At New Carlisle, a sleepy little village where the dogfennel was wonderfully advanced for June, Zene took the gray from the wagon and hitched him to the carriage, substituting Old Hickory. The gray's shoulder was rubbed by his collar, and Zene reasoned that the lighter weight of the carriage would give him a better chance of healing his bruise. Thus paired the horses looked comical. Hickory and Henry evidently considered the change a disgrace to them. But they made the best of it and uttered no protest, except keeping as wide a space as possible between themselves and their new mates. But the gray and white, old yoke fellows at the plough, who knew nothing of the dignity of carriage drawing, and cared less, who had rubbed noses and shared feed-boxes ever since they were colts, both lifted up their voices in mournful whinneys and refused comfort and correction. The white turned his head back over his shoulder and would have halted anywhere until his mate came up; while the gray strained forward, shaking his head, and neighing as if his throat were full of tears every time a tree or a turn in the road hid the wagon.

The caravan moving to this irregular and doleful music, passed through another little town which Zene said was named Boston, late on a rainy afternoon. Here they crossed the Miami River in a bridge through the cracks of which Robert Day and Corinne looked at the full but not very wide stream. It flowed beneath them in comparative silence. The rain pricked the water's surface into innumerable puckers.

"Little boys dancing up," said aunt Corinne, in time-honored phrase.

"No; it's bees stingin' the water," said her nephew, "with long stingers that reach clear out of the clouds."

These sky-bees stung the dusty road until it lay first in dark dimples and last in swollen mud rows and shallow pools. The 'pike kept its dignity under the heaviest rains. Its very mud was light and plaster-like, scarcely clinging to the wheels or soiling the horses' legs. Its flint ribs rung more sharply under the horses' shoes. Through the damp dusk aunt Corinne took pleasure in watching the fire struck by old Henry and the gray, against the trickling stones. They pulled the carriage curtains down, and Grandma Padgett had the oilcloth apron drawn up to her chin, while she continued to drive the horses through a slit. The rear of the wagon made a blur ahead of them. Now the 'pike sides faded from fresh green to a general dulness, and trees whispering to the rain lost their vistas and indentations of shade, and became a solid wall down which a steady pour hissed with settled monotony. Boswell and Johnson no longer foraged at the 'pike sides, or lagged behind or scampered ahead. They knew it was a rainy October night without lightning and thunder, slipped by mistake into the packet of June weather; and they trotted invisibly under the carriage, carrying their tails down, and their lolling tongues close to the puddles they were obliged to scamper through or skip. Boswell and Johnson remembered their experiences at the lonesome Susan house, where they lay in the deep weeds and were forgotten until morning by the harassed family; and they rolled their eyes occasionally, with apprehension lest the grinding of the wheels should cease, and some ghostly wall loom up at one side of their way, unlighted by a single glimmer and unperfumed by any whiff of supper. It was a fine thing to be movers' dogs when the movers went into camp or put up in state at a tavern. Around a camp were all sorts of woodsy creatures to be scratched out of holes or chased up trees, or to be nosed and chewed at. There were stray and half-wild pigs that had tails to be bitten, and what could be more exhilarating than making a drove of grunting pigs canter like a hailstorm away into deep woods! And in the towns and villages all resident dogs came to call on Boswell and Johnson. At every tavern Boswell picked a fight and Johnson fought it out; sometimes retiring with his tail to the earth and a sad expression of being outnumbered, but oftener a victor to have his wounds dressed and bandaged by Boswell's tongue. There was plenty to eat at taverns and camps, and good hunting in the woods; but who could tell what hungry milestone might stand at the end of this day's journey?

Grandma Padgett herself was beginning to feel anxious on this subject. She drove faster in order to overtake Zene and consult with him, but before his attention could be attracted, both carriage and wagon reached a broad belt of shine stretching across the 'pike, and making trees in the meadow opposite stand out as distinct individuals.

This illumination came from many camp-fires extending so far into the woods that the last one showed like a spark. A great collection of moving wagons were ranged in line along the extent of these fires, and tents pitched under the dripping foliage revealed children playing within their snug cover, or women spreading the evening meal. Kettles were hung above the fires, and skillets hissed on the coals. The horses, tied to their feed-boxes, were stamping and grinding their feed in content, and the gray lifted up his voice to neigh at the whole collection as Grandma Padgett stopped just behind Zene. All the camp dogs leaped up the 'pike together, and Boswell and Johnson met them in a neutral way while showing the teeth of defence. To Boswell and Johnson as well as to their betters, this big and well-protected encampment had an inviting look, provided the campers were not to be shunned.

A man came up the 'pike side through the rain and kicked some of the dogs aside.

"Hullo," said he most cheerfully. "Want to put up?"

"What is it?" inquired Zene cautiously. He then craned his neck around to look at Grandma Padgett, whose spectacles glared seriously at the man.

This hospitable traveller wore a red shirt and a slouched hat, and had his trousers tucked in his boots. He pulled off his hat to shake the rain away, and showed bushy hair and a smiling bearded face. No weather could hurt him. He was ready for anything.

"Light down," he exclaimed. "Plenty of room over there if you want it."

"Who's over there?" inquired Zene.

"Oh, it's a big camp-meeting," replied the man. "There's twenty or thirty families, and lots of fun."

"Do you mean," inquired Grandma Padgett, "a camp-meeting for religious purposes?"

"You can have that if you want it," responded the man, "and have your exhorters along. It's a family camp. Most of us going out to Californy. Goin' to cross the plains. Some up in the woods there goin' to Missoury. Don't care where they're goin' if they want to stop and camp with us. We're from the Pan Handle of Virginia. There's a dozen families or more of us goin' out to Californy together. The rest just happened along."

"I'm a Virginian myself," said Grandma Padgett, warming, "though Ohio's been my State for many years."

"Well, now," exclaimed the mover, "if you want to light right down, we'll be all the gladder for that. I saw you stoppin' here uncertain; and there's the ford over Little Miami ahead of you. I thought you'd not like to try it in the dark."

"You're not like a landlord back on the road that let us risk our necks!" said Grandma Padgett with appreciation. "But if you take everybody into camp ain't you afraid of getting the wrong sort?"

"Oh, no," replied the Virginian. "There's enough of us to overpower them."

"Well, Zene," said Grandma Padgett, "I guess we'd better stop here. We've provisions in our wagon."

"How far you goin'?" inquired the hospitable mover.

"Into Illinois," replied the head of the small caravan.

"Your trip'll soon be done, then. Come on, now, and go to Californy, why don't you! That's the country to get rich in! You'll see sights the other side of the Mississippi!"

"I'm too old for such undertakings," said Grandma Padgett, passing over the mover's exuberance with a smile.

"Why, we have a granny over ninety with us!" he declared. "Now's the time to start if you want to see the great western country."

Zene drove off the 'pike on the temporary track made by so many vehicles, and Grandma Padgett followed, the Virginian showing them a good spot near the liveliest part of the camp, upon which they might pitch.

The family sat in the-carriage while Zene took out the horses, sheltered the wagon under thick foliage where rain scarcely penetrated, and stretched the canvas for a tent. Then Grandma Padgett put on her rubber overshoes, pinned a shawl about her and descended; and their fire was soon burning, their kettle was soon boiling, in defiance of water streams which frequently trickled from the leaves and fell on the coals with a hiss. The firelight shone through slices of clear pink ham put down to broil. Aunt Corinne laid the cloth on a box which Zene took out of the wagon for her, and set the cups and saucers, the sugar and preserves, and little seed cakes which grew tenderer the longer you kept them, all in tempting order. They had baker's bread and gingercakes in the carriage. Since her adventure at the Susan house, Grandma Padgett had taken care to put provisions in the carriage pockets. Then aunt Corinne, assisted by her nephew, got potatoes from the sack, wrapped them in wet wads of paper, and roasted them in the ashes. A potato so roasted may be served up with a scorched and hardened shell, but its heart is perfumed by all the odors of the woods. It tastes better than any other potato, and while the butter melts through it you wonder that people do not fire whole fields and bake the crop in hot earth before digging it, to store for winter.



Zene had frequently assured Robert Day that an egg served this way was better still. He said he used to roast eggs in the ashes when burning stumps, and you only needed a little salt with them, to make them fit for a king. But Robert Day scorned the egg and remained true to the potato.

While they were at supper the Virginian's wife came to see them, carrying in her hand an offering of bird-pie. Grandma Padgett responded with a dish of preserves. And they then talked about the old State, trying to discover mutual interests there.

The Virginian's wife was a strong, handsome, cordial woman. Her family came from the Pan Handle, but from the neighborhood of Wheeling, They were not mountaineers. She had six children. They were going to California because her husband had the mining fever. He wanted to go years before, but she held out against it until she saw he would do no good unless he went. So they sold their land, and started with a colony of neighbors.

The names of all her relatives were sifted, and Grandma Padgett made a like search among her own kindred, and they discovered that an uncle of one, and a grandfather of the other, had been acquainted, and served together in the War of '12. This established a bond. Grandma Padgett was gently excited, and told Bobaday and Corinne after the Virginia woman's departure to her own wagons, that she should feel safe on account of being an old neighbor in the camp.



