"What in the devil's name--" he exclaimed, aghast.

Will was trembling from exhaustion, and his face glimmered like a
pallid blotch under the shadow of the aspen. When the turkeys
stirred on an overhanging bough above him he started nervously
and sucked in his breath with a hissing sound. He was run to
death; this Christopher saw at the first anxious look.

"Get me something to eat," said the boy; "I'm half starved--but
bring it to the barn, for I'm too dead tired to stand a moment.
Yes, I ran away, of course," he finished irritably. "Do I look as
if I'd come in grandpa's carriage?"

With a last spurt of energy he disappeared into the shadows
behind the house, and Christopher, going into the kitchen, began
searching the tin safe for the chance remains of supper. On the
table was the bowl of buckwheat which Cynthia had been preparing
when she was called away by some imperious demand of her
mother's, and near it he saw the open prayer-book from which she
had been reading. From the adjoining room he heard Tucker's
voice--those rich, pleasant tones that translated into sound the
courageous manliness of the old soldier's face--and for an
instant he yearned toward the cheerful group sitting in the
firelight beyond the whitewashed wall--toward the blind woman in
her old oak chair, listening to the evening chapter from the
Scriptures. Then the feeling passed as quickly as it had come,
and securing a plate of bread and a dried ham-bone, he filled a
glass with fresh milk, and, picking up his lantern, went out of
doors and along the little straggling path to the barn.