“I can’t let you go to the stables,” he objected.  “The horse-boys sleep there.  But I’ll put a roof over you, some way.  Wait here a minute till I come back.”

His thought was to go to his mother and ask her help; but half-way to the house his courage failed him.  Since the breach in spiritual confidence he had been better able to see the lovable side of his mother’s faith; but he could not be blind to that quality of hardness in it which, even in such chastened souls as Martha Gordon’s, finds expression in woman’s inhumanity to woman.  Besides, Ardea and her cousin were still in the way.

He swung on his heel undecided.  On the hillside back of the new foundry there was a one-roomed cabin built on the Gordon land years before by a hermit watchman of the Chiawassee plant.  It was vacant, and Tom remembered that the few bits of furniture had not been removed when the old watchman died.  Would the miserable shack do for a temporary refuge for the outcast?  He concluded it would have to do; and, making a wide circuit of the house, he went around to the stables to harness Longfellow to the buggy.  Luckily, the negroes were all in the detached kitchen, eating their supper, so he was able to go and come undetected.

When he drove down to the gate he found Nan waiting where he had left her; but now she had a bundle in her arms.  As he got out to swing the driveway grille, the house door opened; a flood of light from the hall lamp banded the lawn, and there were voices and footsteps on the veranda.  He flung a nervous glance over his shoulder; Ardea and her cousin were returning down the foot-path.  Wherefore he made haste, meaning not to be caught again, if he could help it.  But the fates were against him.  Longfellow, snatched ruthlessly from his half-emptied oat box, made equine protest, yawing and veering and earning himself a savage cut of the whip before he consented to place the buggy at the stone mounting-step.

“Quick!” said Tom, flinging the reins on the dashboard.  “Chuck your bundle under the seat and climb in!”

But Nan was provokingly slow, and when she tried to get in with the bundle still in her arms, the buggy hood was in the way.  Tom had to help her, was in the act of lifting her to the step, when the wicket latch, clicked and Ardea and Miss Euphrasia came out.  They passed on without comment, but Tom could feel the electric shock of righteous scorn through the back of his head.  That was why he drove half-way to the lower end of the pike before he turned on Nan to say: 

“What’s in that bundle you’re so careful of?  Why don’t you put it under the seat?”

She looked around at him, and dark as it was, he saw that the great black eyes were shining with a strange light—­strange to him.

“I reckon you wouldn’t want me to do that, Tom-Jeff,” she answered simply.  “Hit’s my baby—­my little Tom.”