CHAPTER X.

THE CRY OF A CHILD IN THE NIGHT.

But the camp was too exciting to let the children fall asleep early. Fires were kept briskly burning, and some of the wagoners feeling in a musical humor, shouted songs or hummed melancholy tunes which sounded like a droning accompaniment to the rain. The rain fell with a continuous murmur, and evidently in slender threads, for it scarcely pattered on the tent. It was no beating, boisterous, drenching tempest, but a lullaby rain, bringing out the smell of barks, of pennyroyal and May-apple and wild sweet-williams from the deep woods.

Robert Day crept out of the carriage, having with him the oil-cloth apron and a plan. Four long sticks were not hard to find, or to sharpen with his pocket knife, and a few knocks drove them into the soft earth, two on each side of a log near the fire. He then stretched the oil-cloth over the sticks, tying the corners, and had a canopied throne in the midst of this lively camp. A chunk served for a footstool. Bobaday sat upon his log, hearing the rain slide down, and feeling exceedingly snug. His delight came from that wild instinct with which we all turn to arbors and caves, and to unexpected grapevine bowers deep in the woods; the instinct which makes us love to stand upright inside of hollow sycamore-trees, and pretend that a green tunnel among the hazel or elderberry bushes is the entrance hall of a noble castle.

Bobaday was very still, lest his grandmother in the tent, or Zene in the remoter wagon, should insist on his retiring to his uneasy bed again. He got enough of the carriage in daytime, having counted all its buttons up and down and crosswise. The smell of the leather and lining cloth was mixed with every odor of the journey. One can have too much of a very easy, well-made carriage.

The firelight revealed him in his thoughtful mood: a very white boy with glistening hair and expanding large eyes of a gray and velvet texture. Some light eyes have a thin and sleepy surface like inferior qualities of lining silk; and you cannot tell whether the expression or the humors of the eye are at fault. But Nature, or his own meditations on what he read and saw in this delicious world, had given to Bobaday's irises a softness like the pile of gray velvet, varied sometimes by cinnamon-colored shades.

His eyes reflected the branches, the other campfires, and many wagons. It gave him the sensation of again reading for the first time one of grandfather's Peter Parley books about the Indians, or Mr. Irving's story of Dolph Heyleger, where Dolph approaches Antony Vander Heyden's camp. He saw the side of one wagon-cover dragged at and a little night-capped head stuck out.

"Bobaday!" whispered aunt Corinne, creeping on tiptoe toward him, and anxious to keep him from exclaiming when he saw her.

"What did you get up for?" he whispered back.

"What did you get up for?" retaliated aunt Corinne.

Robert Day made room for her on the log under the canopy, and she leaned down and laced her shoes after being seated. "Ma Padgett's just as tight asleep! What'd she say if she knew we wasn't in bed!"

It was so exciting and so nearly wicked to be out of bed and prowling when their elders were asleep, they could not possibly enjoy the sin in silence.

"Ain't it nice?" whispered aunt Corinne. "I saw you fixin' this little tent, and then I sl-ip-ped up and hooked some of my clothes on, and didn't dast to breathe 'fear Ma Padgett'd hear me. There must be lots of children in the camp."

"Yes; I've heard the babies cryin'."

"Do you s'pose there's any gipsy folks along?"

"Do 'now," whispered Bobaday, his tone inclining to an admission that gipsy folks might be along.

"The kind that would steal us," explained aunt Corinne.

This mere suggestion was an added pleasure; it made them shiver and look back in the bushes.

"There might be—away back yonder," whispered Robert Day, emboldened by remembering that his capable grandmother was just within the tent, and Zene at easy waking distance.

"But all the people will hitch up and drive away in the morning," he added, "and we won't know anything about 'em."

To aunt Corinne this seemed a great pity. "I'd like to see how everybody looks," she meditated.

"So'd I," whispered her nephew.

"It's hardly rainin' a drizzle now," whispered aunt Corinne.

"I get so tired ridin' all day long," whispered Robert, "that I wish I was a scout or something, like that old Indian that was named Trackless in the book—that went through the woods and through the woods, and didn't leave any mark and never seemed to wear out. You remember I read you a piece of it?"

Aunt Corinne fidgeted on the log.

"Wouldn't you like," suggested her nephew, whose fancy the nighttime stimulated, "to get on a flying carpet and fly from one place to another?"

Aunt Corinne cast a glance back over her shoulder.

"We could go a little piece from our camp-fire and not get lost," she suggested.

"Well," whispered Robert boldly, "le's do it. Le's take a walk. It won't do any harm. 'Tisn't late."

"The's chickens crowin' away over there."

"Chickens crow all times of the night. Don't you remember how our old roosters used to act on Christmas night? I got out of bed four times once, because I thought it was daylight, they would crow so!"

"Which way'll we take?" whispered aunt Corinne.

Robert slid cautiously from the log and mapped out the expedition.

"Off behind the wagon so's Zene won't see us. And then we'll slip along towards that furthest fire. We can see the others as we go by. Follow me."

It was easy to slip behind the wagon and lose themselves in the brush. But there they stumbled on unseen snags and were caught or scratched by twigs, and descended suddenly to a pig-wallow or other ugly spot, where Corinne fell down. Bobaday then thought it expedient for his aunt to take hold of his jacket behind and walk in his tracks, according to their life-long custom when going down cellar for apples after dark. Grandma Padgett was not a woman to pamper the fear of darkness in her family. She had been known to take a child who recoiled from shapeless visions, and lead him into the unlighted room where he fancied he saw them.

So after proceeding out of sight of their own wagon, aunt Corinne and her nephew, toughened by this training, would not have owned to each other a wish to go back and sit in safety and peace of nerve again upon the log. Robert plodded carefully ahead, parting the bushes, and she passed through the gaps with his own figure, clinching his jacket with fingers that tightened or relaxed with her tremors.

They had not counted on being smelled out by dogs at the various watch-fires. One lolling yellow beast sprang up and chased them. Aunt Corinne would have flown with screams, but her nephew hushed her up and put her valiantly on a very high stump behind himself. The dog took no trouble to trace them. He was too comfortable before the brands, too mud-splashed and stiff from a long day's journey, to care about chasing any mystery of the wood to its hole. But this warned them not to venture too near other fires where other possible dogs lay sentry.

"Why didn't we fetch old Johnson?" whispered aunt Corinne, after they slid down the tree stump.

"'Cause Boswell'd been at his heels, and the whole camp'd been in a fight," replied Bobaday. "Old Johnson was under our wagon; I don't know where Bos was. I was careful not to wake him."

Through gaps in foliage and undergrowth they saw many an individual part of the general camp; the wagon-cover in some cases being as dun as the hide of an elephant. When a curtain was dropped over the front opening of the wagon, Bobaday and Corinne knew that women and children were sleeping within on their chattels. Here a tent was made of sheets and stretched down with the branch of an overhanging tree for a ridge-pole; and there horse-blankets were made into a canopy and supported by upright poles. Within such covers men were asleep, having sacks or comforters for bedding.

On a few wagon tongues, or stretched easily before fires, men lingered, talking in steady, monotonous voices as if telling stories, or in indifferent tones as if tempting each other to trades.

The rain had entirely ceased, though the spongy wet wood sod was not pleasant to walk upon. "I guess," said-aunt Corinne, "we'd better go back."

"Well, we've seen consider'ble," assented her nephew. "I guess we'd better."

So he faced about. But quite near them arose the piercing scream of a child in mortal fear.



CHAPTER XI.

THE DARKENED WAGON.

Aunt Corinne and her nephew felt pierced by the cry. Her hands gripped his jacket with a shock. Robert Day turning took hold of his aunt's wrist to pinch her silent, but his efforts were too zealous and turned her fright to indignation.

"I don't want my hand pinched off, Bobaday Padgett!" whispered aunt Corinne, jerking away and thus breaking the circuit of comfort and protection which was supposed to flow from his jacket.

"But listen," hissed Robert.

"I don't want to listen," whispered aunt Corinne; "I want to go back to our camp-fire."

"Nobody can hurt us," whispered her nephew, gathering boldness. "You stay here and let me creep through the bushes to that wagon. I want to see what it was."

"If you stay a minute I'll go and leave you," remonstrated aunt Corinne. "Ma Padgett don't want us off here by ourselves."

But Robert's hearing was concentrated upon the object toward which he moved. He used Indian-like caution. The balls of his large eyes became so prominent that they shone with some of the lustre of a cat's in the dark.

Corinne took hold of the bushes in his absence.

The wind was breathing sadly through the trees far off. What if some poor little child, lost in the woods, should come patting to her, with all the wildness of its experience hanging around it? Oh, the woods was a good play-house, on sunshiny days, but not the best of homes, after all. That must be why people built houses. When the snow lay in a deep cake, showing only the two thumb-like marks at long intervals made by the rabbit in its leaping flight, and when the air was so tense and cold you could hear the bark of a dog far off, Bobaday used to say he would love to live in the woods all the time. He would chop to keep himself warm. He loved to drag the air into his lungs when it seemed frozen to a solid. Corinne remembered how his cheeks burned and his eyes glittered during any winter exertion. And what could be prettier, he said, than the woods after it sleeted all night, and hoar frost finished the job! Every tree would stand glittering in white powder, as if dressed for the grandest occasion, the twigs tipped with lace-work, and the limbs done in tracery and all sorts of beautiful designs. Still this white dress was deadly cold to handle. Aunt Corinne had often pressed her fingers into the velvet crust upon the trunks. She did not like the winter woods, and hardly more did she like this rain-soaked place, and these broad, treacherous leaves that poured water down her neck in the humid dark.

