“Now for my adventure:  Aunt Ann wanted some hair-wash, and I went to the barber’s shop in the town to buy it.  There was no one in but a black boy, because it was the bathing-time.  He, I mean the boy, said he would call Mr. Johnson.  In a moment there came out of a back room who do you think but our Josiah!  He just stood still a moment—­and then said, ’Good God!  Miss Leila!  Come into the back room—­you did give me a turn.’  I thought he seemed to be alarmed.  Well, I went with him, and he asked me at once who was with me.  I said, Aunt Ann, and that she was not well.  Then I got out of him that he had wandered a while, and at last chosen this as a safe place.  No one had told me fully about Cousin George Grey and why Josiah was scared and ran away, but now I got it all out of him—­and how you warned him—­and I do think it was splendid of a boy like you.  He was dreadfully afraid of being taken back to be a slave.  It seems he saved his money, and after working here bought out the shop when his master fell ill.  I did not like it, but to quiet him I really had to say that I would not tell Aunt Ann, or he would have to run away again.  I am sure aunt would not do anything to trouble him, but it was quite impossible to make him believe me, and he got me at last to promise him.  I suppose there is really no harm in it, but I never did keep anything from Aunt Ann.  I got the hair-wash and went away with his secret.  Now, isn’t that a story!

“I forgot one thing.  As the Southern gentlemen come to be shaved and ask where he was born, they hear—­think of it—­that ‘Mr. Johnson’ was born in Connecticut!  His grandfather had been a slave.  I shall see him again.

“This is the longest letter I ever wrote, and you are to feel duly complimented, Mr. Penhallow.

“Good-bye.  Love from Aunt Ann.

“Yours truly,

“LEILA GREY.

“P.S.  I am sure that I may trust you not to speak of Josiah.”

Mr. John Penhallow, as they said at Westways, “going on seventeen,” gathered much of interest in reading and re-reading this letter from Miss Grey.  To own a secret with Leila was pleasant.  To hear of Josiah as “Mr. Johnson” amused him.  That he was prosperous he liked, and that he was fearful with or without reason seemed strange.  It was and had been hard for the young freeman to realize the ever-present state of mind of a man in terror of arrest without any crime on his conscience.  There was perhaps a slight hint of doubt in Leila’s request that he would be careful not to mention what she had said of Josiah, “as if I am really a boy and Leila older than I,” murmured John.  He knew, as he once more read her words, that he ought to tell his uncle, who could best decide what to do about Josiah and his terror of being reclaimed by his old owner.

During the early hours of a summer night Mark Rivers sat on the porch in a rocking-chair, which he declared gave him all the exercise he required.  It was the only rocking-chair at Grey Pine, and nothing so disturbed the Squire as Mark Rivers rocking on that unpleasant piece of furniture and smoking as if it were a locomotive.  It was an indulgence of Ann Penhallow, who knew that there had been a half-dozen rockers in the burned rectory.