CHAPTER I

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      The night was hot and dark, for the moon rose late. The perfume of the petunia bed hung heavy in the air, and the katydids and crickets kept up a continual symphony in the orchard close to the house. Its music floated in at the open window, and called to the girl alluringly, as she sat in the darkened upper room patiently rocking Emmeline's baby to sleep in the little wooden cradle.

      She had washed the supper dishes. The tea towels hung smoothly on the little line in the woodshed, the milk pans stood in a shining row ready for the early milking, and the kitchen, swept and garnished and dark, had settled into its nightly repose. The day had been long and full of hard work, but now as soon as the baby slept Phoebe would be free for a while before bedtime.

      Unconsciously her foot tapped faster on the rocker in her impatience to be out, and the baby stirred and opened his round eyes at her, murmuring sleepily:

      "Pee-bee, up-e-knee! Pee-bee, up-e-knee! " Which being interpreted was a demand to be taken up on Phoebe's knee. But Phoebe, knowing from experience that she would be tied for the evening if she acceded to this request, toned her rocking into a sleepy motion, and the long lashes suddenly dropped again upon the fat little cheeks. At last the baby was asleep.

      With careful touch Phoebe slowed the rocking until the motion was scarcely perceptible, waiting a minute in hushed attention to hear the soft regular breathing after the cradle had stopped. Then she rose noiselessly from her chair, and poised on tiptoe over the cradle to listen once more and be sure, before she stole softly from the room.

      As she reached the door the baby heaved a long, deep sigh, doubtless of satisfaction with its toys in dreamland, and Phoebe paused, her heart standing still for an instant lest, after all, that naughty baby would waken and demand to be taken up. How many times had she just reached the door, on other hot summer nights, and been greeted by a loud cry which served to bring Emmeline to the foot of the stairs, with: "I declare, Phoebe Deane! I should think if you would half try you could keep that poor child from crying all night!" and Phoebe would be in for an hour or two of singing, and rocking and amusing the fretful baby.

      But the baby slept on, and Phoebe stepped cautiously over the creaking boards in the floor, and down the stairs lightly, scarcely daring yet to breathe. Like a fairy she slipped past the sitting-room door, scarcely daring to glance in lest she would be seen, yet carrying with her the perfect mental picture of the room and its occupants as she glided out into the night.

      Albert, her half-brother, was in the sitting-room. She could see his outline through the window: Albert, with his long, thin, kindly-careless face bent over the village paper he had brought home just before supper. Emmeline sat over by the table close to the candle, with her sharp features intent upon the hole in Johnny's stocking. She had been threading her needle as Phrebe passed the door, and the fretful lines between her eyes were intensified by the effort to get the thread into the eye of the needle.

      Hiram Green was in the sitting-room also. He was the neighbor whose farm adjoined Albert Deane's on the side next the village. He was sitting opposite the hall door, his lank form in a splint-bottomed chair tilted back against the wall. His slouch hat was drawn down over his eyes and his hands were in his pockets. He often sat so with Albert in the evening. Sometimes Emmeline called Phoebe in and gave her some darning or mending, and then Phoebe had to listen to Hiram Green's dull talk, to escape which she had fallen into the habit of slipping out into the orchard after her work was done. But it was not always that she could elude