Bobaday pounced upon her with such force when he appeared once more, that she was startled into trying to climb a bush no higher than herself.

He had not a word to say, but hitched his aunt to his jacket and drew her away with considerable haste. They floundered over logs and ran against stumps. Their own smouldering fire, and wagon with the hoops standing up like huge uncovered ribs, and the tents wherein their guardian slept after the fatigue of the day, all appeared wonderfully soon, considering the time it had taken them to reach their exploring limit.

Aunt Corinne huddled by the coals, and Bobaday sat down on the foot-chunk he had placed for his awning throne.

"You better go to bed quick as ever you can," he said.

"I guess I ain't goin'," said aunt Corinne with indignant surprise, "till you tell me somethin' about what was up in the bushes. I stayed still and let you look, and now you won't tell me!"

"You heard the sound," remonstrated Robert.

"But I didn't see anything," argued aunt Corinne.

"You wouldn't want to," said Bobaday.

They were talking in cautious tones, but no longer whispering. It had become too tiresome. Aunt Corinne would now have burst out with an exclamation, but checked herself and tilted her nose, talking to the coals which twinkled back to her between her slim fingers.

"Boys think they are so smart! They want to have all the good times and see all the great shows, and go slidin' in winter time, when girls have to stay in the house and knit, and then talk like they's grown up, and we's little babies!"

Robert Day fixed his eyes on his aunt with superior compassion.

"Grandma Padgett wouldn't want me to scare you," he observed.

Corinne edged several inches closer to him. She felt that she must know what her nephew had seen if she had to thread all the dark mazes again and look at it by herself.

"Ma Padgett never 'lows me to act scared," she reminded him. "I always have to go up to what I'm 'fraid of."

"You won't go up to this."

"Maybe I will. Tisn't so far back to that wagon."

"I wouldn't stir it up for considerable," said Robert.

"Was it a lion or a bear? Was it goin' to eat anything? Is that what made the little child cry?"

"The little child hollered 'cause 'twas afraid of it. I was glad you didn't look in at the end of the wagon with me."

Aunt Corinne edged some inches nearer her protector.

"How could you see what was in a dark wagon?"

"There was a candle lighted inside. Aunt Krin, there was a little pretty girl in that wagon that I do believe the folks stole!"

This was like a story. The luxury of a real stolen child had never before come in aunt Corinne's way.

"Why, Bobaday?" she inquired affectionately.

"Because the, little girl seemed like she was dead till all at once she opened her eyes, and then her mouth as if she was going to scream again, and they stopped her mouth up, and covered her in clothes."

"What did the wagon look like?"

"Like a little room. And they slept on the floor. They had tin things hangin' around the sides, and a stove in one corner with the pipe stickin' up through the cover. And the cover was so thick you couldn't see a light through it. You could only see through the pucker-hole where it comes together over the feed-box."

"And how many folks were there?"

"I don't know. I saw them fussing with the little girl, and I saw it, and then I didn't stay any longer."

"What was it, Bobaday?"

"I don't know," he solemnly replied.

"Yes, but what did it look like?"

Her nephew stared doubtingly upon her.

"Will you holler if I tell you?"

Aunt Corinne went through an impressive pantomime of deeding and double-deeding herself not to holler.

"Will you be afraid all the rest of the night?"

No; aunt Corinne intimated that her courage would be revived and strengthened by knowing the worst about that wagon.

He pierced her with his dilating eyes, and beckoned her to put up her ear for the information.

"You ain't goin' to play any trick," remonstrated his relative, "like you did when you got me to say grandmother, grandmother, thith —thith—thith, and then hit my chin and made me bite my tongue?"

Robert was forced to chuckle at the recollection, but he assured aunt Corinne that grandmother, grandmother, thith—thith—thith was far from his thoughts. He hesitated, with aunt Corinne's ear jogging against his chin. Then in a loud whisper he communicated:

"It was a man with a pig's head on him!"



CHAPTER XII.

JONATHAN AND THRUSTY ELLEN.

Aunt Corinne drew back into a rigid attitude. "I don't believe it!" she said.

Robert Day passed over her incredulity with a flickering smile.

"People don't have pigs' heads on them!" argued aunt Corinne. "Did he grunt?"

"And he had a tush stickin' out from his lower jaw," added Robert.

They gazed at each other in silent horror. While this awful pantomime was going on, the flap of Grandma Padgett's tent was lifted, and a voice of command, expressing besides astonishment and alarm, startled their ears with—

"Children!"

Aunt Corinne leaped up and turned at bay, half-expecting to find the man with the pig's head gnashing at her ear. But what she saw in the sinking light was a fine old head in a night-cap, staring at them from the tent. Bobaday and his aunt were so rapid in retiring that their guardian was unable to make them explain their conduct as fully as she desired. They slept so long in the morning that the camp was broken up when Grandma Padgett called them out to breakfast.



Zene wanted the tent of aunt Corinne to stretch over the wagon-hoops. He had already hitched the horses, restoring the gray and the white to their former condition of yoke-fellows, and these two rubbed noses affectionately and had almost as much to whisper to each other as had Robert and Corinne over their breakfast.

The darkened wagon was nowhere to be seen. Corinne climbed a tall stump as an observatory, and Bobaday went a piece into the bushes, only to find that all that end of the camp was gone. The colony of Virginians was also partly under way.

Aunt Corinne felt a certain sadness steal over her. She had brought herself to admit the pig-headed man, with limitations. He might have a pig's head on him, but it wasn't fast. He did it to frighten children. She had fully intended to see him and be frightened by him at any cost. Now he was gone like a bad dream in the night. And she should not know if the little girl was stolen. She could only revenge herself on Robert Day for having seen into that darkened wagon, with the stove-pipe sticking out when she had not, by sniffing doubtfully at every mysterious allusion to it. They did not mention the pigheaded man to Grandma Padgett, though both longed to know if such a specimen of natural history had ever come under her eyes. She would have questioned then about the walk that led to this discovery. Her prejudices against children's prowling away from their elders after dark were very strong.

Aunt Corinne thought the pig-headed man might have come to their carriage when they were ready to start, instead of the Virginian.

"Right along the pike?" he inquired cheerfully.

"I believe so," said Grandma Padgett.

"You'll be in our company then as far as you go. It'll be better for you to keep in a big company."

"It will indeed," said Grandma Padgett sincerely.

"Oh, you'll keep along to Californy," said the Virginian."

"To the Illinois line," amended Grandma Padgett, at which he laughed, adding:

"Well, we'll neighbor for a while, anyhow."

"Let your little boy and girl ride in our carriage," begged Robert Day, seizing on this relief from monotony.

"Yes do," said his grandmother, turning her glasses upon the little boy and girl. Aunt Corinne had been inspecting them as they stood at their father's heels, and bestowing experimental smiles on them. The boy was a clear brown-eyed fellow with butternut trousers up to his arm-pits, and a wool hat all out of shape. The little girl looked red-faced and precise, the color from her lips having evidently become diluted through her skin. Over a linsey petticoat she wore a calico belted apron. The belt was as broad as the length of aunt Corinne's hand, for in the course of the morning aunt Corinne furtively measured it. Although it was June weather, this little girl also wore stout shoes and yarn stockings.

"Well, they might get in if they won't crowd you," assented their father. "You're all to take dinner with us, my wife says."

The children were hoisted up the steps, which they climbed with agile feet, as if accustomed to scaling high cart wheels. Bobaday sat by his grandmother, and the back seat received this addition to the party without at all crowding aunt Corinne. She looked the boy and girl over with great satisfaction. They were near her own age.

"Do you play teeter in the woods?" she inquired with a fidget, by way of opening the conversation.

The boy rolled his eyes towards her and replied in a slow drawl, sometimes they did.

Robert Day then put it to him whether he liked moving.

"I like to ride the leaders for fawther," replied the boy.

"What's your name?" inquired aunt Corinne, directing her inquiry to both.

The little girl turned redder, answering in a broad drawl like her brother, "His name's Jonathan and mine's Clar'sy Ellen."

Aunt Corinne looked down at the hind wheel revolving at her side of the carriage, and her lips unconsciously moved in meditation.

"Thrusty Ellen!" she repeated aloud.

"Clar'sy Ellen," corrected the little girl, her broad drawl still confusing the sound.

Aunt Corinne's lips continued to move. She whispered to the hind wheel, "Mercy! If I was named Jonathan and Thrusty Ellen, I'd wish my folks'd forgot to name me at all!"



CHAPTER XIII.

FAIRY CARRIE AND THE PIG-HEADED MAN.

Little Miami river was crossed without mishap, and the Padgetts and Breakaways took dinner together.

