August had hoped Julia would say a word in his behalf.  But she was too much, cowed by her mother’s fierce passion.  So like a criminal going to prison, like a man going to his own funeral, August Wehle went down the hall toward the stairs, which were at the back of it.  Humphreys instinctively retreated into his room.  Mrs. Anderson glared on the young man as he went by, but he did not turn his head even when he passed Julia.  His heart and hope were all gone; in his mortification and defeat there seemed to him nothing left but his unbroken pride to sustain him.  He had descended two or three steps, when Julia suddenly glided forward and said with a tremulous voice:  “You aren’t going without telling me good-by, August?”

“Jule Anderson! what do you mean?” cried her mother.  But the hall was narrow by the stairway, and Jonas, by standing close to Cynthy Ann, in an unconscious sort of a way managed to keep Mrs. Anderson back; else she would have laid violent hands on her daughter.

When August lifted his eyes and saw her face full of tenderness and her hand reached over the balusters to him, he seemed to have been suddenly lifted from perdition to bliss.  The tears ran unrestrained upon his cheeks, he reached up and took her hand.

“Good-by, Jule!  God bless you!” he said huskily, and went out into the night, happy in spite of all.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE MOTHER.

Out of the door he went, happy in spite of all the mistakes he had made and of all the contretemps of his provoking misadventure; happy in spite of the threat of arrest for burglary.  For nearly a minute August Wehle was happy in that perfect way in which people of quiet tempers are happy—­happy without fluster.  But before he had passed the gate, he heard a scream and a wild hysterical laugh; he heard a hurrying of feet and saw a moving of lights.  He would fain have turned back to find out what the matter was, he had so much of interest in that house, but he remembered that he had been turned out and that he could not go back.  The feeling of outlawry mingled its bitterness with the feeling of anxiety.  He feared that something had happened to Julia; he lingered and listened.  Humphreys came out upon the upper porch and looked sharply up and down the road.  August felt instinctively that he was the object of search and slunk into a fence-corner, remembering that he was now a burglar and at the mercy of the man whose face was enough to show him unrelenting.

Presently Humphreys turned and went in, and then August came out of the shadow and hurried away.  When he had gone a mile, he heard the hoofs of horses, and again he concealed himself with a cowardly feeling he had never known before.  But when he found that it was Jonas, riding one horse and leading another, on his way to bring Dr. Ketchup, the steam-doctor, he ran out.

“Jonas!  Jonas! what’s the matter?  Who’s sick?  Is it Julia?”