He hitched the sleepy animal to a pine tree just off the road and tiptoed toward the hollow, the appointed rendezvous.  To reach this hollow he was obliged to pass through the Parker yard and, although he went on tiptoe, each footstep sounded, in his ears, like the crack of doom.  He tried to think of some explanation to be made to Kenelm in case the latter should hear and hail him, but he could think of nothing more plausible than that he was taking a walk, and this was far from satisfactory.

And then he was hailed.  From a window above, at the extreme end of the kitchen, came a trembling whisper.

“Caleb!  Caleb Hammond, is that you?”

Mr. Hammond’s heart, which had been thumping anything but a wedding march beneath the summer under-flannels, leaped up and stuck in his throat; but he choked it down and gasped a faint affirmative.

“Oh, my soul and body!  Where have you been?  I’ve been waitin’ and waitin’.”

“What in time did you wait up there for?  Why don’t you come down?”

“I can’t.  Kenelm’s locked the doors, and the keys are right next to his room door.  I can’t get down.”

Here was an unexpected obstacle.  Caleb was nonplused.

“Go home!” wailed the voice from above.  “Don’t stand there.  Go home!  Can’t you see it ain’t any use?  Go home!”

Five minutes before he received this order Mr. Hammond would have been only too glad to go home.  Now he was startled and angry and, being angry, his habitual stubbornness developed.

“I shan’t go home neither,” he whispered, fiercely.  “If you can’t come down I’ll—­I’ll come up and get you.”

“Shh—­shh!  He’ll hear you.  Kenelm’ll hear you.”

“I don’t care much if he does.  See here, Hannah, can’t you get down nohow?  How about that window?  Can’t you climb out of that window?  Say, didn’t I see a ladder layin’ alongside the woodshed this mornin’?”

“Yes, there’s a ladder there, but—­where are you goin’?  Mr. Hammond—­Caleb—­”

But Caleb was on his way to the woodshed.  He found the ladder and laboriously dragged it beneath the window.  Kenelm Parker had a local reputation for sleeping like the dead.  Otherwise Mr. Hammond would never have dared risk the noise he was making.

Even after the ladder had been placed in position, Miss Parker hesitated.  At first she flatly refused to descend, asserting that no mortal power could get her down that thing alive.  But Caleb begged and commanded in agonized whispers, and finally she was prevailed upon to try.  Mr. Hammond grasped the lower end of the ladder with a grip that brought the perspiration out upon his forehead, and the lady, with suppressed screams and ejaculations of “Oh, good Lord!” and “Heavens and earth!  What shall I do?” reached the ground safe and more or less sound.  They left the ladder where it was, and tiptoed fearfully out to the lane.