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The small white figure in the moonlight, the merry little playmate, hanging on his footsteps, eager to run his errands, the slender girl, with the red braids and the proud shy eyes, and the woman who knelt upon the hearth in Aunt Ailsey's cabin, smiling up at him as she dried her hair all gathered round him now illuminated against the darkness of the night.
With a cigar in his mouth, Dan passed slowly to and fro against the lighted windows, and looked up tenderly at the gray sky and the small flying birds. There was a glow in his face, for, with a total cessation of time, he was back in Aunt Ailsey's cabin, and the rain was on the roof.
The whip cracked, the fat roans kicked the dust, and on they went merrily down the branch road into the turnpike; past Aunt Ailsey's cabin, past the wild cherry tree, where the blue sky shone through naked twigs; down the long curve, past the tuft of cedars and still the turnpike swept wide and white, into the distance, dividing gay fields dotted with browsing cattle.
The boy rose, shook himself, and swung his bundle across his arm. "Will you tell me the way?" he asked, and she gave him a few childish directions. "You go past the wheat field an' past the maple spring, an' at the dead tree by Aunt Ailsey's cabin you turn into the road with the chestnuts. Then you just keep on till you get there an' if you don't ever get there, come back to breakfast."
As Dan looked at her it seemed to him for the first time that he found a likeness to Betty to Betty as she smiled up at him from the hearth in Aunt Ailsey's cabin. It was not in the mouth alone, nor in the eyes alone, but in something indefinable which belonged to every feature in the kindly fervour that shone straight out from the smiling face.
Well, we stood it as long as we could, and then we started having our meals here, and it is so much nicer. Oliver says the change from the boarding-house has given him a splendid appetite, and he enjoys everything that I make so much particularly the waffles by Aunt Ailsey's recipe. Be sure to tell her.
"You are like the wandering princess in the fairy tale all in blue upon a lonely road; but this isn't just the place for loitering, you know. Come up behind me and I'll carry you to shelter in Aunt Ailsey's cabin; it isn't the first time I've run away, with you, remember." He lifted her upon the horse, and started at a gallop up the turnpike.
As he galloped along the turnpike on Prince Rupert, the travelling countrymen turned to look after him, and muttered that "dare-devil Jack Montjoy had risen from his grave if he had a grave." Once he met Betty at the gate, and catching her up before him, dashed with her as far as Aunt Ailsey's cabin and back again. "You are as light as a fly," he said with a laugh, "and not much bigger.
The little girl stirred impatiently, her gaze fluttering from the landscape. "Old Aunt Ailsey's conjured all the tails off Sambo's sheep," she remarked, with feminine wile. "I saw 'em hanging on her door." "Oh, shucks! she can't conjure!" scoffed the boy. "She's nothing but a free nigger, anyway and besides, she's plum crazy " "I saw 'em hanging on her door," steadfastly repeated the little girl.
Beyond the whitened foldings of the mountains a deep red glow was burning in the west, and she wanted to hold out her hands to it for warmth. Her next thought was that a winter sunset soon died out, and as she turned quickly to go homeward, she saw that she was before Aunt Ailsey's cabin, and that the little window was yellow from the light within.
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