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Haley.
     
    “Who isn’t?” Hope shrugged. “Don’t get me wrong, Haley. We love him dearly, and I think he loves us, too, probably lots more than most fathers love their children. But golly, his idea of doing us a favor is to discipline us every time we turn around.” A patch of light on the grass to their left, cast from Kitty’s window above, disappeared. Hope and Haley looked up at the darkened window. “Going to bed early,” said Hope. “Guess she’ll cry herself to sleep tonight.” Suddenly she motioned for silence. “Listen!”
     
    Haley heard a rustling in the untended barberry hedge bounding the driveway. A figure separated from the shadows, and Haley recognized Roy, who looked as though he had been eluding bloodhounds for a week. He spoke hoarsely, and was visible for only a minute — long enough to give them a note for Kitty, rumpled and moist from his perspiring hands. He retreated again into the hedge, and Hope ran upstairs with the message, leaving Haley alone on the kitchen steps. The light in Kitty’s room flashed on again, and Haley turned his head to see her standing in the window, waving her hands and nodding. A moment later, he saw Roy head across the barnyard toward the highway, running between patches of shadows in a low crouch.
     
    Hope returned, vibrant with excitement. “They’re going to get married anyway, Haley — tonight!”
     
    Haley laughed nervously, and found himself without adequate comment.
     
    “And the wonderful thing about it is that we get to see them elope!”
     
    “I’d rather keep out of it,” said Haley, his voice tinged with anxiety.
     
    “Oh, but you can’t,” said Hope, enthusiastically. “You’re absolutely crucial. They’re going to use your window, because it’s the farthest from the General’s room.”
     
    “Good grief! What if she gets caught by Annie or the General on her way out through my room? That’d look dandy for me.”
     
    “Oh, the General will never find out how she got out. He won’t find out she’s gone until morning. She’s making a dummy for her bed right now.”
     
    “All the same, I’d be happier if—”
     
    “You
are
a mouse, aren’t you,” said Hope.
    Haley suddenly hated himself for his querulousness. “I didn’t mean it
that
way,” he objected lamely. “It’s just that I want to make sure everything’s planned just right, that’s all.”
    They returned together, with Hope apparently mollified, into the brightly lighted sunroom, where the General and Annie perused respectively the first and second sections of the evening paper, with an occasional and complacent “huh” or “ha.”
     
    At 3 a.m., Caesar, the chastened horse, kicked the side of his stall twice, perhaps in token retribution for the saw-toothed bits. The solid thumps carried to the ears of Haley, who threw back his covers and ran to the window. In the silent patch of blues and blacks below him, he saw Roy, moving toward the house, staggering beneath the weight of a tall ladder. Roy stood the ladder upright, and leaned it in toward Haley’s windowsill. The ladder gathered speed as it fell toward the house, and Roy was without leverage to stop it as it threatened to hit the clapboard siding with a thundering whack. Haley leaned out and caught the ladder just before it hit, and his hand served as a cushion between it and the house. In spite of himself he cried out, and jerked his hand, which stung smartly and bled.
     
    Roy popped his colorful head into the window, and Hope and Kitty slipped through the bedroom door, looking furtively over their shoulders, and struggling with several large pieces of luggage.
     
    “Who yelled?” whispered Hope angrily.
     
    Haley appealed with his eyes to Roy for vindication, but Roy, florid and perspiring, was staring amazed at the baggage Kitty expected to carry away on the nuptial motorcycle. Haley guessed, from what little he knew of Roy, that the idea of spiriting his love away had delighted