“So have I,” said Josephus.  Then he added, “Say, I’m awful glad I got scared, and ran here, and found you.”

“So am I.”

“There’s something I want to tell you that’s very queer,” whispered Josephus.  “There is a wooden book just like the one in Mr. Holbrook’s house under the eaves in the lean-to, and I know where the key is.  It is in the chest in the kitchen, in the till hidden under a lot of linen night-caps.”

“Has it a green ribbon on it?” whispered Letitia fearfully.

“Yes, it has.  Say, don’t you ever think you’d like to run away from here?”

“Yes, but I’m afraid I might get into something worse.”

“That’s the way I feel.  Otherwise we might both watch our chance and go through that wooden book in our lean-to, but we might find ourselves in Grandmother Peabody’s garret where I came from, and we might find ourselves in a place full of worse wild animals than there are here, and things worse than Injuns.  And we might have to learn more than we’ve learned here, and work harder, and I don’t feel as if I could stand that.”

“I don’t either.”  Then Letitia whispered very violently, “There is a little green door here, and I know where the key is, with a green ribbon, but I am afraid.”

“That’s very funny—­just like me,” said Josephus.

“Well, I may make up my mind to take the chance anyhow, and if I do you had better.  Say, if you hear I’ve gone, you just go through your little green door, will you?”

“Maybe,” whispered Letitia doubtfully, and then her Great-great-grandmother Letitia came back.  “There isn’t a sign of an Injun here,” said she, “and I am ’most froze.  I’m going to start the fire, and you boy, you had better come too.  You can sleep on the floor by the fire to-night and go home in the morning.  Father and mother are coming.  I heard their horses.  Mother’s is a little lame, and favors one foot, and I know.  They’re right here, and they’ll be cold, and I’ve got to start up the fire.”

“I’ll help,” cried Josephus.

“You’d better,” said the elder Letitia; “if I had a brother as big as you, he’d have to work instead of hunting rabbits.”

Josephus flew about the kitchen dragging heavy logs, and poking the fire, and Letitia quite admired him, but her great-great-grandmother simply scolded.  “You are a most unhandy boy,” said she.  “You can have had little training in making hearth fires.”

However, the flames leaped high into the great chimney mouth, when Captain John Hopkins and his wife entered.

“How pleasant it is, and how thankful we ought to be to have a good warm room to enter,” said Great-great-great-grandmother Letitia Hopkins, although she looked very grave.  The sick neighbor was very sick unto death, it was feared, and she was a good woman and a good neighbor.