“And she with them?”

“Yea, unless she has elected to remain.”

“At what hour?”

“I cannot tell.”

“By what road shall I meet her?”

“There are two roads:  we generally use the river-road.”

“To-night?  I will go to meet her.  By the river-road, you say?”

“Yea.”

“And if I do not meet her?”

“If thou dost not meet her,” said the lady-abbess, answering calmly, “it will be because she is detained on the road.”

I had to believe her, and yet I was very skeptical.  As I walked out of the door the man was at my heels.  He followed me out on to the wooden stoop and nodded to Hiram.

“Who is that, Hiram?” I whispered as he leaned across the back of a horse, adjusting some leathern buckle.

“That?” said Hiram under his breath.  “That’s a deep ’un:  that’s Elder Nebson.”

Great was the dissatisfaction of the stout-hearted Splinter at my retreat, as he called it, from the enemy’s ground.

“I’d ha’ liked nothin’ better than to beat up them quarters.  I thought every minit’ you’d be calling me, and was ready to go in.”  And he clenched his fist in a way that showed unmistakably how he would have “gone in” had he been summoned.  By this time we were driving on briskly toward the river-road.  “You wa’n’t smart, I reckon, to leave that there house.  It was your one chance, hevin’ got in.  Ten chances to one she’s hid away som’eres in one of them upper rooms,” and he pointed to a row of dormer-windows, “not knowin’ nothin’ of your bein’ there.”

“Stop!” I said with one foot on the shafts.  “You don’t mean to say she is shut up there?”

“Shet up?  No:  they be too smart for that.  But there’s plenty ways to shet a young gal’s eyes an’ ears ‘thout lockin’ of her up.  How’d she know who was in this wagon, even if she seed it from her winders?  To be sure, I made myself conspicuous enough, a-whistlin’ ‘Tramp, tramp,’ and makin’ the horses switch round a good deal.  But, like enough, ef she’d be down-spereted-like, she’d never go near the winder, but just set there, a-stitchin’ beads on velvet or a-plattin’ them mats.”

“Why should she work?” I asked, with my grasp still on the reins.

“Them all does,” he answered, taking a fresh bite of the straw.  “It’s the best cure for sorrow, they say.  Or mebbe she’s a-teachin’ the children.  I see a powerful sight of children comin’ along while you was in there talkin’, a-goin’ to their school, and I tried to ask some o’ them about her.  But the old sheep who was drivin’ on ’em looked at me like vinegar, and I thought I’d better shet up, or mebbe she’d give the alarm that we was here with horses and wagon to carry her off.”

I had a painful moment of indecision as Hiram paused in his narrative and leisurely proceeded to evict a fly from the near horse’s ear.  “I think we’ll go on, Hiram,” I said, jumping back to my seat again.  “Take the river-road.”