road, when she heard the
sound of a horse's hoofs and felt sure he was coming.

'Why, Jerry, how you frightened me!' Frank said, as he reined his horse
close up to her. 'Jump down and get up behind me. I will take you home.'

She obeyed, and with the agility of a little cat, got down from the
gate-post and on to the horse's back, putting both arms around Frank's
waist to keep herself steady, for the big horse took long steps, and she
felt a little afraid.

'Did you post the letter?' she asked again, as they left the gate behind
them and struck into the lane.

To lie now was easy enough, and Frank answered without hesitation:

'Of course. Did you think I would forget it?'

'No,' Jerry answered. 'I knew you would not. I only wanted to be sure,
because he trusted it to me, and not to have sent it would have been
mean, and a sneak, and a lie, and a steal. Don't you think so?'

She emphasized the 'steal,' and the 'lie,' and the 'sneak,' and the
'mean,' with a kick that made the horse jump a little and quicken his
steps.

'Yes,' Frank assented; it would be all she affirmed, and more too, and
the man who could do such a thing was wholly unworthy the respect of any
one, and ought to be punished to the full extent of the law.

'That's so,' Jerry said, with another emphatic kick and a slight
tightening of her arm around the conscience-stricken man, who wondered
if he should ever reach the cottage and be free from the clasp of those
arms, which seemed to him like bands of fire burning to his soul. 'I'd
never speak to him again,' Jerry continued, 'and Mr. Arthur wouldn't
either. He is so right-up, and hates a trick. I don't believe, either,
that any harm will come to Maude from that letter, as you said. If there
does, and Mr. Arthur can fix it, he will, I know, for I shall ask him,
and he once told me he would do anything for me, because I look as he
thinks Gretchen must have looked when she was a little girl like me.'

They had reached the cottage by this time, where they found Harold in
the yard looking up and down the lane for Jerry, whose protracted
absence at that hour had caused them some anxiety, even though they were
accustomed to her long rambles by herself and frequent absences from
home. It was not an unusual thing for her to linger in the Tramp House,
even after dark, talking to herself, and Gretchen, and Mah-nee, and her
mother and a sick woman, whose face was far back in the past. She was
there now, Harold