I'm going away for a spell. Don't worry."
Then, shutting the door, he had run off before she could reply or ask a
question.
When we got home from school that night, Addison and I found traces of
the runaways. There had been rain the week before, followed by a hard
freeze and snow squalls, which had left a film of light snow on the hard
crust beneath. At the rear of the west barn we found the tracks of a
hand sled leading off across the fields toward the woods.
"Gone hunting, I guess," said Addison. "They are probably heading for
the Old Slave's Farm, or for Adger's lumber camp. Let them go. They'll
be sick to death of it in a week."
I felt much the same about it; but grandmother and Theodora were not a
little disturbed. Ellen, however, sided with Addison. "Halse will be
back by to-morrow night," she said. "He and Alfred will have a spat by
that time."
Saturday and Sunday passed, however, and then all the following week,
with no word from them.
On Tuesday evening, when they had been gone eleven days, Mrs. Batchelder
hastened in with alarming news for us. She had had a letter from Alfred,
she said, written from Berlin Falls in New Hampshire, where he had gone
to work in a mill; but he had not said one word about Halstead!
"I don't think they could have gone off together," she said, and she
read Alfred's letter aloud to us, or seemed to do so, but did not hand
it to any of us to read.
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