she felt worried.

"Johnny!" she called all through the house and wood-shed. Then she
missed the little coat, cap, and comforter.

"If he has gone to meet his grandpa, he'll freeze to death. Oh, why
didn't I amuse him till his grandpa came," she thought. She opened the
door and tried to call, but a cloud of snow beat her back. Wrapping
herself comfortably, she started down the white road she thought Johnny
had taken.

She called and called his name, and in her excitement expected every
moment to find him frozen. She promised the wind and snow that, if they
would only spare her Johnny, her dead daughter's baby, that in place of
his impatient old grandma there should be one as patient as Job!

She had nearly reached the depot. She heard the evening train, she saw
the glare of the great lamp on the engine though the glass that covered
it was half hidden by the blinding snow. She heard a sleigh coming
toward her, and said to herself, "No matter who it is, I will stop him,
and he shall help me." The bells came nearer and nearer, and the sleigh
stopped. "Where are you going, my good woman? It is a rough night,
isn't it, for a woman to be out?"

Any other time, how grandma would have laughed!--grandpa didn't know
his own wife!

"Take her in, father," said another voice. Poor grandma! It was
Johnny's father who spoke.

[Illustration: JOHNNY STARTS TO RUN AWAY.]

"Oh, Johnny's lost!" she cried, as she tottered into the sleigh. "He
will freeze before we can find him."

The old lady was taken home, and grandpa and Johnny's father started
off, quite naturally in the wrong direction, for Johnny.

* * * * *

For a while, Johnny went on manfully; but soon his little fingers and
toes began to beg him to go back. He refused to notice their petition,
and wished grandma could see him, as the wind whirled him round and
round and almost buried him in the snow. He thought he had gone about
ten miles, when he heard bells. He turned to one side for the sleigh to
pass, when he heard a voice he knew.

"Oh, Jerry," he cried, "please take me in!"

Jerry stopped, and asked, "Who are ye?"

"I'm Johnny," said our small hero, quite meekly.

"And where may ye be bound to, Johnny?" said Jerry.

"To the depot. I'm going to New York," said Johnny, who thought this a
mild way to tell Jerry he was running away.

"This road niver took any one to the depot, Jacky. If I hadn't come
this way, yer'd been