e kitchen. Ann slipped through it hastily, lit a lantern
which was hanging beside the kitchen chimney, and was out doors in a
minute.

The storm was one of sharp, driving sleet, which struck her face like
so many needles. The first blast, as she stepped outside the door,
seemed to almost force her back, but her heart did not fail her. The
snow was not so very deep, but it was hard walking. There was no
pretense of a path. The doctor lived half a mile away, and there
was not a house in the whole distance, save the meeting house and
schoolhouse. It was very dark. Lucky it was that she had taken the
lantern; she could not have found her way without it.

On kept the little slender, erect figure, with the fierce
determination in its heart, through the snow and sleet, holding the
blanket close over its head, and swinging the feeble lantern bravely.

When she reached the doctor's house, he was gone. He had started for
the North Precinct early in the evening, his good wife said; he was
called down to Captain Isaac Lovejoy's, the house next the North
Precinct Meeting House. She'd been sitting up waiting for him, it was
such an awful storm, and such a lonely road. She was worried, but she
didn't think he'd start for home that night; she guessed he'd stay at
Captain Lovejoy's till morning.

[Illustration: SHE ALMOST FAINTED FROM COLD AND EXHAUSTION.]

The doctor's wife, holding her door open, as best she could, in
the violent wind, had hardly given this information to the little
snow-bedraggled object standing out there in the inky darkness,
through which the lantern made a faint circle of light, before she had
disappeared.

"She went like a speerit," said the good woman, staring out into the
blackness in amazement. She never dreamed of such a thing as Ann's
going to the North Precinct after the doctor, but that was what the
daring girl had determined to do. She had listened to the doctor's
wife in dismay, but with never one doubt as to her own course of
proceeding.

Straight along the road to the North Precinct she kept. It would
have been an awful journey that night for a strong man. It seemed
incredible that a little girl could have the strength or courage to
accomplish it. There were four miles to traverse in a black, howling
storm, over a pathless road, through forests, with hardly a house by
the way.

When she reached Captain Isaac Lovejoy's house, next to the meeting
house in the North Precinct of Braintree, stum