Robert Day could not help noticing the difference between his grandmother's wagon and the wagons of the Virginians. Their wagon-beds were built almost in the shape of the crescent moon, bending down in the centre and standing high at the ends, and they appeared half as long again as the Ohio vehicle. The covers were full of innumerable ribs, and the puckered end was drawn into innumerable puckers.

The children took their dinners to the yellow top of a brand-new stump which, looked as if somebody had smoothed every sweet-smelling ring clean on purpose for a picnic table. Some branches of the felled tree were near enough to make teeter seats for Corinne and Thrusty Ellen. Jonathan and Robert stood up or kneeled against the arching roots. Dinner taken from the top of a stump has the sap of out-door enjoyment in it; and if you have to scare away an ant, or a pop-eyed grasshopper thuds into the middle of a plate, you still feel kindly towards these wild things for dropping in so sociably.

Jonathan and Thrusty Ellen were rather silent, but such remarks as they made were solid information.

"You don't know wher' my fawther's got his money," said Jonathan.

This was stated so much like a dare that Robert yearned to retort that he did know, too. As he did not know, the next best thing was to pretend it was no consequence anyhow, and find out as quickly as possible; therefore Robert Day said:

"Ho! Maybe he hasn't any."

"He has more gold pieces 'n ever you seen," proceeded Jonathan weightily.

"Then why don't he give you some?" exclaimed aunt Corinne with a wriggle. "I had a gold dollar, but I b'lieve that little old man with a bag on his back stole it."

Jonathan and Thrusty Ellen made round eyes at a young damsel who had been trusted with gold.



"My fawther calls 'em yeller boys," said Jonathan. "He carries 'em and his paper money in a belt fastened round his waist under all his clothes."

"You don't ought to tell," said Thrusty Ellen. "Father said we shouldn't talk about it."

"He won't steal it," said Jonathan, indicating Robert with his thumb. "She won't neither," indicating aunt Corinne.

Aunt Corinne with some sharpness assured the Virginia children that her nephew and herself were indeed above such suspicion; that Ma Padgett and brother Tip had the most money, and even Zene was well provided with dollars; while they had silver spoons among their goods that Ma-Padgett said had been in the family more than fifty years!

Jonathan and Thrusty Ellen accepted this information with much stolidity. The grandeur of having old silver made no impression on them. They saw that Grandma Padgett had one pair of horses hitched to her moving-wagon instead of three pairs, and they secretly rated her resources by this fact.

It was very cheerful moving in this long caravan. When there was a bend in the 'pike, and the line of vehicles curved around it, the sight was exhilarating.

Some of the Virginians sat on their horses to drive. There was singing, and calling back and forth. And when they passed a toll-gate, all the tollkeeper's family and neighbors came out to see the array. Jonathan and Robert rode in his father's easiest wagon, while Thrusty Ellen, and her mother enjoyed Grandma Padgett's company in the carriage. As they neared Richmond, which lay just within the Indiana line, men went ahead like scouts to secure accommodations for the caravan. At Louisburg, the last of the Ohio villages, aunt Corinne was watching for the boundary of the State. She fancied it stretched like a telegraph wire from pole to pole, only near the ground, so the cattle of one State could not stray into the other, and so little children could have it to talk across, resting their chins on the cord. But when they came to the line and crossed it there was not even a mark on the ground; not so much as a furrow such as Zene made planting corn. And at first Indiana looked just like Ohio. Later, however, aunt Corinne felt a difference in the States. Ohio had many ups and downs; many hillsides full of grain basking in the sun. The woods of Indiana ran to moss, and sometimes descended to bogginess, and broad-leaved paw-paw bushes crowded the shade; mighty sycamores blotched with white, leaned over the streams: there was a dreamy influence in the June air, and pale blue curtains of mist hung over distances.

But at Richmond aunt Corinne and her nephew, both felt particularly wide awake. They considered it the finest place they had seen since the capital of Ohio. The people wore quaint, but handsome clothes. They saw Quaker bonnets and broad-brimmed hats. Richmond is yet called the Quaker city of Indiana. But what Robert Day and Corinne noticed particularly was the array of wagons moved from street to street, was an open square such as most Western towns had at that date for farmers to unhitch their teams in, and in that open square a closely covered wagon connected with a tent. It was nearly dark. But at the tent entrance a tin torch stuck in the ground showed letters and pictures on the tent, proclaiming that the only pig-headed man in America was therein exhibiting himself and his accomplishments, attended by Fairy Carrie, the wonderful child vocalist.

Before Bobaday had made out half the words, he telegraphed a message to aunt Corinne, by leaning far out of the Brockaway wagon and lifting his finger. Aunt Corinne was leaning out of the carriage, and saw him, and she not only lifted her finger, but violently wagged her head.

The caravan scouts had not been able to find lodging for all the troops, and there was a great deal of dissatisfaction about the rates asked by the taverns. So many of the wagons wound on to camp at the other side of the town, the Brockaways among them. But the neighborly Virginian, in exchanging Robert for his wife and daughter at the carriage door, assured Grandma Padgett he would ride back to her lodging-place next morning and pilot her into the party again.

"I thank you kindly," said Grandma Padgett in old-fashioned phrase. "It's growing risky for me to sleep too much in the open night air. At my age folks must favor themselves, and I'd like a bed to-night, if it is a tavern bed, and a set, table, if the vittles are tavern vittles. And we can stir out early."

So Thrusty Ellen and Jonathan rode away with their father, unconscious of Robert and Corinne's superior feeling in stopping at a tavern.

In the tavern parlor were a lot of sumptuous paper flowers under a glass case. There were a great many stairs to climb, and a gong was sounded for supper.

After supper Grandma Padgett made Zene take her into the stable-yard, that she might carry from the wagon some valuables which thieves in a town would be tempted to steal.

It was about this time that Corinne and Robert Day strayed down the front steps, consulted together and ventured down the street, came back, and ventured again to the next corner.

"He gave us the slip before," said Robert, "but I'd like to get a good look at him for once."

"Would you da'st to spend your gold dollar, though," said aunt Corinne.

"Well, that's better than losin' it," he responded.

It seemed very much better in aunt Corinne's eyes.

"We can just run down there, and run right back after we go in, while Ma Padgett is busy."

"Then we'll have to be spry," said Robert Day.

Having passed the first corner they were spry, springing along the streets with their hands locked. It was not hard to find one's way about in Richmond then, and the tavern was not far from the open square. They came upon the tent, the smoky tin torch, the crowd of idlers, and a loud-voiced youth who now stood at the entrance shouting the attractions within.

Robert dragged his aunt impetuously to the tent door and offered his gold dollar to the shouter.

"Pass right in, gentlemen and ladies," said the ill-looking youth in his monotonous yell, bustling as if he had a rush of business, "and make room for the crowd, all anxious to see the only pig-headed man in America, and to hear the wonderful warblings of Fairy Carrie, the child vocalist. Admission fixed at the low figure of fifteen cents per head," said the ill-looking youth, dropping change into Robert's hand and hustling him upon the heels of Corinne who craned her neck toward the inner canvas. "Only fifteen cents, gentlemen, and the last opportunity to see the pig-headed man who alone is worth the price of admission, and has been exhibited to all the crowned heads of Europe. Fifteen cents. Five three cent pieces only. Fairy Carrie, the wonderful child vocalist, and the only living pig-headed man standing between the heavens and earth to-day."

But when aunt Corinne had reached the interior of the tent, she turned like a flash, clutched Robert Day, and hid her eyes against him. A number of people standing, or seated on benches, were watching the performances on a platform at one end of the tent.

"He won't hurt you," whispered Robert.

"Go 'way!" whispered aunt Corinne, trembling as if she would drive the mere image from her thoughts.

"It's the very thing I saw at the camp," whispered Robert.

"Le's go out again."

"I want my money's worth," remonstrated Robert in an injured tone. "And now he's pickin' up his things and going behind a curtain. Ain't he ugly! I wonder how it feels to look that way? Why don't you stand up straight and act right! Folks'll notice you. I thought you wanted to see him so bad!"

"I got enough," responded aunt Corinne. "But there comes the little girl. And it's the little girl I saw in the wagon. Ain't she pretty!"



"She ain't got a pig's head, has she?" demanded aunt Corinne.

"She's the prettiest little girl I ever saw," responded Robert impatiently. "I guess if she sees you she'll think, you're sheep-headed. You catch me spendin' gold dollars to take you to shows any more!"

The shrill treble of a little child began a ballad at that time very popular, and called "Lilly Dale." Aunt Corinne faced about and saw a tiny creature, waxen-faced and with small white hands, and feet in bits of slippers, standing in a dirty spangled dress which was made to fluff out from her and give her an airy look. Her long brown curls hung about her shoulders. But her black eyes were surrounded with brownish rings which gave her a look of singing in her sleep, or in a half-conscious state. She was a delicate little being, and as she sung before the staring people, her chin creased and the corners of her mouth quivered as if she would break into sobs if she only dared. Her song was accompanied by a hand-organ ground behind the scenes; and when she had finished and run behind the curtain, she was pushed out again in response to the hand-clapping.

