to
the Parker homestead.

He hitched the sleepy animal to a pine tree just off the road and
tiptoed toward the hollow, the appointed rendezvous. To reach this
hollow he was obliged to pass through the Parker yard and, although he
went on tiptoe, each footstep sounded, in his ears, like the crack of
doom. He tried to think of some explanation to be made to Kenelm in case
the latter should hear and hail him, but he could think of nothing
more plausible than that he was taking a walk, and this was far from
satisfactory.

And then he was hailed. From a window above, at the extreme end of the
kitchen, came a trembling whisper.

"Caleb! Caleb Hammond, is that you?"

Mr. Hammond's heart, which had been thumping anything but a wedding
march beneath the summer under-flannels, leaped up and stuck in his
throat; but he choked it down and gasped a faint affirmative.

"Oh, my soul and body! Where HAVE you been? I've been waitin' and
waitin'."

"What in time did you wait up there for? Why don't you come down?"

"I can't. Kenelm's locked the doors, and the keys are right next to his
room door. I can't get down."

Here was an unexpected obstacle. Caleb was nonplused.

"Go home!" wailed the voice from above. "Don't stand there. Go HOME!
Can't you SEE it ain't any use? Go HOME!"

Five minutes before he received this order Mr. Hammond would have been
only too glad to go home. Now he was startled and angry and, being
angry, his habitual stubbornness developed.

"I shan't go home neither," he whispered, fiercely. "If you can't come
down I'll--I'll come up and get you."

"Shh--shh! He'll hear you. Kenelm'll hear you."

"I don't care much if he does. See here, Hannah, can't you get down
nohow? How about that window? Can't you climb out of that window? Say,
didn't I see a ladder layin' alongside the woodshed this mornin'?"

"Yes, there's a ladder there, but--where are you goin'? Mr.
Hammond--Caleb--"

But Caleb was on his way to the woodshed. He found the ladder and
laboriously dragged it beneath the window. Kenelm Parker had a local
reputation for sleeping like the dead. Otherwise Mr. Hammond would never
have dared risk the noise he was making.

Even after the ladder had been placed in position, Miss Parker
hesitated. At first she flatly refused to descend, asserting that no
mortal power could get her down that thing alive. But Caleb begged and
commanded in agonized whispers, and finally she was prevailed upon to
try. M