benzeor's household. The children had gone to her with their troubles rather than to their mother, and Sarah had never failed to have a word of comfort or of help for every one. Even Benzeor himself had come to depend upon her judgment in many of his affairs, and she had been as patient and gentle with him as she had been with the troubled little ones.
And to Tom she had been the one true friend he had ever known. Somehow she had always understood him, and from the days of their early childhood it had always been a matter of pride to him that he was her acknowledged champion and protector. Many a time, when he was a sturdy little lad, had he taken her part against the tormenting boys in the school. For her he had carved quaint and strange looking dolls out of horse-chestnuts, and the childish Sarah had never failed to receive them with many expressions of pleasure, and had lavished a wealth of affection upon them which was almost as pleasing to Tom as to the little mother herself. For her he had gathered the chestnuts in the autumn and the bright colored flowers in the springtime; and when, with the passing of the years, there had come to them both new feelings and new interests, he still had shared with her all those dimly perceived ambitions and longings which are ever present in the boyish heart when it arrives at that position where it can look out upon the time when the boy is to become a man.
Perhaps Tom had enjoyed her sympathy and interest the more because of the loneliness of his own position. But Sarah never by word or act had caused him to feel that he was only Benzeor Osburn's "bound boy," and not truly one of the household.
Tom was thinking of some of these things as he watched the departing girl, and, forgetting for the moment all the anger and shame which her last words had aroused, he called aloud after her.
"Sarah! Sarah!" he shouted. "Wait a minute! Come back! Come back!"
Sarah apparently did not hear him, or heed him if she heard, and without once turning her head or looking behind her soon disappeared in the forest.