The voices came nearer.  Ann hesitated no longer.  “Come,” said she, “quick!”

Then she fled into the house, the man following.  Inside, she bolted the door, and made her unwelcome guest take off his boots in the kitchen, and follow her softly up stairs with them in his hand.

Ann’s terror, leading him up, almost overwhelmed her.  What if anybody should wake!  Nabby slept near the head of the stairs.  Luckily, she was a little deaf, and Ann counted on that.

She conducted the man across a little entry into a back, unfurnished chamber, where, among other things, were stored some chests of grain.  The moon shone directly in the window of the attic-chamber, so it was light enough to distinguish objects quite plainly.

Ann tiptoed softly from one grain-chest to another.  There were three of them.  Two were quite full; the third was nearly empty.

“Get in here,” said Ann.  “Don’t make any noise.”

He climbed in obediently, and Ann closed the lid.  The chest was a rickety old affair and full of cracks—­there was no danger but he would have air enough.  She heard the voices out in the yard, as she shut the lid.  Back she crept softly into her own room, undressed and got into bed.  She could hear the men out in the yard quite plainly.  “We’ve lost him again,” she heard one of them say.

Presently Phineas Adams opened a window, and shouted out, to know what was the matter.

“Seen anything of the horse-thief?” queried a voice from the yard.

“No!” said Phineas.  “I have been asleep these three hours.  You just waked me up.”

“He was hiding under the meeting-house,” said the voice, “must have slipped in there this morning, when we missed him.  We went down there and watched to-night, and almost caught him.  But he disappeared a little below here, and we’ve lost him again.  It’s my opinion he’s an evil spirit in disguise.  He ran like the wind, in amongst the trees, where we couldn’t follow with the horses.  Are you sure he did not skulk in here somewhere?  Sim White thinks he did.”

“I knew I saw him turn the corner of the lane,” chimed in another voice, “and we’ve scoured the woods.”

“I think we’d better search the barn, anyhow,” some one else said, and a good many murmured assent.

“Wait a minute, I’ll be down,” said Phineas, shutting his window.

How long poor Ann lay there shaking, she never knew.  It seemed hours.  She heard Phineas go down stairs, and unlock the door.  She heard them tramp into the barn.  “O, if I had hidden him there!” she thought.

After a while, she heard them out in the yard again.  “He could not have gotten into the house, in any way,” she heard one man remark speculatively.  How she waited for the response.  It came in Phineas Adams’ slow, sensible tones:  “How could he?  Didn’t you hear me unbolt the door when I came out?  The doors are all fastened, I saw to it myself.”