Robert Day hung entranced on this performance. But when Fairy Carrie had sung her second song and disappeared, he took hold of his aunt's ear and whispered cautiously therein:

"I know the pig-headed man stole that little girl."

Aunt Corinne looked at him with solemn assent. Then there were signs of the pig-headed man's returning to the gaze of the public. Aunt Corinne at once grasped her nephew's elbow and pushed him from the sight. They went outside where the ill-looking youth was still shouting, and were crowded back against the wagon by a group now beginning to struggle in.

Robert proposed that they walk all around the outside, and try to catch another glimpse of Fairy Carrie.

They walked behind the wagon. A surly dog chained under it snapped out at them. Aunt Corinne said she should like to see Fairy Carrie again, but Ma Padgett would be looking for them.

At this instant the little creature appeared back of the tent. Whether she had crept under the canvas or knew some outlet to the air, she stood there fanning herself with her hands, and looking up and about with an expression which was sad through all the dusk.

Corinne and Robert Day approached on tiptoe. Fairy Carrie continued to fan herself with her fingers, and looked at them with a dull gaze.

"Say!" whispered aunt Corinne, indicating the interior of the tent, "is he your pa?"

Fairy Carrie shook her head.

"Is your ma in there?"

Fairy Carrie again shook her head, and her face creased as if she were now determined in this open air and childish company to cry and be relieved.

"Can't you talk?" whispered aunt Corinne.

"No," said the child.

"Yes, you can, too! Did the show folks steal you?"

Fairy Carrie's eyes widened. Tears gathered and dropped slowly down her cheeks.

Aunt Corinne seized her hand. "Why, Bobaday, Padgett! You just feel how cold her fingers are!"

Robert did so, and shook his head to indicate that he found even her fingers in a pitiable condition.

"You come with us to Ma Padgett," exhorted aunt Corinne in an excited whisper. "I wouldn't stay where that pig-man is for the world."

The dog under the wagon was growling.

"If the pig-man stole you, Ma Padgett will have him put in jail."

"Le's go back this way, so they won't catch her," cautioned Bobaday.

The dog began to bark.

Robert and Corinne moved away with the docile little child between them. At the barking of the dog one or two other figures appeared behind the tent. Fairy Carrie in her spangled dress was running between Robert and Corinne into the dark.



CHAPTER XIV.

SEARCHING.

But Grandma Padgett did not enjoy the tavern bed or the tavern breakfast. She passed the evening until midnight searching the streets of Richmond, accompanied by Zene and his limp. Some of the tavern people had seen her children in front of the house, but the longest search failed to bring to light any trace of them in or about that building. The tavern-keeper interested himself; the chamber maids were sympathetic. Two hostlers and a bartender went different ways through the town making inquiries. The landlady thought the children might have wandered off to the movers' encampment, where there were other children to play with. Grandma Padgett bade Zene put himself on one of the carriage horses and post to camp. When he came back he reported that Thrusty Ellen and Jonathan were asleep in the tents, and nobody had seen Robert and Corinne.

While searching the streets earlier in the evening, Grandma Padgett observed the pig-headed man's pavilion, and this she also explored with Zene. A crowd was making the canvas stifling, and the pig-headed man's performances were being varied by an untidy woman who screamed and played on a portable bellows which had ivory keys, after explaining that Fairy Carrie, the Wonderful Musical Child, had been taken suddenly ill and could appear no more that night.

Grandma Padgett remained only long enough to scan twice over every face in the tent. She went out, telling Zene she was at her wits' end.

"Oh, they ain't gone far, marm," reassured Zene. "You'll find out they'll come back to the tavern all right; mebby before we get there."

But every such hopeful return to base disheartened the searchers more. At last the grandmother was obliged to lie down.

Early in the morning the Virginian came, full of concern. His party was breaking camp, but he would stay behind and help search for the children.

"That I won't allow," said Grandma Padgett. "You're on a long road, and you don't want to risk separating from the colony. Besides no one can do more than we can—unless it was Son Tip. As I laid awake, I wished in my heart Son Tip was here."

"Can't you send him a lightnin' message?" said the Virginian. "By the telegraphic wire," he explained, quoting a line of a popular song.

"I wish I could," said Grandma Padgett, "but there's no telegraph office in miles of where he's located. I thought of it last night. There's no way to reach him that I can see, but by letter, and sometimes they lay over on the road. And I don't allow to stop at this place. I'm goin' to set out and hunt in all directions till I find the children."

The Virginian agreed that her plan was best. He also made arrangements to ride back and tell her if the caravan overtook them on the 'pike during that day's journey. Then he and Grandma Padgett shook hands with each other and reluctantly separated.

She made inquiries about all the other roads leading out of Richmond. Zene drove the carriage out of the barnyard, and Grandma Padgett, having closed her account with the tavern, took the lines, an object of interest and solicitude to all who saw her depart, and turned Old Hickory and Old Henry on a southward track. Zene followed with the wagon; he was on no account to loiter out of speaking distance. The usual order of the march being thus reversed, both vehicles moved along lonesomely. Even Boswell and Johnson scented misfortune in the air. Johnson ran in an undeviating line under the carriage, as if he wished his mistress to know he was right there where she could depend on him. His countenance expressed not only gravity, but real concern. Boswell, on the other hand, was in a state of nerves. If he saw a bank at the roadside he ran ahead and mounted it, looking back into the carriage, demanding to know, with a yelping howl, where Bobaday and Corinne were. When his feelings became too strong for him he jumped at the step, and Grandma Padgett shook her head at him.

"Use your nose, you silly little fice, and track them, why don't you?"

As soon as Boswell understood this reproach he jumped a fence and smelt every stump or tuft of grass, every bush and hummock, until the carriage dwindled in the distance. Then he made the dust smoke under his feet as a sudden June shower will do for a few seconds, and usually overtook the carriage with all of his tongue unfurled and his lungs working like a furnace. Johnson reproved him with a glance, and he at once dropped his tail and trotted beside Johnson, as if throwing himself on that superior dog for support in the hour of affliction.

At noon no trace of Robert and Corinne had been seen. Grandma Padgett halted, and when Zene came up she said:

"We'll eat a cold bite right here by the road, and then go on until sunset. If we don't find them, we'll turn back to town and take another direction."

They ate a cold bite, brought ready packed from the Richmond tavern. The horses were given scant time for feeding, and drank wherever they could find water along the road.

Cloudless as the day was, Grandma Padgett's spectacles had never made any landscape look as blue as this one which she followed until sunset. Sometimes it was blurred by a mist, but she wiped it off the glasses.

At sunset they had not seen a track which might be taken for Robert or Corinne's. The grasshoppers were lonesome. There was a great void in the air, and the most tuneful birds complained from the fence-rails. Grandma Padgett constantly polished her glasses on the backward road.

Nothing was said about making a halt for supper or any kind of cold bite. The carriage was silently turned as one half the sun stood above the tree-tops, I and it passed the wagon without other sign. The wagon turned as silently. The shrill meadow insects became more and more audible. Some young calves in a field, remembering that it was milking time, began to call their mothers, and to remonstrate at the bars in voices full of sad cadences. The very farmhouse dogs, full-fed, and almost too lazy to come out of the gates to interview Boswell and Johnson, barked as if there was sickness in their respective families and it was all they could do to keep up their spirits and refrain from howling.

The carriage and wagon jogged along until the horizon rim was all of that indescribable tint that evening mixes with saffron, purple and pink. Grandma Padgett became anxious to reach Richmond again. The Virginian might have returned over the road with news of her children. Or the children themselves might be at the tavern waiting for her. Zene drove close behind her, and when they were about to recross a shallow creek, scooped between two easy swells and floating a good deal of wild grapevine and darkly reflecting many sycamores, he came forward and loosened the check-reins of Hickory and Henry to let them drink. Grandma Padgett felt impatient at any delay.

"I don't think they want water, Zene," said she.

"They'd better cool their mouths, marm." he said. But still he fingered the check reins, uncertain how to state what had sent him forward.

"Seems like I heard somebody laugh, marm," said Zene.

"Well, suppose you did," said Grandma Padgett. "The whole world won't mourn just because we're in trouble."

"But it sounded like Corinne," said Zene uncertainly.

Grandma Padgett's glasses glared upon him.

"You'd' be more apt to hear her crying," she exclaimed. "When did you hear it?"

"Just now. I jumped right off the load."

Hickory and Henry, anxious to taste the creek, would have moved forward, but were checked by both pairs of hands.

"What direction?"

"I don't feel certain, marm," said Zene, "but it come like it was from that way through the woods."

Grandma Padgett stretched her neck out of the carriage toward the right.

"Is that a sled track?" she inquired. "It's gittin' so dim I can't see.".

Zene said there was a sled track, pointing out what looked like a double footpath with a growth of grass and shrubs along the centre.

"We'll drive in that way," she at once decided, "and if we get wedged among the trees, we'll have to get out the best way we can."

Zene turned the gray and white, and led on this new march. Hickory and Henry, backed from the creek without being allowed to dip their mouths, reluctantly thumped the sled track with their shoes, and pretended to distrust every tall stump and every glaring sycamore limb which rose before their sight. Scrubby bushes scraped the bottom of the carriage bed. Now one front wheel rose high over a chunk, and the vehicle rolled and creaked. Zene's wagon cover, like a big white blur, moved steadily in front, and presently Hickory and Henry ran their noses against it, and seemed to relish the knock which the carriage-pole gave the feed-box. Zene had halted to listen.

