Page:The adventures of Ann; stories of colonial times.djvu/91

Rh hot mush; and after breakfast she caught a minute, when Phineas had gone to work, and Mrs. Polly was in the pantry, and Nabby down cellar. She had barely time to fill a bowl with mush, and scud.

How lightly she stepped over that back chamber floor, and how gingerly she opened the grain-chest lid. The thief looked piteously out at her from his bed of Indian corn. He was a handsome man, somewhere between forty and fifty. Indeed he came of a very good family in a town not so very far away. Horse-thiefs numbered some very respectable personages in their clan in those days sometimes.

They carried on a whispered conversation while he ate. It was arranged that Ann was to assist him off that night.

What a day poor Ann had, listening and watching inconstant terror every moment, for fearsome-thing would betray her. Beside, her conscience troubled her sadly ; she was far from being sure that she was doing right in hiding a thief from justice. But the poor man's tears, and the mention