The voice was firm, low, and steady; and opening the gate, the young girl entered, paused a moment, and then, without a word, ran rapidly towards the house.  As she turned an angle, she saw the youth still standing by the gate, as if to protect her.  She flew past the corner, and called, in a distressed voice: 

“Mamma! mamma! oh, mother!”

She was a Puritan girl, with the self-repression and control of her race, and the momentary apprehension that seized her as she left the side of Barton was overcome as she entered her father’s house.

“Julia!” exclaimed her mother, coming forward, “is that you?  Where have you come from?  What is the matter?”

“I came through the woods,” said the girl, hurriedly.  “I’ve been so awfully frightened!  Such dreadful things have happened!” with a half hysterical laugh, which ended in a sob.

“Julia!  Julia! my child! what under the heavens has happened?  Are you hurt?”

“No, only dreadfully frightened.  I was belated, and it came on dark, and just as we turned into the path from the old road, that awful beast, with a terrible shriek, sprang into the road before us, and was about to leap upon me, when Barton sprang at him and drove him off.  If it had not been for him, I would have been torn in pieces.”

“Barton?—­was he with you?  Thank God! oh, bless and thank God for your escape!  My child! my child!  How awful it sounds!  Come! come to my room, and let me hold you, and hear it all!”

“Oh, mamma! what a weak and cowardly thing a woman is!  I thought I was so strong, and really courageous, and the thought of this thing makes me tremble now.”

They gained her mother’s room, and Julia, seating herself at her mother’s feet, and resting her arms on her mother’s lap, undertook to tell her story.

“I cannot tell you how it all happened.  Barton met me, and would come along with me, and then he said strange things to me; and I answered him back, and quarrelled with him, and—­”

“What could he have said to you?  Tell me all.”

Julia began and told with great minuteness, and with much feeling, her whole adventure.  She explained that she really did not want Bart to come with her, for that it would displease her father; and that when he did, she thought he ought to know that he was not at liberty to be her escort or come to the house, and so she told him.  She could not tell why she answered him just as she did, but she was surprised, and not quite herself, and she might have said it differently, and need not have said so much, and he certainly must know that she did not mean it all.  Surely it was most his fault; if he really had such feelings, why should he tell her, and tell her as he did?  It was dreadful, and she would never be happy again; and she laid her head in her mother’s lap, in her great anguish.

When her burst of grief had subsided, and she was calm, her mother asked several questions, and learned all that was said, and was much excited at Julia’s account of the encounter with the beast and Barton’s intrepidity.  She seemed to feel that they had both escaped a great danger, through his courage.