as he whispered, 'I'm
running away from home!'

Once again, the feat was glorious.

'No?' said Master Richard, smitten with envy and admiration. 'Are you?
Really?'

'Yes,' Joe answered. 'I'm agooin' to Liverpool, to begin wi'.'

This was exquisitely large and vague, and Master Richard began to yearn
for a share in the high enterprise upon which his friend had entered. He
had half a mind to run away from home himself, though, to be sure, there
was nothing else to run away from. In Joe's case there was a difference.

'Where are you going to stay to-night?' asked Master Richard. The
question sounded practical, but at bottom it was nothing of the sort.
It was part of the romance of the thing, and yet it threw cold water on
Joe's newly-lighted courage, and put it out again.

'I don't know,' said Joe, somewhat forlornly.

'I say,' interjected Ichabod, 'is that young Mountain, Master Richard?'

'Yes,' said Master Richard.

'Thee know'st thy feyther is again thy speakin' to him, and his feyther
is again his speakin' to thee.'

'You mind your own business, Ichabod,' said the young autocrat, who was
a little spoiled perhaps, and had been accustomed to have his own way in
quite a princely fashion.

'I'm mindin' it,' returned Ichabod. 'It's a part o' my business to keep
thee out o' mischief.'

'Ah!' piped Master Richard, 'you needn't mind that part of your business
to-night.'

'All right,' said Ichabod, reshouldering the sack he had meanwhile
balanced on the coping of the bridge. 'See as thee beesn't late for
tay-time.'

With that, having discharged his conscience, he went on again, and the
two boys stayed behind.

'What are you running away for?' asked Eichard.

'Why, feyther said it was brought to him as you and me had shook hands
and had took on to be friends with one another, and he told me to go
into the brewus and take my shirt off.'

'Take your shirt off?' inquired the other. In Joe's lifetime, short
as it was, he had had opportunity to grow familiar with this fatherly
formula, but it was strange to Master Richard. 'What for?'

'What for! Why, to get a hidin', to be sure.'

'Look here!' said Richard, having digested this, 'you come and stop in
one of our barns. Have you had your tea?'

'No,' returned Joe, 'I shouldn't ha' minded so much if I had.'

'I'll bring something out to you,' said the protector.

So the two lads set out together, and to evade Ichabod, struck off at
a run across the fields,