Suddenly, among other brilliant ideas, came the thought that sometimes boys ran away; Mike’s boy Jerry ran away (Mike was the man who worked for grandpa), and he didn’t have any money, and Johnny had fifteen cents; besides, when he got on the cars he could tell the conductor to charge it to his father; of course, he knew his father; he came from New York every month.

He listened till he heard grandma go to the shed for wood, and before she came back her small grandson was some distance from the house in the deep snow, putting on his coat and tying his comforter over his ears.

As he looked back and saw the shadow of grandma as she put down the wood, he said:  “I guess I’ll make her cry pretty soon.”

After the wood, grandma seemed to find quite a number of things either to take up or put down, so for a little while Johnny was forgotten.  Did you ever notice that grandmothers, and mothers too, are always begging for a little quiet, yet, if they ever get a bit, nothing seems to make them more uneasy?

Grandma thought Johnny was unusually still—­she thought, “and is asleep on the lounge.”  So she was not alarmed when she saw the little empty chair, but when no Johnny appeared on the lounge or anywhere in the room, she felt worried.

“Johnny!” she called all through the house and wood-shed.  Then she missed the little coat, cap, and comforter.

“If he has gone to meet his grandpa, he’ll freeze to death.  Oh, why didn’t I amuse him till his grandpa came,” she thought.  She opened the door and tried to call, but a cloud of snow beat her back.  Wrapping herself comfortably, she started down the white road she thought Johnny had taken.

She called and called his name, and in her excitement expected every moment to find him frozen.  She promised the wind and snow that, if they would only spare her Johnny, her dead daughter’s baby, that in place of his impatient old grandma there should be one as patient as Job!

She had nearly reached the depot.  She heard the evening train, she saw the glare of the great lamp on the engine though the glass that covered it was half hidden by the blinding snow.  She heard a sleigh coming toward her, and said to herself, “No matter who it is, I will stop him, and he shall help me.”  The bells came nearer and nearer, and the sleigh stopped.  “Where are you going, my good woman?  It is a rough night, isn’t it, for a woman to be out?”

Any other time, how grandma would have laughed!—­grandpa didn’t know his own wife!

“Take her in, father,” said another voice.  Poor grandma!  It was Johnny’s father who spoke.

[Illustration:  JOHNNY STARTS TO RUN AWAY.]

“Oh, Johnny’s lost!” she cried, as she tottered into the sleigh.  “He will freeze before we can find him.”

The old lady was taken home, and grandpa and Johnny’s father started off, quite naturally in the wrong direction, for Johnny.