“I don’t want him to come back,” Charlotte whispered fiercely in return.

Sylvia stared at her helplessly.  Charlotte’s face looked strange and hard in the moonlight.  “Your mother’s dreadful worried,” she whispered again, presently.  “She thinks you’ll catch cold.  I come out of the front door on purpose so you can go in that way.  Your father’s asleep in his chair.  He told your mother not to unbolt this door to-night, and she didn’t darse to.  But we went past him real still to the front one, an’ you can slip in there and get up to your chamber without his seeing you.  Oh, Charlotte, do come!”

Charlotte arose, and she and Sylvia went around to the front door.  Sylvia crept close to the house as before, but Charlotte walked boldly along in the moonlight.  “Charlotte, I’m dreadful afraid he’ll see you,” Sylvia pleaded, but Charlotte would not change her course.

Just as they reached the front door it was slammed with a quick puff of wind in their faces.  They heard Mrs. Barnard’s voice calling piteously.  “Oh, father, do let her in!” it implored.

“Don’t you worry, mother,” Charlotte called out.  “I’ll go home with Aunt Sylvia.”

“Oh, Charlotte!” her mother’s voice broke in sobs.

“Don’t you worry, mother,” Charlotte repeated, with an unrelenting tone in the comforting words.  “I’ll go right home with Aunt Sylvia.  Come,” she said, imperatively to her aunt, “I am not going to stand here any longer,” and she went out into the road, and hastened down it, as Barnabas had done.

“I’ll take her right home with me,” Sylvia called to her sister in a trembling voice (nobody knew how afraid she was of Cephas); and she followed Charlotte.

Sylvia lived on an old road that led from the main one a short distance beyond the new house, so the way led past it.  Charlotte went on at such a pace that Sylvia could scarcely keep up with her.  She slid along in her wake, panting softly, and lifting her skirts out of the evening dew.  She was trembling with sympathy for Charlotte, and she had also a worry of her own.  When they reached the new house she fairly sobbed outright, but Charlotte went past in her stately haste without a murmur.

“Oh, Charlotte, don’t feel so bad,” mourned her aunt.  “I know it will all come right.”  But Charlotte made no reply.  Her dusky skirts swept around the bushes at the corner of the road, and Sylvia hurried tremulously after her.

Neither of them dreamed that Barnabas watched them, standing in one of the front rooms of his new house.  He had gone in there when he fled from Cephas Barnard’s, and had not yet been home.  He recognized Charlotte’s motions as quickly as her face, and knew Sylvia’s voice, although he could not distinguish what she said.  He watched them turn the corner of the other road, and thought that Charlotte was going to spend the night with her aunt—­he did not dream why.  He had resolved to stay where he was in his desolate new house, and not go home himself.