“That was me,” said the boy.  “At least,” he added in rather a dazed and hopeless tone, “I suppose it was, and I guess I remember you too.  You had curls, and we went coasting down that long hill near Grandmother’s together.”

“Seems to me we did,” said Letitia, and her own tone was dazed and hopeless.

“Since I have been here,” whispered the boy, “I haven’t been exactly sure who I was and that is the truth.  The folks where I am staying are real good.  They go to meeting all day Sunday and they don’t work Saturday nights, but I can’t understand it.  We have to make all the things I have seen already made, for one thing.”

Letitia nodded in the dark.

“That is the way here,” said she.

“And Mr. Cephas Holbrook has just the name that my great-great-great-uncle on my mother’s side had,” said the boy, in a whisper so puzzled that it was fairly agonized.  “Grandmother has told me about him.  He had a battle with six Injuns and killed them all himself, and this Mr. Cephas Holbrook has done just that same thing.  And he killed ten wolves and nailed their heads to the meeting-house.  Say,” the boy continued confidentially, “those were the heads I meant, you know.”

“Of course I know,” whispered Letitia.  “I wouldn’t speak to you if you had done such awful things.”

“I didn’t, honestly,” said Josephus Peabody.  “Where did you come from to-night?” asked Letitia.

“Why, I came from Mr. Cephas Holbrook’s.  It’s about ten miles away on that side.”  The boy pointed in the dark.

“You came all that way?”

“I had to if I came at all.  I don’t get any time to see my traps day-times.  I have to work.  I have to chop wood, and make wooden pegs.  I never saw wooden pegs, till—­till I came here.  I have to work all day.  Eliphalet Holbrook, he’s a boy about my size, got out of the window one night, when it was moonlight, and we set traps, and we haven’t either of us had a chance to look at them and see if we’ve caught anything; but to-night, I had a cold and they sent me to bed early and I whispered to Eliphalet, that I’d see those traps; and I had a pine knot, and I run and run, but I couldn’t find the traps.”

“You didn’t run ten miles?”

“No, the traps were set only about three miles from where we live and I rather think I lost my way.  Then I heard the Injuns—­say, I used to call them Indians.”

“So did I,” said Letitia.

“They say Injuns here.  Then I heard them, and I run the rest of the way, and then I saw your light.  Are you one of Captain John Hopkins’ children?”

“I don’t know.  I don’t think I am,” replied Letitia miserably.

“What is your name?”

“Letitia Hopkins.”

“Then you must be.”

“I don’t believe I am.”

Suddenly Letitia felt a hard little boy-hand clutch hers in the dark.  The boy’s voice whispered forcibly in her ear.  “Say,” said the voice, “did you—­did you get here, I wonder, in some queer way just as I did?”