It was dark in the woods. A rustle could be heard now and then as of some tiny four-footed creature moving the stiff grass; or a twig cracked. The frogs in the creek were tuning their bass-viols. A tree-toad rattled on some unseen trunk, and the whole woods heaved its great lungs in the steady breathing which it never leaves off, but which becomes a roar and a wheeze in stormy or winter weather.

"There isn't anything"—began Grandma Padgett, but between thing and "here" came the distinct laugh of a child.



Zene cracked his whip over the gray and the white, and the wagon rumbled ahead rapidly, jarring against roots, and ends of decayed logs, turning short in one direction, and dipping through a long sheltered mud-hole to the very wheel-hubs, brushing against trees and under low branches until guttural remonstrances were scraped out of the cover, and finally descending into an abrupt hollow, with the carriage rattling at its hind wheels.

Grandma Padgett had been through many experiences, but she felt she could truly say to her descendants that she never gave up so entirely for pure joy in her life as when she saw Robert and Corinne sitting in front of a fire built against a great stump, and talking with a fat, silly-looking man who leaned against a cart-wheel.



CHAPTER XV.

THE SPROUTING.

"Why, Bobaday Padgett," exclaimed aunt Corinne, "if there isn't our wagon—and Ma Padgett."

Both children came running to the carriage steps, and their guardian got down, trembling. She put her arms around them, and after a silent hug, shook one in each hand.

The fire illuminated wagon and carriage, J. D. Matthew's cart, and the logs and bushes surrounding them. It flickered on the blue spectacles and gave Grandma Padgett a piercing expression while she examined her culprits.

"Where have you been, while Zene and I hunted up and down in such distress?"

"We's going right back to the tavern soon's he could get us there," Robert hastened to explain. "It's that funny fellow, J. D., Grandma. But he thought we better go roundabout, so they wouldn't catch us."

Zene, limping down from his wagon, listened to this lucid statement.

"O Zene," exclaimed aunt Corinne, "I'm so glad you and Ma Padgett have come! But we knew you wouldn't go on to Brother Tip's without us. Bobaday said you'd wait till we got back, and we ran right straight out of town."

"You ought to be well sprouted, both of you," said Grandma Padgett, still trembling as she advanced toward the fire. "Robert Day, break me a switch; break me a good one, and peel the leaves off. So you came across this man again, and he persuaded you to run away with him, did he?"

J. D. Matthews, who had stood up smiling his widest, now moved around to the other side of his cart and crouched in alarm.

Grandma Padgett now saw that the cart was standing level and open, and within it there appeared a nest of brown curls and one slim, babyish hand.

"What's that?" she inquired.

"Why, don't you see, Grandma?" exclaimed Robert, "that's Fairy Carrie that we ran away with. They made her sing at the show. We just went in a minute to see the pig-headed man. I had my gold dollar. And she felt so awful. And we saw her behind the tent."

"She cried, Ma Padgett," burst in aunt Corinne, "like her heart was broke, and she couldn't talk at all. Then they were coming out to make her go in again, and we said didn't she want to go to you? You wouldn't let her live with a pig-headed man and have to sing. And she wanted to go, so they came out. And we took hold of her hands and ran. And they chased us. And we couldn't go to the tavern 'cause they chased us the other way: it got dark, and when Bobaday hid us under a house, they chased past us, and we waited, oh! the longest time."

"And then," continued Robert, "when we came out, we didn't know which way to go to the tavern, but started roundabout, through fields and over fences, and all, so the show people wouldn't see us. Aunt Corinne was scared. And we stumbled over cows, and dogs barked at us. But we went on till after 'while just as we's slippin' up a back street we met J. D. and the cart, and he was so good! He put the poor little girl in the cart and pushed her. She was so weak she fell down every little bit when we's runnin'. Aunt Corinne and me had to nearly carry her."

"Well, why didn't he bring you back to the tavern?"

"Grandma, if he had, the show people would been sure to get her! We thought they'd travel on this morning. And we were so tired! He took us to a cabin house, and the woman was real good. The man was real good, too. They had lots of dogs. We got our breakfast and stayed all night. They knew we'd strayed off, but they said J. D. would get us back safe. I gave them the rest of my dollar. Then this morning we all started to town, but J. D. had to go away down the road first, for some eggs and things. And it took us so long we only got this far when it came dusk."

"J. D. took good care of us," said aunt Corinne. "Everybody knows him, and he is so funny. The folks say he travels along the pike all through Indiana and Ohio."

"Well, I'm obliged to him," said Grandma Padgett, still severely; "we owe him, too, for a good supper and breakfast he gave us the other time we saw him. But I can't make out how he can foot it faster than we can ride, and so git into this State ahead of us."

Mr. Matthews now came forward, and straightening his bear-like figure, proceeded to smile without apprehension. He cleared his voice and chanted:

Sometimes I take the wings of steam, And on the cars my cart I wheel. And so I came to Richmond town Two days ago in fair renown.

"Oh," said Grandma Padgett.

"What's that he's givin' out, marm?" inquired Zene.

"It's a way he has," she explained. "He talks in verses. This is the pedler that stayed over in that old house with us, near by the Dutch landlord and the deep creek. Were you going to camp here all night?" she inquired of J. D.

"We wanted him to," coaxed aunt Corinne, "my feet ached so bad. Then we could walk right into town in the morning, and he'd hide Fairy Carrie in his cart till we got to the tavern."

"Zene," said Grandma Padgett, "you might as well take out the horses and feed them. They haven't had much chance to-day."

"Will we stay here, marm?"

"I'll see," said Grandma Padgett. "Anyhow, I can't stand it in the carriage again right away."

"Let's camp here," urged Robert. "J. D.'s got chicken all dressed to broil on the coals, and lots of good things to eat."

"He wouldn't have any money the last time, and I can't have such doings again. I'm hungry, for I haven't enjoyed a meal since yesterday. Mister, see here," said Grandma Padgett, approaching the cart.

J. D. moved backwards as she came as if pushed by an invisible pole carried in the brisk grandmother's hands.

"Stand still, do," she urged, laying a bank bill on his cart. She, snapped her steel purse shut again, put it in her dress pocket, and indicated the bill with one finger. "I don't lay this here for your kindness to the children, you understand. You've got feelings, and know I'm more than obliged. But here are a lot of us, and you buy your provisions, so if you'll let us pay you for some, we'll eat and be thankful. Take the money and put it away."

Thus commanded, J. D. returned cautiously to the other side of the cart, took the money and thrust it into his vest pocket without looking at it. He then smiled again at Grandma Padgett, as if the thought of propitiating her was uppermost in his mind.

"Now go on with your chicken-broiling," she concluded, and he went on with it, keeping at a distance from her while she stood by the cart or when she sat down on a log by the fire.

"Here's your stick, Grandma," said Robert Day, offering her a limb of paw paw, stripped of all its leaves.

Grandma Padgett took it in her hands, reduced its length and tried its limberness.

"If I had given my family such trouble when I's your age," she said to Corinne and Robert, "I should have been sprouted as I deserved."

They listened respectfully.

"Folks didn't allow their children to run wild then. They whipped them and kept them in bounds. I remember once father whipped brother Thomas for telling a falsehood, and made welts on his body."

Corinne and Robert had heard this tale before, but their countenances, put on a piteous expression.

"You ought to have a sprouting," concluded their guardian as if she did not know how to compromise with her conscience, "but since you meant to do a good turn instead of a bad one"—

"Oh, we never intended to run away, Grandma, and worry you so," insisted Robert.

"We's just sorry for the little girl," murmured aunt Corinne.—"Why, I'll let it pass this time. Only never let me know you to do such a thing again." The paw paw sprout fell to the ground, unwarped by use. Corinne and Robert were hearty in promising never to run away with Fairy Carrie or any other party again.

This serious business completed, the grandmother turned her attention to the child in the cart.

"How sound asleep the little thing is," she observed, smoothing Fairy Carrie's cheek from dark eye-circle to chin, "and her flesh so cold!"

"She's just slept that way ever since J. D. put her in his cart!" exclaimed aunt Corinne. "We made her open her eyes and take some breakfast in her mouth, but she went to sleep again while she's eatin'."

"And we let her sleep ever since," added Bobaday. "It didn't make a bit of difference whether the cart went jolt-erty-jolt over stones or run smooth in the dust. And we shaded her face with bushes."

"She's not well," said their experienced elder. "The poor little thing may have some catching disease! It's a pretty face. I wonder whose child she is? You oughtn't to set up your judgment and carry a little child off with you from her friends. I hardly know what we'll do about it."

"Oh, but they wern't her friends, Ma Padgett," asserted aunt Corinne solemnly. "She isn't the pig-headed man's little girl. Nor any of them ain't her folks. Bobaday thinks they stole her away."

"If she'd only wake up and talk," said Robert, "maybe she could tell us where she lives. But she was afraid of the show people."

