It was a little after daybreak. Mrs. Pipkin was making a fire as he went through the kitchen; she guessed the deacon wasn’t stirring yet. Jack took the milkpails and went into the barn-yard. The cows got up, one after another, stretched themselves, flirted their tails, and waited to be milked. He placed his stool beside one of them; and there he sat milking in the cool of the morning,—keeping all the while an anxious lookout for the deacon,—when the large front gate rattled, and he saw a man trying to unfasten it.