bleach, and she worried about that. A web of linen cloth and a horse
were very dissimilar booty; but a thief was a thief. Suppose anything
should happen to the linen they had worked so hard over!

At last, she could not endure it any longer. Up she got, put on her
clothes hurriedly, crept softly down stairs and out doors. There was
a full moon and it was almost as light as day. The snow looked like a
vast sheet of silver stretching far away over the fields.

Ann was hastening along the path between two high snowbanks when all
of a sudden she stopped, and gave a choked kind of a scream. No one
with nerves could have helped it. Right in the path before her stood
the horse-thief, gray cloak and all.

Ann turned, after her scream and first wild stare, and ran. But the
man caught her before she had taken three steps. "Don't scream," he
said in a terrible, anxious whisper. "Don't make a noise, for God's
sake! They're after me! Can't you hide me?"

"No," said Ann, white and trembling all over but on her mettle, "I
won't. You are a sinful man, and you ought to be punished. I won't do
a thing to help you!"

The man's face bending over her was ghastly in the moonlight. He went
on pleading. "If you will hide me somewhere about your place, they
will not find me," said he, still in that sharp agonized whisper.
"They are after me--can't you hear them?"

Ann could, listening, hear distant voices on the night air.