“Where is Rebecca?” said Barney.  He looked at William, and again the savage impulse seized him.  William did not shrink before it.

[Illustration:  “‘Where is Rebecca?’ said Barney”]

“What do you mean?” he returned.  His lips were quite stiff and white, but he looked back at Barney.

“Don’t you know where she is?”

“Before God I don’t, Barney.  What do you mean?”

“She left home this morning.  Mother turned her out.”

“Turned her out!” repeated William.

“Come with me and find her and marry her, or I’ll kill you,” said Barney, and he lashed out suddenly with his fist in William’s face.

“You won’t need to, for I’ll kill myself if I don’t,” William gasped out.  Then he turned and ran.

“Where are you going?” Barney shouted, rushing after him, in a fury.

“To put the horse in the cutter,” William called back.  And, indeed, he was headed towards the barn.  Barney followed him, and the two men put the horse between the shafts.  Once William asked, hoarsely, “Any idea which way?” and Barney shook his head.

“What time did she go?”

“Some time this forenoon.”

William groaned.

The horse was nearly harnessed when Tommy Ray came running out from the store, and beckoned to Barney.  “Rose says she see her going up the turnpike this morning,” he said, in a low voice.  “She was up in her chamber that looks over the turnpike, and she see somebody goin’ up the turnpike.  She thought it looked like Rebecca, but she supposed it must be Mis’ Jim Sloane.  It must have been Rebecca.”

“What time was it?” William asked, thrusting his white face between them.  The boy turned aside with a gesture of contempt and dislike.  “About half-past ten,” he answered, shortly.  Then he turned on his heel and went back to the store.  Rose was peering around the half-open door with a white, shocked face.  Somehow she had fathomed the cause of the excitement.

“We’ll go up the turnpike, then,” said Barney.  William nodded.  The two men sprang into the cutter, and the snow flew in their faces from the horse’s hoofs as they went out the barn door.

The old tavern stood facing the old turnpike road to Boston, but the store and barn faced on the new road at its back, and people generally approached the tavern by that way.

William and Barney had to drive down the hill; then turn the corner, and up the hill again on the old turnpike.

There was not a house on that road for a full mile.  William urged the horse as fast as he could through the fresh snow.  Both men kept a sharp lookout at the sides of the road.  The sun was out now, and the snow was blinding white; the north wind drove a glittering spray as sharp and stinging as diamond-dust in their faces.

Once William cried out, with a dry sob, “My God, she’ll freeze in this wind, if she’s out in it!”

And Barney answered, “Maybe it would be better for her if she did.”