Dan thought this a good idea, and he lost not a moment in acting upon it. He was noted far and near for his lightness of foot, but no one in the Summerdale hills had ever seen him run as he ran that day. He hardly seemed to touch the ground; and the farther he went the faster he went, because his increasing fear lent him wings. He was so hopelessly stampeded that if the road had been crowded with teams or people he would not have seen one of them. He did not slacken his pace until he reached the wood-shed, and then he came to an abrupt halt and looked behind him. There was no one in the road over which he had passed in his headlong flight, and the woods were silent.
"Well, I done it, didn't I?" exclaimed Dan, drawing a long breath of relief, and thrusting his hand into the pocket in which he thought he had put the letter. "It ain't no use for anything that gets around on two legs to think of follering me when I turn on the steam. Now, then, where's that there—"
"That there what? And who's been a-follering of you?" demanded a familiar voice, almost at his elbow.
Dan was frightened again. He looked up, and there stood his father, who had been keeping up a persistent but of course fruitless search for the letter ever since Dan went away.
One glance at his angry face was a revelation to the boy. He knew now that Silas had lost the letter where he found it. Dan would have been glad to take it out and hand it over to him—he didn't want anything more to do with it after the experience he had already had with the "hant"—but he found, to his unbounded amazement and alarm, that he could not do it. He had dropped the letter somewhere along the road.
"Who's been a-follering of you? and what have you lost?" repeated Silas, who began to have a faint idea that he understood the situation.
"There was a hant follering of me," replied Dan, as soon as he could speak. "He was coming for me, 'cause I could hear him slamming through the bushes; but I can run faster'n him, else I wouldn't be here now."
"You can't bamboozle your pap with no tale about a hant, for I don't believe in such things," declared Silas, but his face told a different story. He looked fully as wild as Dan did, and he was almost as badly frightened. "Why don't you come to the p'int, and tell me that you have lost the letter that was left in my wood-pile last winter, and which I never seen till this morning? If you will tell me the truth about it, I will tell you something that will make your eyes stick out as big as your fist."
"And won't you larrup me for losing of it?" asked Dan, who saw very plainly that it was useless for him to deny that he had once had the letter in his possession.
"No, I won't do nothing to you; honor bright. Did you read what was into it?"