Miranda. Grace Livingston Hill

      Chapter VI

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      There was no sound nor movement inside, and at first the girl began to think her quest had been in vain; or perhaps the prisoner had already escaped. If there was a way of escape she made sure Allan would find it; but after a second her senses cleared and she heard soft breathing over in the corner. She crept toward it, and made out a dark form lying in the shadow. She knelt beside it, put her hand out and touched his hair, his heavy beautiful hair that she had admired so many times in school when his head was bent over his book and the light from the window showed purple shadows in its dark depths. It thrilled her now strangely with a sense of privilege and almost of awe to feel how soft it was. Then her hand touched the smoothness of his boy-face, and she bent her head quite close, so that she felt his breath on her cheek.

      "Allan!" she whispered, "Allan!" But it was some minutes before she could get him awake with her quiet efforts, for she dared not make a noise, and he was dead with fatigue and anxiety, besides being almost numb with the cold. His head was pillowed on his arm and he had wrapped around him some old sacking that had been given him for his bed. Grandfather Heath as constable did not believe in making the way of the transgressor easy, and he had gone contented to his warm comfortable bed leaving only a few yards of old sacking and a hard clay floor for the supposed criminal to lie upon. This was not cruelty in Grandfather Heath. He called it Justice.

      At last Miranda's whispered cries in his ear, and her gentle shakings aroused the boy to a sense of his surroundings. Her arms were about his neck, trying tenderly to bring him to a sitting posture, and her cheek was against his as though her soul could reach his attention by drawing nearer. Her little freckled saucy face, all grave and sorrowful now in the darkness, brought to him a conviction of sympathy he had not known in all his lonely boyhood days, and with his first waking sense the comfort of her presence touched him warmly. He held himself utterly quiet just to be sure that she was there touching him and it was not a dream, somebody caring and calling to him with almost a sob in her breath. For an instant a wild thought of his own mother whom he had never known came to him and then almost immediately he knew that it was Miranda. All the hideous truth of his situation came back to him, as life tragedies will on sudden waking, yet the strong young arms, that with their efforts were warm, and the soft breath and exquisitely soft cheek were there.

      "Yes," he said very softly but quite distinctly in her ear, not moving yet however, "I'm awake. What is it?"

      "Oh, I'm so glad," she caught her breath with a sob, and instantly was her alert business-like self again, all sentiment laid aside.

      "Get up quick and put on this overcoat," she whispered, beginning to unbutton it with hurried fingers. "There's some things to eat in the pockets. Hurry! You ain't got any time to waste. Grandma wakes up awful easy and she might find out I had my door buttoned and get Grandpa roused up. Or somebody might a heard the door creak. It made a turrible noise. Ain't you most froze? Your hands is like ice—" she touched them softly and then drew them both up to her face and blew on them to warm them with her breath. There's some old mittens of mine in the pocket here, they ain't your size, but mebbe you ken git into 'em, and anyhow they're better'n nothin'. Hurry, cause it would be all no use ef Grandpa woke up——"

      Allan sprang up suddenly.

      "Where is your grandfather?" he asked anxiously, "Does he know you're here?"

      "He's abed and asleep this three hours," said the girl holding up the coat and catching one of his hands to put it in the sleeve. "I heard him tell about you bein' out here, and I jest kep' still and let 'em think I was asleep, so Grandma sent me up to bed and I waited till they went upstairs and got quiet, then I slipped down an' got the key and some vittles, and went back and clumb out my window to the cherry tree so's I wouldn't make a noise with the door. You better walk the rails of the fence till you get out the back pasture and up by the sugar maples. Then you could go through the woods and they couldn't track you even ef it did stop snowin' soon and leave any kind of tracks. But I don't guess it'll stop yet awhile. It's awful fine and still like it was goin' on to snow fer hours. Hev you got any money with you? I put three shillin's in the inside coat pocket. It was all I hed. I thought you might need it. Reach up and git that half a ham over your head. You'll need it. Is there anythin' else you want?

      While she talked she had hurried him into the coat, buttoning it around him as if he had been a child and she his mother; and the tall fellow stooped and let her fasten him in, tucking the collar around his neck. He shook his head, and softly whispered a hoarse “No” to her question, but it caught in his throat with something like a sob. It was the memory of that sound that had sent the sobs of his young brother Nathan piercing to the soul of her, years later, down beside the pieplant bed.

      "Don't you let 'em catch you, Allan," she said anxiously, her hand lingering on his arm, her eyes searching in the dark for his beloved face.

      "No, I won't let 'em catch me," he murmured menacingly, "I'll get away all right, but Randa" —he had always called her Randa though no one else in the village ever called her that—"Randa, I want you to know I didn't do it. I didn't kill Enoch Taylor, indeed I didn't. I wasn't even there. I didn't have a thing to do with it."

      "O' course you didn't!"said Miranda indignantly, her whole slender body stiffening in the dark. He could feel it as he reached out to put a hand on either of her shoulders.

      "Did you 'spose I'd think you could? But ef you told 'em, couldn't you make 'em prove it? Ain't there any way? Do you hev to go away?" Her voice was wistful, pleading, and revealed her heart.

      "Nobody would believe me, Randa. You know how folks are here about me."

      "I know," she said sorrowfully, her voice trailing almost into tears. "And anyhow" he added, I couldn't because—well Randa—I know who did it and I wouldn't tell!" His voice was deep and earnest. She understood. It was the rules of the game. He had known she would understand. "Oh!" she said in a breath of surrender. "Oh! of course you couldn't tell!" then suddenly rousing—"But you mustn't wait," she added anxiously, "somebody might come by, and you ain't got a minute to lose. You'll take care o' yourself, Allan, won't you?"

      “Course,” he answered almost roughly, "course, Randa. And say, Randa, you're just a great little woman to help me out this way. I don't know's I ought to let you. It'll mebbe get you into trouble."

      "Don't you worry 'bout me," said Miranda. "They ain't going to know anything about me helpin' you, and ef they did they can't do nothin' to a girl. I'd just like to see 'em tryin' to take it out o' me. Ef they dare I'll tell 'em how everybody has treated you all these years. You ain't had it fair Allan. Now go quick—”

      But the boy turned suddenly and took her in his arms, holding her close in his great rough overcoated clasp, and putting his face down to hers as they stood in the deepest shadow of the old smoke-house.

      "There wasn't ever anybody but you understood, Randa," he whispered, "and I ain't going to forget what you've done this time——" The boy's lips searched for hers and met them in a shy embarrassed kiss that sought to pay homage of his soul to her. "Good-bye, Randa, I ain't going to forget, and mebbe—mebbe, some day I can come back and get you—that is ef you're still here waiting."

      He kissed her again impetuously, and then as if half ashamed of what he had done he left her standing there in the darkness and slipped out through the blackness into the still, thick whiteness of the snow; stepped from the door to the rail fence as she had suggested and rapidly disappeared into the silence of the storm in the direction of the sugar maples. Miranda stood still for several minutes unconscious of the cold, the night, and her loneliness; regardless of the fact that she had taken off a warm overcoat and was without any wrap over her flimsy little school dress. She was not cold now. A fine glow enveloped her