She put into her belt the sharp little knife her brother used to carry, and then began to gather together everything eatable that she could carry with her.  There was not much that could be easily carried—­some dried beef, a piece of cheese, some corn-meal, a piece of pork, a handful of cheap coffee-berries, and some pieces of hard corn bread.  She hesitated over a pan half full of baked beans, and finally added them to the store.  They were bulky, but she ought to take them if she could.  There was nothing else in the house that seemed advisable to take in the way of eatables.  Their stores had been running low, and the trouble of the last day or two had put housekeeping entirely out of her mind.  She had not cared to eat, and now it occurred to her that food had not passed her lips that day.  With strong self-control she forced herself to eat a few of the dry pieces of corn bread, and to drink some cold coffee that stood in the little coffee-pot.  This she did while she worked, wasting not one minute.

There were some old flour-sacks in the house.  She put the eatables into two of them, with the pan of beans on the top, adding a tin cup, and tied them securely together.  Then she went into her little shed room, and put on the few extra garments in her wardrobe.  They were not many, and that was the easiest way to carry them.  Her mother’s wedding-ring, sacredly kept in a box since the mother’s death, she slipped upon her finger.  It seemed the closing act of her life in the cabin, and she paused and bent her head as if to ask the mother’s permission that she might wear the ring.  It seemed a kind of protection to her in her lonely situation.

There were a few papers and an old letter or two yellow with years, which the mother had always guarded sacredly.  One was the certificate of her mother’s marriage.  The girl did not know what the others were.  She had never looked into them closely, but she knew that her mother had counted them precious.  These she pinned into the bosom of her calico gown.  Then she was ready.

She gave one swift glance of farewell about the cabin where she had spent nearly all of her life that she could remember, gathered up the two flour-sacks and an old coat of her father’s that hung on the wall, remembering at the last minute to put into its pocket the few matches and the single candle left in the house, and went out from the cabin, closing the door behind her.

She paused, looking down the road, and listened again; but no sound came to her save a distant howl of a wolf.  The moon rode high and clear by this time; and it seemed not so lonely here, with everything bathed in soft silver, as it had in the darkening cabin with its flickering candle.

The girl stole out from the cabin and stealthily across the patch of moonlight into the shadow of the shackly barn where stamped the poor, ill-fed, faithful horse that her brother had ridden to his death upon.  All her movements were stealthy as a cat’s.