Old Noah admitted me at my knock, locked the door after me, and sent me into the smaller parlour, where the whole family happened to be.  When I whispered my message to Fanny, she turned so many colours, and made so precipitately for the entrance hall, that her father was put on the alert.  He followed her quietly out, just in time to see a very shivering, humble, shamefaced youth step in from the snowy outer night.  The sight of his father turned Ned cold and stiff upon the threshold; but all the father did was to put on a grim look of contempt, and say: 

“Well, sir, I suppose you’ve changed your tune.”

“Yes, sir,” said the penitent, meekly, and there being now no reason for secrecy he shambled after his father into the parlour.  There, after his mother’s embrace, he grinned sheepishly upon us all.  Fanny was quite rejoiced, and so was little Tom till the novelty wore off; while Madge greeted the prodigal good-humouredly enough, and one could read Phil’s relief and forgiveness on his smiling face.  Master Ned, grateful for an easier ordeal than he had feared, made no exception against Phil in the somewhat sickly amiability he had for all, and we thought that here were reconciliation and the assurance of future peace.

Ned’s home-coming brought trouble in its train, as indeed did his every reappearance afterward.  It came out that he and another boy—­the one in whose house he had found refuge on the night of his running away—­had started off for the North to lead the lives of hunters and trappers, a career so inviting that they could not wait to provide a sufficient equipment.  They travelled afoot by the Albany post-road, soliciting food at farmhouses, passing their nights in barns; and got as far as Tarrytown, ere either one in his pride would admit to the other, through chattering teeth, that he had had his fill of snow and hunger and the raw winds of the Hudson River.  So footsore, leg-weary, empty, and frozen were they on their way back, that they helped themselves to one of Jacob Post’s horses, near the Philipse manor-house; and not daring to ride into town on this beast, thoughtlessly turned it loose in the Bowery lane, never thinking how certainly it and they could be traced—­for they had been noticed at Van Cortlandt’s, again at Kingsbridge, and again at the Blue Bell tavern.  After receiving its liberty, the horse had been seen once, galloping toward Turtle Bay, and never again.

So, a few days after Ned’s reentrance into the bosom of his family, there came to the house a constable, of our own town, with a deputy sent by the sheriff of Westchester County, wanting Master Edward Faringfield.

Frightened and disgraced, his mother sent for her husband; and for the sake of the family name, Mr. Faringfield adjusted matters by the payment of twice or thrice what the horse was worth.  Thus the would-be hunter and trapper escaped the discomfort and shame of jail; though by his father’s sentence he underwent a fortnight’s detention on bread and water in his bedroom.