didn't think he'd start for home that night; she guessed he'd stay at
Captain Lovejoy's till morning.

The doctor's wife, holding her door open, as best she could, in the
violent wind, had hardly given this information to the little
snow-bedraggled object standing out there in the inky darkness,
through which the lantern made a faint circle of light, before she
had disappeared.

"She went like a speerit," said the good woman, staring out into the
blackness in amazement. She never dreamed of such a thing as Ann's
going to the North Precinct after the doctor, but that was what the
daring girl had determined to do. She had listened to the doctor's
wife in dismay, but with never one doubt as to her own course of
proceeding.

Straight along the road to the North Precinct she kept. It would have
been an awful journey that night for a strong man. It seemed
incredible that a little girl could have the strength or courage to
accomplish it. There were four miles to traverse in a black, howling
storm, over a pathless road, through forests, with hardly a house by
the way.

When she reached Captain Isaac Lovejoy's house, next to the Meeting
House in the North Precinct of Braintree, stumbling blindly into the
warm, lighted kitchen, the captain and the doctor could hardly
believe their senses. She told the doctor about Thirsey; then she
almost fainted from cold and exhaustion.

Good wife Lovejoy laid her on the settee, and brewed her some hot