ust this side was a deserted
house, which had not been lived in for many years and was gray and
crumbling. The fields that belonged to it had been made part of a great
sheep pasture, and two or three sheep were standing by the half-opened
door, as if they were quite at home there in windy or wet weather. Betty
had seen the old house before, and thought it was most picturesque. She
now proposed that they should have a picnic party by and by, and make a
fire in the old fireplace; but Nelly Foster thought there would be great
danger of burning the house down.

"Suppose we go and look in?" pleaded Betty. "Mary Beck and I saw it not
long after I came, but she thought it was going to rain, so that we
didn't stop. I like to go into an empty old ruin, and make up stories
about it, and wonder who used to live there. Don't stop to pick these
blackberries; you know they aren't half ripe," she teased Nelly; and so
they went over to the old house, frightening away the sheep as they
crossed the doorstep boldly. It was all in ruins; the roof was broken
about the chimney, so that the sun shone through upon the floor, and the
light-red bricks were softened and sifting down. In one corner there was
a heap of withes for mending fences, which had been pulled about by the
sheep, and there were some mud nests of swallows high against the walls,
but the birds seemed to have already left them. This room had been the
kitchen, and behind it was a dark, small place which must have been a
bedroom when people lived there, dismal as it looked now.

"I am going to look in here and all about the place," said Betty
cheerfully, and stepped in to see what she could find.

"Oh, go back, Nelly!" she screamed, in a great fright, the next moment;
and they fled out of the house into the warm sunshine. They had had time
to see that a man was lying on the floor as if he were dead. Betty's
heart was beating so that she could hardly speak.

"We must get somebody to come," she panted, trying to stop Nelly. "Was
it somebody dead?"

But Nelly sank down as pale as ashes into the sweet-fern bushes, and
looked at her strangely. "Oh, Betty Leicester, it will kill mother, it
will kill her! I believe it was my father; what shall I do?"

"Your father," faltered Betty,--"your father? We must go and tell." Then
she remembered that he was a hunted man, a fugitive from justice.

They looked fearfully at the house; the sheep had come back and stood
again near the doorway