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At last, she could not endure it any longer. Up she got, put on her clothes hurriedly, crept softly down stairs and out doors. There was a full moon and it was almost as light as day. The snow looked like a vast sheet of silver stretching far away over the fields.

Ann was hastening along the path between two high snowbanks when all of a sudden she stopped, and gave a choked kind of a scream. No one with nerves could have helped it. Right in the path before her stood the horse-thief, gray cloak and all.

Ann turned, after her scream and first wild stare, and ran. But the man caught her before she had taken three steps. “Don’t scream,” he said in a terrible, anxious whisper. “Don’t make a noise, for God’s sake! They’re after me! Can’t you hide me?”

“No,” said Ann, white and trembling all over but on her mettle, “I won’t. You are a sinful man, and you ought to be punished. I won’t do a thing to help you!”

The man’s face bending over her was ghastly in the moonlight. He went on pleading. “If you will hide me somewhere about your place, they will not find me,” said he, still in that sharp agonized whisper. “They are after me–can’t you hear them?”

Ann could, listening, hear distant voices on the night air.

“I was just going to hide in your barn,” said the thief, “when I met you. O let me in there, now! don’t betray me!”

Great tears were rolling down his bearded cheeks. Ann began to waver. “They might look in the barn,” said she hesitatingly.

The man followed up his advantages. “Then hide me in the house,” said he. “I have a daughter at home, about your age. She’s waiting for me, and it’s long she’ll wait, and sad news she’ll get at the end of the waiting, if you don’t help me. She hasn’t any mother, she’s a little tender thing–it’ll kill her!” He groaned as he said it.

The voices came nearer. Ann hesitated no longer. “Come,” said she, “quick!”

Then she fled into the house, the man following. Inside, she bolted the door, and made her unwelcome guest take off his boots in the kitchen, and follow her softly up stairs with them in his hand.

Ann’s terror, leading him up, almost overwhelmed her. What if anybody should wake! Nabby slept near the head of the stairs. Luckily, she was a little deaf, and Ann counted on that.

She conducted the man across a little entry into a back, unfurnished chamber, where, among other things, were stored some chests of grain. The moon shone directly in the window of the attic-chamber, so it was light enough to distinguish objects quite plainly.

Ann tiptoed softly from one grain-chest to another. There were three of them. Two were quite full; the third was nearly empty.

“Get in here,” said Ann. “Don’t make any noise.”

He climbed in obediently, and Ann closed the lid. The chest was a rickety old affair and full of cracks–there was no danger but he would have air enough. She heard the voices out in the yard, as she shut the lid. Back she crept softly into her own room, undressed and got into bed. She could hear the men out in the yard quite plainly. “We’ve lost him again,” she heard one of them say.

Presently Phineas Adams opened a window, and shouted out, to know what was the matter.

“Seen anything of the horse-thief?” queried a voice from the yard.

“No!” said Phineas. “I have been asleep these three hours. You just waked me up.”

“He was hiding under the meeting-house,” said the voice, “must have slipped in there this morning, when we missed him. We went down there and watched to-night, and almost caught him. But he disappeared a little below here, and we’ve lost him again. It’s my opinion he’s an evil spirit in disguise. He ran like the wind, in amongst the trees, where we couldn’t follow with the horses. Are you sure he did not skulk in here somewhere? Sim White thinks he did.”