"
He laid his hand on my arm.
"Can you hitch up your horse and come with me--right away?"
McAlway helped with the buckles and said not a word. In ten minutes,
certainly not more, we were driving together down the lane.
"Do you know a family named Williams living on the north road beyond the
three corners?" asked the Scotch Preacher.
Instantly a vision of a somewhat dilapidated house, standing not
unpicturesquely among ill-kept fields, leaped to my mind.
"Yes," I said; "but I can't remember any of the family except a gingham
girl with yellow hair. I used to see her on her way to school,''
"A girl!" he said, with a curious note in his voice; "but a woman now."
He paused a moment; then he continued sadly:
"As I grow older it seems a shorter and shorter step between child and
child. David, she has a child of her own,''
"But I didn't know--she isn't--"
"A woods child," said the Scotch Preacher.
I could not find a word to say. I remember the hush of the evening there
in the country road, the soft light fading in the fields. I heard a
whippoorwill calling from the distant woods.
"They made it hard for her," said the Scotch Preacher, "especially her
older brother. About four o'clock this afternoon she ran away, taking
her baby with her.
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