It seemed very extraordinary.  If it had not been for Red Robin’s being untied, they would almost have doubted if Ann had seen rightly.  The thief had disappeared so suddenly and utterly, it almost seemed impossible that he could have been there at all.

There was much talk over it after meeting.  “Are you sure you saw him, Ann?” Mrs. Polly asked.

“Yes; I am sure,” Ann would reply.  She began to feel rather uncomfortable over it.  She feared people would think she had been napping and dreaming although Red Robin was untied.

That night the family were all in bed at nine o’clock, as usual; but Ann up in her snug feather-bed in her little western chamber, could not sleep.  She kept thinking about the horse-thief, and grew more and more nervous.  Finally she thought of some fine linen cloth she and Mrs. Polly had left out in the snowy field south of the house to bleach, and she worried about that.  A web of linen cloth and a horse were very dissimilar booty; but a thief was a thief.  Suppose anything should happen to the linen they had worked so hard over!

At last, she could not endure it any longer.  Up she got, put on her clothes hurriedly, crept softly down stairs and out doors.  There was a full moon and it was almost as light as day.  The snow looked like a vast sheet of silver stretching far away over the fields.

Ann was hastening along the path between two high snowbanks when all of a sudden she stopped, and gave a choked kind of a scream.  No one with nerves could have helped it.  Right in the path before her stood the horse-thief, gray cloak and all.

Ann turned, after her scream and first wild stare, and ran.  But the man caught her before she had taken three steps.  “Don’t scream,” he said in a terrible, anxious whisper.  “Don’t make a noise, for God’s sake!  They’re after me!  Can’t you hide me?”

“No,” said Ann, white and trembling all over but on her mettle, “I won’t.  You are a sinful man, and you ought to be punished.  I won’t do a thing to help you!”

The man’s face bending over her was ghastly in the moonlight.  He went on pleading.  “If you will hide me somewhere about your place, they will not find me,” said he, still in that sharp agonized whisper.  “They are after me—­can’t you hear them?”

Ann could, listening, hear distant voices on the night air.

“I was just going to hide in your barn,” said the thief, “when I met you.  O let me in there, now! don’t betray me!”

Great tears were rolling down his bearded cheeks.  Ann began to waver.  “They might look in the barn,” said she hesitatingly.

The man followed up his advantages.  “Then hide me in the house,” said he.  “I have a daughter at home, about your age.  She’s waiting for me, and it’s long she’ll wait, and sad news she’ll get at the end of the waiting, if you don’t help me.  She hasn’t any mother, she’s a little tender thing—­it’ll kill her!” He groaned as he said it.