She said, too,-- "I'm so sorry about the barn!" Ham only laughed, in his quiet way, as he kissed his portly mother-in-law, and said,-- "Come, come, mother Kinzer, you didn't set it afire.

Can't Miranda and I have some supper?
Dab must be hungry, too, after all that roof-sweeping." There had been a sharp strain on the nerves of all of them that day and evening; and they were glad enough to gather around the tea-table, while all that was now left of the old barn smouldered peaceably away with half the boys in the village on guard.
Once or twice Ham or Dab went out to see that all was dying out rightly; but it was plain that all the danger was over, unless a high wind should come to scatter the cinders.
By this time the whole village had heard of Dab's adventure with the tramp, and had at once connected the latter with the fire.

There were those, indeed, who expressed a savage wish to connect him with it bodily; and it was well for him that he had done his running away promptly, and had hidden himself with care, for men were out after him in all directions, on foot and on horseback.

Who would have dreamed of so dirty a vagabond "taking to the water"?
"He's a splendid fellow, anyway!" Odd, was it not?
but Annie Foster and Jenny Walters were half a mile apart when they both said that very thing, just before the clock in the village church hammered out the news that it was ten, and bedtime.

They were not either of them speaking of the tramp.
It was long after that, however, before the lights were out in all the rooms of the Morris mansion..