"He and Alfred will have a spat by that time." Saturday and Sunday passed, however, and then all the following week, with no word from them.
On Tuesday evening, when they had been gone eleven days, Mrs.Batchelder hastened in with alarming news for us.

She had had a letter from Alfred, she said, written from Berlin Falls in New Hampshire, where he had gone to work in a mill; but he had not said one word about Halstead! "I don't think they could have gone off together," she said, and she read Alfred's letter aloud to us, or seemed to do so, but did not hand it to any of us to read.
We had never trusted Mrs.Batchelder implicitly; and a long time afterwards it came out that there was one sentence in that letter that she had not read to us.

It was this: "Don't say anything to any of them about Halstead." Guessing that there had been trouble of some kind between the boys, she was frightened; to shield Alfred she had hurried over with the letter, and had tried to make us believe that the boys had not gone off together.
Addison and I still thought that the boys had set out in company, though we did not know what to make of Alfred's letter.

We were waiting in that disturbed state of mind, hoping to hear something from Alfred that would clear up the mystery, when the old Squire came home.
"He has gone away, sir," Addison said at last, when the old gentleman inquired for Halstead at supper.
"Gone away?
Where?
What for ?" the old gentleman asked in much astonishment; and then the whole story had to be told him.
The old Squire heard it through without saying much.

When we had finished, he asked, "Did you know that Halstead meant to go away ?" "We did not know for certain, sir," Addison replied.
"Still, you both knew something about it ?" "Yes, sir." "Did either one of you do anything to prevent it ?" We had to admit that we had done nothing.
The old Squire regarded us a moment or two in silence.
"In one of the oldest narratives of life that have come down to us," he said at last, "we read that there were once two brothers living together, who did not agree and who often fell out.