For there was Hannah, with a white, white face, holding out a little note folded like an old-fashioned thumb-paper.
"Go quick!" she stammered as she slipped it Into Ralph's hand, inadvertently touching his fingers with her own--a touch that went tingling through the school-master's nerves.

But she had hardly said the words until she was gone down the brookside path and over into the pasture.

A few minutes afterward she drove the cows up into the lot and meekly took her scolding from Mrs.Means for being gone sech an awful long time, like a lazy, good-fer-nothin piece of goods that she was.
Ralph opened the thumb-paper note, written on & page torn from an old copy-book, in Bud's "hand-write" and running: "Mr.Heartsook "deer Sur: "I Put in my best licks, taint no use.

Run fer yore life.

A plans on foot to tar an fether or wuss to-night.