“But why did you run away?”

“Well, Mr. John, it was sort of sudden.  You see ever since I could remember there was some one to say, Caesar you do this, or you go there.  One day when I was breakin’ a colt, Mr. Woodburn says to me—­I was leanin’ against a stump—­how will that colt turn out?  I said, I don’t know, but I did.  It wasn’t any good.  My mind was took up watchin’ a hawk goin’ here and there over head like he was enjoyin’ hisself.  Then—­then it come over me—­that he’d got no boss but God.  It got a grip on me like—­” The lad listened intently.

“You wanted to be free like the hawk.”

“I don’t quite know—­never thought of it before—­might have seen lots of hawks.  I ain’t never told any one.”

“Are you glad to be free?”

“Ah, kind of half glad, sir.  I ain’t altogether broke in to it.  You see I’m old for change.”

As he ended, James Penhallow reappeared.  “Got through, John?  You look years older.  Your aunt will miss those curly locks.”  He went into the shop as John walked away, leaving Josiah who would have liked to add a word more of caution and who nevertheless felt somehow a sense of relief in having made a confession the motive force of which he would have found it impossible to explain.

John asked himself no such question as he wandered deep in boy-thought along the broken line of the village houses.  Josiah’s confidence troubled and yet flattered him.  His imagination was captured by the suggested idea of the wild freedom of the hawk.  He resolved to be careful, and felt more and more that he had been trusted with a secret involving danger.

While John wandered away, the barber cut the Squire’s hair, and to his surprise Josiah did not as usual pour out his supply of village gossip.

CHAPTER VI

It was now four days since John’s sentence had been pronounced, and not to be allowed to swim in the heat of a hot September added to the severity of the penalty.  The heat as usual made tempers hot and circumstances variously disturbed the household of Grey Pine.  Politics vexed and business troubled the master.  Of the one he could not talk to his wife—­of the other he would not at present, hoping for better business conditions, and feeling that politics and business were now too nearly related to keep them apart.  Ann, his wife, thought him depressed—­a rare mood for him.  Perhaps it was the unusual moist heat.  He said, “Yes, yes, dear, one does feel it.”  She did not guess that the obvious unhappiness of the lad who had won the soldier’s heart was being felt by Penhallow without his seeing how he could end it and yet not lessen the value of a just verdict.