with Nabby. Nabby _had_ waked up the preceding night.

"I didn't see anything," proclaimed Nabby; "but I heerd a noise. I
think there's mice out in the grain-chist in the back chamber."

"I must go up there and look," said Mrs. Polly. "They did
considerable mischief, last year."

Ann turned pale; what if she should take it into her head to look
that day!

She watched her chance very narrowly for the 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 in constant terror
every moment, for fear something 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