"I should think that was likely," said Grandma Padgett.

In the heat of his sympathy, he confided to his grandmother what he had seen of the darkened wagon the night they met the Virginians at the large camp.

The paw paw stick had been laid upon the fire. It blackened frowningly. But Robert and Corinne had known many an apple sprout to preach them such a discourse as it had done, without enforcing the subject matter more heavily.

Grandma Padgett reported that she had searched for her missing family in the show tent, though she could not see why any sensible boy or girl would want to enter such a place. And it was clear to her the child might be afraid of such creatures, and very probable that she did not belong to them by ties of blood. But they might prove her lawful guardians and cause a small moving party a great deal of trouble. "But we won't let them find her again," said aunt Corinne. "Ma, mayn't I keep her for my little sister?—and Bobaday would like to have another aunt."

"Then we'd be stealing her," said Grandma Padgett. "If she's a lost child she ought to be restored to her people, and travelling along the 'pike we can't keep the showmen from finding her."

Bobaday and Corinne gazed pensively at the stump fire, wondering how grown folks always saw the difficulties in doing what you want to do.



CHAPTER XVI.

THE MINSTREL.

J. D. Matthews spread his supper upon a log. He had delicacies which created a very cheerful feeling in the party, such as always rises around the thanksgiving board.

Zene sat at one side of the log by J. D. Matthews. Opposite them the grandmother and her children, camped on chunks covered with shawls and horse-blankets Seeing what an accomplished cook this singular pedler was, how much at home he appeared in the woods, and what a museum he could make of his cart, Zene respectfully kept from laughing at him, except in an indulgent way as the children did.

"I guess we'll stay just where we are until morning," said Grandma Padgett. "The night's pleasant and warm, and there are just as few mosquitoes here as in the tavern. I didn't sleep last night." She felt stimulated by the tea, and sufficiently recovered from the languor which follows extreme anxiety, to linger up watching the fire, allowing the children to linger also, while J. D. Matthews put his cupboard to rights after supper.

It was funny to see his fat hands dabbling in dishwater; he laughed as much about—it as aunt Corinne did.

Grandma Padgett removed the sleeping child from his cart, and after trying vainly to make her eat or arouse herself, put her in the bed in the tent, attired in one of aunt Corinne's gowns.

"She was just as helpless as a young baby," said Grandma Padgett, sitting down again by the fire. "I'll have a doctor look at that child when we go through Richmond. She acts like she'd been drugged."

J. D. Matthews having finished—his dishwashing, sat down in the shadow some distance from the outspoken woman in spectacles, and her family.

"Now come up here," urged aunt Corinne, "and sing it all over—what you was singing before Ma Padgett came."

J. D. ducked his head and chuckled, but remained in his shadow.

"Awh-come on," urged Robert Day "Zene'll sing 'Barb'ry Allen' if you'll sing your song again."

Zene glanced uneasily at Grandma Padgett, and said he must look at the horses. "Barb'ry Allen" was a ballad he had indulged the children with when at a distance from her ears.

But the tea and the hour, and her Virginia memories through which that old sing-song ran like the murmur of bees, made Grandma Padgett propitious, and she laid her gracious commands on Zene first, and J. D. Matthews afterwards. So that not only "Barb'ry Allen" was sung, but J. D.'s ditty, into which he plunged with nasal twanging and much personal enjoyment.

"It's why he didn't ever get married," explained aunt Corinne, constituting herself prologue.

"I should think he needn't make any excuses for that," remarked Grandma Padgett, smiling.

J. D. sawed back and forth on a log, his silly face rosy with pleasure over the tale of his own woes:

O, I went to a friend's house, The friend says "Come in. Take a hot cup of coffee, O where have you been?"

It's down to the Squi-er's With a license I went, And my good Sunday clothes on, To marry intent.

"O where is the lady?" The good Squi-er, says he. "O she's gone with a wed'wer That is not poor J. D."

"It's now you surprise me," The friend says a-sigh'n, "J. D. Matthews not married, The sun will not shine!"

"Well, I think she was simple!" exclaimed aunt Corinne in epilogue, "when she might have had a man that washed the dishes and talked poetry all the time."



CHAPTER XVII.

THE HOUSE WITH LOG STEPS.

Richmond must soon have seemed far behind Grandma Padgett's little caravan, had not Fairy Carrie still drowsed in the carriage, keeping the Richmond adventures always present.

They had parted from J. D. Matthews and the Virginian and his troop. Jonathan and Thrusty Ellen were somewhere on the road ahead, but at a point unknown to Robert and Corinne. They might turn off towards the southwest if all the emigrants agreed to forsake the St. Louis route. No one could tell where J. D. might be rattling his cart.

The afternoon which finally placed Richmond in diminishing perspective, Robert rode with Zene and lived his campaign over again. This was partly necessary because little Carrie lay on the back carriage-seat. But it was entirely agreeable, for Zene wanted to know all the particulars, and showed a flattering, not to say a stimulating anxiety to get a good straight look at Bobaday's prowess in rescuing the distressed. Said Zene:

"But what if her folks never turn up?"

"Then my pa will take her to live with us," said Robert Day, "and Grandma Padgett will do by her just as she does by aunt Krin and me. She isn't a very lively little girl. I'd hate to play Blind Man with her to be blinded; for seems as if she'd just stand against the wall and go to sleep. But it'll be a good thing to have one still child about the house: aunt Corinne fidgets so. I believe, though, her folks are hunting her. Look what a fuss there was about us I When people's children get lost or stolen, they hunt and hunt, and don't give it up."

In the carriage, aunt Corinne sitting by her mother, turned her head at every fifth revolution of the wheels, to see how the strange little girl fared.

"Do you s'pose she will ever be clear awake, Ma Padgett?" inquired, aunt Corinne.

"She'll drowse it off by and by," replied Ma Padgett. "The rubbing I give her this morning, and the stuff the Richmond doctor made her swallow, will bring her out right."

"She's so pretty," mused aunt Corinne. "I'd like to have her hair if she never wanted it any more."

"That's a covetous spirit. But it puts me in mind," said Grandma Padgett, smiling, "of my sister Adeline and the way she took to get doll's hair."

Aunt Corinne had often heard of sister Adeline and the doll's hair, but she was glad to hear the brief tale told again in the pleasant drowsing afternoon.

The Indiana landscape was beautiful in tones of green and stretches of foliage. Whoever calls it monotonous has never watched its varying complexions or the visible breath of Indian summer which never departs from it at any season.

"Mother came in from meeting one day," said Grandma Padgett, "and went into her bedroom and threw her shawl on the bed. She had company to dinner and was in a hurry. It was a fine silk shawl with fringe longer than my hand. Uncle Henry brought it over the mountains as a present. But Adeline come in and saw the fringe and thought what nice doll hair it would make. So by and by mother has an errand in the bedroom, and she sees her shawl travelling down behind the bed, and doesn't know what to think. Then she hears something snip, snip, and lifts up the valance and looks under the bed, and there sets Adeline cutting the fringe off her shawl! She had it half cut off."

"And what did Grandma do then?" aunt Corinne omitted not to ask.

"Oh, she punished Adeline. But that never had any effect on her. Adeline was a funny child," said Grandma Padgett, retrospective tenderness showing through her blue glasses. "I remember once she got to eatin' brown paper, and mother told her it would kill her if she didn't quit it. Adeline—made up her mind she was going to eat brown paper if it did kill her. She never doubted that it would come true as mother said. But she prepared to die, and made her will and divided her things. Mother found it out and put a stop to the business. I remember," said Grandma Padgett, laughing, "that I was disappointed, because I had to give back what she willed to me! yet I didn't want Adeline to die. She was a lively child. She jumped out of windows and tom-boyed around, but everybody liked her. Once I had some candy and divided fair enough, I thought, but Adeline after she ate up what she had, said I'd be sorry if I didn't give her more, because she was going, to die. It worked so well on my feelings that next time I tried that plan on Adeline's feelings, and told her if she didn't do something I wanted her to do she'd be sorry; for I was going to die. She said she knew it; everybody was going to die some day, and she couldn't help it and wasn't going to be sorry for any such thing! Poor Adeline: many a year she's been gone, and I'm movin' further away from the old home."

Grandma Padgett lifted the lines and slapped them on the backs of old Hickory and Henry. Rousing themselves from coltish recollections of their own, perhaps, the horses began to trot.



In Indiana, some reaches of the 'pike were built on planks instead of broken stone, and gave out a hollow rumble instead of a flinty roar. The shape and firmness of the road-bed were the same, but the ends of boards sometimes cropped out along the sides. In this day, branches of the old national thoroughfare penetrate to every part of the Hoosier State. The people build 'pikes instead of what are called dirt roads. There are, of course, many muddy lanes and by-ways. But they have some of the best drives which have been lifted out of the Mississippi Valley.

Though the small caravan had lost time, and Son Tip might be waiting at the Illinois line before they reached that point, Grandma Padgett said they would all go to morning meeting in the town where they stopped Saturday night, and only drive a short piece on Sunday afternoon. She hated to be on expense, but they had much to return thanks for; and the Israelites made Sabbath day's journeys when they were moving.

