“’Sh! Jen, don’t make any noise. Yes, I’m going. There, don’t cry—good-by!”
He bent down and kissed her, but she could not speak for the sobs that choked her. After holding her arms around his neck for a moment, she vanished into her room.
Joe went softly down the stairs, and out at the kitchen door. It was cool and refreshing in the open air. In the east the sky was beginning to put on the gray of morning.
Jennie, looking down through the dusk from the window of her room, saw Joe walk down the path to the road gate, then turn, as if some new thought had struck him, and cross the yard to the barn, entering it by the stable door.
“Oh!” exclaimed the child to herself, in a frightened whisper, “oh! he’s going to take the horse; he’s going to take Charlie!”
She sank down on the floor, and covered her face with her hands. She did not want to see so dreadful a thing happen. But curiosity finally got the better of her fear, and she looked out again just in time to see some one lead the gray horse from the stable, mount him, and ride away into the dusk.
“O Joe!” she murmured. “O Charlie! Oh, what will Father say now! Isn’t it dreadful, dreadful!”
But though she did not know it, the person whom Jennie saw riding away into the dusk on old Charlie’s back was not Joe.