"Would I!" exclaimed Harvey.
"We'll just leave it and cut and run," explained Henry Burns. "Then she won't know who sent it, and she'll have to keep it. See?"
"It's most nine o'clock," remarked Harvey.
"I'm going," said Henry Burns.
"Oh, well, I'll stand by," said Harvey. "Let's be off, then. It's a good two miles and a half, nearer three."
Shortly after, one might have seen the two comrades trudging along the road leading out of Benton, in the direction of Ellison's mill.
They walked briskly, and in a little less than three quarters of an hour a light from a window on a hill-top warned them that they were approaching the farmhouse of Farmer Ellison. They turned in from the road that ran along the bank of the stream, and made their way through his field on the hillside, in the direction of the brook.
"Does Ellison keep any dog?" asked Harvey, once.
"I don't know, any more than you do," replied his companion. "Never saw any. We'll keep well down near the brook, though, so they can't see us from the house."
They passed through some clumps of small cedars and thin birches, stumbling now and then over cradle-knolls and pitching into little depressions. It was a clear night and starlit, but the shadows in the half darkness were confusing. A lamp gleamed in the kitchen window, above them, and they could see someone moving past the window from time to time.