"Oh, Charlotte!" her mother's voice broke in sobs.

"Don't you worry, mother," Charlotte repeated, with an unrelenting
tone in the comforting words. "I'll go right home with Aunt Sylvia.
Come," she said, imperatively to her aunt, "I am not going to stand
here any longer," and she went out into the road, and hastened down
it, as Barnabas had done.

"I'll take her right home with me," Sylvia called to her sister in a
trembling voice (nobody knew how afraid she was of Cephas); and she
followed Charlotte.

Sylvia lived on an old road that led from the main one a short
distance beyond the new house, so the way led past it. Charlotte went
on at such a pace that Sylvia could scarcely keep up with her. She
slid along in her wake, panting softly, and lifting her skirts out of
the evening dew. She was trembling with sympathy for Charlotte, and
she had also a worry of her own. When they reached the new house she
fairly sobbed outright, but Charlotte went past in her stately haste
without a murmur.

"Oh, Charlotte, don't feel so bad," mourned her aunt. "I know it will
all come right." But Charlotte made no reply. Her dusky skirts swept
around the bushes at the corner of the road, and Sylvia hurried
tremulously after her.

Neither of them dreamed that Barnabas watched them, standing in one
of the front rooms of his new house. He had gone in there when he
fled from Cephas Barnard's, and had not yet been home. He recognized