“It’s Kate,” the answer came in a hoarse whisper as I recognized her form and staff.

“Run, boy—­they have just come out o’ the woods.  I saw them.  They will take you away.  Run.”

She had picked up the flail and now she put it in my hands and gave me a push toward the door.  I ran, and none too quickly, for I had not gone fifty feet from the barn in the stubble when I heard them coming after me, whoever they were.  I saw that they were gaining and turned quickly.  I had time to raise my flail and bring it down upon the head of the leader, who fell as I had seen a beef fall under the ax.  Another man stopped beyond the reach of my flail and, after a second’s hesitation, turned and ran away in the darkness.

I could hear or see no other motion in the field.  I turned and ran on down the slope toward the village.  In a moment I saw some one coming out of the maple grove at the field’s end, just ahead, with a lantern.

Then I heard the voice of the schoolmaster saying: 

“Is it you, my lad?”

“Yes,” I answered, as I came up to him and Mary, in a condition of breathless excitement.

I told them of the curious adventure I had had.

“Come quick,” said the schoolmaster.  “Let’s go back and find the man in the stubble.”

I remembered that I had struck the path in my flight just before stopping to swing the flail.  The man must have fallen very near it.  Soon we found where he had been lying and drops of fresh blood on the stubble.

“Hush,” said the schoolmaster.

We listened and heard a wagon rattling at a wild pace down the road toward the river.

“There he goes,” said Mr. Hacket.  “His companions have carried him away.  Ye’d be riding in that wagon now, yerself, my brave lad, if ye hadn’t ‘a’ made a lucky hit with the flail—­God bless ye!”

“What would they ‘a’ done with me?” I asked.

“Oh, I reckon they’d ‘a’ took ye off, lad, and kep’ ye for a year or so until Amos was out o’ danger,” said Mr. Hacket.  “Maybe they’d drowned ye in the river down there an’ left yer clothes on the bank to make it look like an honest drowning.  The devil knows what they’d ‘a’ done with ye, laddie buck.  We’ll have to keep an eye on ye now, every day until the trial is over—­sure we will.  Come, we’ll go up to the barn and see if Kate is there.”

Just then we heard the receding wagon go roaring over the bridge on Little River.  Mary shuddered with fright.  The schoolmaster reassured us by saying: 

“Don’t be afraid.  I brought my gun in case we’d meet a painter.  But the danger is past.”

He drew a long pistol from his coat pocket and held it in the light of the lantern.

The loaded cart stood in the middle of the barn floor, where I had left it, but old Kate had gone.  We closed the barn, drawing the cart along with us.  When we came into the edge of the village I began to reflect upon the strange peril out of which I had so luckily escaped.  It gave me a heavy sense of responsibility and of the wickedness of men.