ght Waitstill
tenderly and proudly; "and I for her, too, at the first glance."

She heard her father lock the barn and shed and knew that he would be
going upstairs immediately, so she quickly went through the side yard
and lifted the latch of the kitchen door. It was fastened. She went to
the front door and that, too, was bolted, although it had been standing
open all the evening, so that if a breeze should spring up, it might
blow through the house. Her father supposed, of course, that she was
in bed, and she dreaded to bring him downstairs for fear of his anger;
still there was no help for it and she rapped smartly at the side
door. There was no answer and she rapped again, vexed with her own
carelessness. Patty's face appeared promptly behind her screen of
mosquito netting in the second story, but before she could exchange a
word with her sister, Deacon Baxter opened the blinds of his bedroom
window and put his head out.

"You can try sleepin' outdoors, or in the barn to-night," he called. "I
didn't say anything to you at supper-time because I wanted to see where
you was intendin' to prowl this evenin'."

"I haven't been 'prowling' anywhere, father," answered Waitstill; "I've
been out in the garden cooling off; it's only eight o'clock."

"Well, you can cool off some more," he shouted, his temper now fully
aroused; "or go back where you was this afternoon and see if they'll
take you in there! I know all about your deceitful tricks! I come home
to grind the scythes and found the house and barn empty Cephas said
you'd driven up Saco Hill and I took his horse and followed you and saw
where you went Long's you couldn't have a feller callin' on you here to
home, you thought you'd call on him, did yer, you bold-faced hussy?"

"I am nothing of the sort," the girl answered him quietly; "Ivory
Boynton was not at his house, he was in the hay-field. You know it, and
you know that I knew it. I went to see a sick, unhappy woman who has no
neighbors. I ought to have gone long before. I am not ashamed of it, and
I don't regret it. If you ask unreasonable things of me, you must expect
to be disobeyed once in a while.

"Must expect to be disobeyed, must I?" the old man cried, his face
positively terrifying in its ugliness. "We'll see about that! If you
wa'n't callin' on a young man, you were callin' on a crazy woman, and I
won't have it, I tell you, do you hear? I won't have a daughter o' mine
consortin' with any o' that Boynto