“I did.”

“Who was it?  No lies, now!”

“Mr. George Grey.”  Then Josiah fully realized his danger.

“Why did you?”

“You wouldn’t help me to get whisky.”

“Well, was that all?”

“You went and got the preacher to set Mr. Penhallow on me.  He gave me the devil.”

“My God, was that all?  You’ve ruined me for a drink of whisky—­you’ve got your revenge.  I’m lost—­lost.  Your day will come—­I’ll be there.  Now go and repent if you can—­you’ve been near to death.  Go!” he cried.

He seized the terrified man with one strong hand, lifted him from the chair, cast open the door and hurled him out into the street.  A little crowd gathered around Lamb as he rose on one elbow, dazed.

“Drunk!” said Pole, the butcher.  “Drunk again!”

Josiah shut and locked the door.  Then he tied up his bundle of clothes, filled a basket with food, and went out into his garden.  He cast a look back at the neatly kept home he had recently made fresh with paint.  He paused to pick a chilled rosebud and set it in his button-hole—­a fashion copied from his adored captain.  He glanced tearfully at the glass-framed covers of the yellowing melon vines.  He had made money out of his melons, and next year would have been able to send a good many to Pittsburgh.  As he turned to leave the little garden in which he took such pride, he heard an old rooster’s challenge in his chicken-yard, which had been another means of money-making.  He went back and opened the door, leaving the fowl their liberty.  When in the lane behind his house, he walked along in the rear of the houses, and making sure that he was unobserved, crossed the road and entered the thick Penhallow forest.  He walked rapidly for half an hour, and leaving the wood road found his way to the cabin the first Penhallow built.  It was about half after one o’clock when the fugitive lay down on the earth of the cabin with his hands clasped behind his head.  He stared upward, wondering where he could go to be safe.  He would have to spend some of the carefully saved money.  That seemed to him of all things the most cruel.  He was not trained to consecutive thinking; memories old or new flitted through his mind.  Now and then he said to himself that perhaps he had had no right to run away—­and perhaps this was punishment.  He had fled from the comforts of an easy life, where he had been fed, clothed and trusted.  Not for a moment would he have gone back—­but why had he run away?  What message that soaring hawk had sent to him from his swift circling sweep overhead he was not able to put in words even if he had so desired.  “That wicked hawk done it!” he said aloud.

At last, hearing steps outside, he bounded to his feet, a hand on the knife in his belt.  He stood still waiting, ready as a crouching tiger, resolute, a man at bay with an unsated appetite for freedom.  The door opened and John entered.

“You sort of scared me, Master John.”