The first Sunday—which seemed so remote now—had been partially spent in a grove where they camped for dinner, and Grandma Padgett read the Bible, and made Bobaday and Corinne answer their catechism. But this June Sunday was to be of a thanksgiving character. And they spent it in Greenfield.

At Cambridge City little Carrie roused sufficiently to eat with evident relish. But no such recollection of Dublin, Jamestown called Jimtown for short, by some inhabitants, and only distinguished by its location from another Jamestown in the State—-Knightstown and Charlottesville, remained to her as remained to Bobaday and Corinne. The Indiana village did not differ greatly from the Ohio village situated on the 'pike. There were always the church with a bonny little belfry, and the schoolhouse more or less mutilated as to its weather boarding. The 'pike was the principal street, and such houses as sat at right angles to it, looked lonesome, and the dirt roads weedy or dusty.

Greenfield was a country seat and had a court house surrounded by trees. It looked long and straggling in the summer dusk. Zene, riding ahead to secure lodgings, came back as far as the culvert to tell Grandma Padgett there was no room at the tavern Court, was session, and the lawyers on the circuit filled the house. But there was another place, near where they now halted, that sometimes took in travellers for accommodation's sake. He pointed it out, a roomy building with a broad flight of leg steps leading up to the front doors. Zene said it was not a tavern, but rather nicer than a tavern. He had already prevailed on the man and woman keeping it to take in his party.

Robert and aunt Corinne scampered up the log steps and Grandma Padgett led Fairy Carrie; after them. A plain tidy woman met them at the door and took them into a square room. There were the homemade carpet, the centre-table with daguerreotypes standing open and glaring such light as they had yet to reflect, samplers and colored prints upon the walls, but there was also a strange man busy with some papers at the table.

His hat stood beside him on the floor, and he dropped the sorted papers into it. He was, as Grandma Padgett supposed, one of the lawyers on the circuit. After looking up, he kept on sorting and folding his papers.

The woman went out to continue her supper-getting. In a remote part of the house bacon could be heard hissing over the fire. Robert and Corinne sat upright on black chairs, but their guardian put Carrie on a padded lounge.

The little creature was dressed in aunt Corinne's clothing, giving it a graceful shape in spite of the broad tucks in sleeve, skirt and pantalet, which kept it from draggling over her hands or on the floor, She leaned against the wall, gazing around her with half-awakened interest. The dark circles were still about her eyes, but her pallor was flushed with a warmer color, Grandma Padgett pushed the damp curls off her forehead.

"Are you hungry, Sissy?" she inquired.

"No, ma'am," replied Carrie. "Yes, ma'am," she added, after a moment's reflection.

"She actually doesn't know," said Bobaday, sitting down on the lounge near Carrie. Upon this, aunt Corinne forsook her own black chair and sat on the other side of their charge.

"Do you begin to remember, now?" inquired Robert Day, smoothing the listless hands on Carrie's lap.

"How we run off with you—you know," prompted aunt Corinne, dressing a curl over her finger.

The child looked at each of them, smiling.

"Don't pester her," said Grandma Padgett, taking some work out of her dress pocket and settling herself by a window to make use of the last primrose light in the sky.

"If we don't begin to make her talk, she'll forget how," exclaimed aunt Corinne. "Can't you 'member anything about your father and mother now, Carrie?"



The man who was sorting his papers at the table, turned an attentive eye and ear toward the children. But neither Bobaday nor Corinne considered that he broke up the family privacy. They scarcely noticed him.

"Grandma," murmured Carrie vaguely, turning her eyes toward their guardian by the window.

"Yes, that's Grandma," said Bobaday. "But don't you know where your own pa and ma are?"

"Papa," whispered Carrie, like a baby trying the words. "Mamma. Papa —mamma."

"Yes, dear," exclaimed aunt Corinne. "Where do they live? She's big enough to know that if she knows anything."

"Let's get her to sing a song," suggested Bobaday. "If she can remember a song, she can remember what happened before they made her sing."

"That papa?" said Carrie, looking at the stranger by the table.

"No," returned aunt Corinne, deigning a glance his way. "That's only a gentleman goin' to eat supper here. Sing, Carrie. Now, Bobaday Padgett," warned aunt Corinne, shooting her whisper behind the curled head, "don't you go and scare her by sayin' anything about that pig-man."

"Don't you scare her yourself," returned Robert with a touch of indignation. "You've got her eyes to stickin' out now. Sing a pretty tune, Carrie. Come on, now."

The docile child slid off the lounge and stood against it, piping directly one of her songs. Yet while her trembling treble arose, she had a troubled expression, and twisted her fingers about each other.

In an instant this expression became one of helpless terror. She crowded back against the lounge and tried to hide herself behind Bobaday and Corinne.

They looked toward the door, and saw standing there the young man who sold tickets at the entrance of the pig-headed individual's show. His hands were in his pockets, but he appeared ready to intone forth:

"Walk right in, ladies and gentlemen, and hear Fairy Carrie, the child vocalist!" And the smoky torch was not needed to reveal his satisfaction in standing just where he did.



CHAPTER XVIII.

"COME TO MAMMA!"

Though the dissipated looking young man only stood at the door a moment, and then walked out on the log steps at a sauntering pace, he left dismay behind him. Aunt Corinne flew to her mother, imploring that Carrie be hid. Robert Day stood up before the child, frowning and shaking his head.

"All the pig-headed folks will be after her," exclaimed aunt Corinne. "They'll come right into this room so soon as that fellow tells them. Le's run out the back way, Ma Padgett!"

Grandma Padgett, who had been giving the full strength of her spectacles to the failing light and her knitting, beheld this excitement with disapproval.

"You'll have my needles out," she objected. "What pig-headed folks are after what? Robert, have you hurt Sissy?"

"Why, Grandma Padgett, didn't you see the doorkeeper looking into the room?"

"Some person just looked in—person they appear to object to," said the strange man, giving keen attention to what was going forward. "Are these your own children, ma'am?"

Grandma Padgett rolled up her knitting, and tipped her head slightly back to bring the stranger well under her view.

"This girl and the boy belong to my family," she replied.

"But whose is the little girl on the lounge?"

"I don't know," replied Grandma Padgett, somewhat despondently. "I wish I did. She's a child that seems to be lost from her friends."

"But you can't take her away and give her to the show people again," exclaimed aunt Corinne, turning on this stranger with nervous defiance. "She's more ours than she is yours, and that ugly man scared her so she couldn't do anything but cry or go to sleep. If brother Tip was here he wouldn't let them have her."

"That man that just went out, is a showman," explained Robert Day, relying somewhat on the stranger for aid and re-inforcement. "She was in the show that he tended door for. They were awful people. Aunt Krin and I slipped her off with us."

"That's kidnapping. Stealing, you know," commented the stranger.

"They'd stolen her," declared Bobaday.

"How do you know?"

"Look how 'fraid she was! I peeped into their wagon in the woods, and as soon as she opened her eyes and saw the man with the pig's head, she began to scream, and they smothered her up."

Grandma Padgett was now sitting on the lounge with Carrie lifted into her lap. Her voice was steady, but rather sharp. "This child's in a fit! Robert Day, run to the woman of the house and tell her to bring hot water as soon as she can."

During the confusion which followed, and while Carrie was partially undressed, rubbed, dipped, and dosed between her set teeth, the stranger himself went out to the log steps and stood looking from one end of the street to the other. The dissipated young man appeared nowhere in the twilight.

Returning, the lawyer found Grandma Padgett holding her patient wrapped in shawls. The landlady stood by, much concerned, and talking about a great many remedies beside such as she held in her hands. Aunt Corinne and Robert Day maintained the attitude of guards, one on each side of the door.

Carrie was not only conscious again, but wide awake and tingling through all her little body. Her eyes had a different expression. They saw everything, from the candle the landlady held over her, to the stranger entering: they searched the walls piteously, and passed the faces of Bobaday and aunt Corinne as if they by no means recognized these larger children.

"I want my mamma!" she wailed. Tears ran down her face and Grandma Padgett wiped them away. But Carrie resisted her hand.

"Go away!" she exclaimed. "You aren't my mamma!"

"Poor little love!" sighed the landlady, who had picked up some information about the child.

"And you aren't my mamma!" resented Carrie. "I want my mamma to come to her little Rose."

"Says her name's Rose," said Grandma Padgett, exchanging a flare of her glasses for a startled look from the landlady.

"She says her name's Rose," repeated the landlady, turning to the lawyer as a general public who ought to be informed. Robert and Corinne began to hover between the door and the lounge, vigilant at both extremes of their beat.

"Rose," repeated the lawyer, bending forward to inspect the child. "Rose what? Have you any other name, my little girl?"

"I not your little girl," wept their excited patient. "I'm my mamma's little girl. Go away! you're an ugly papa."

Bobaday and Corinne chuckled at this accusation. Aunt Corinne could not bring herself to regard the lawyer as an ally. If he wished to play a proper part he should have gone out and driven the doorkeeper and all the rest of those show-people from Greenfield. Instead of that, he stood about, listening.

"I haven't even seen such people," murmured the landlady in reply to a whispered question from Grandma Padgett. "There was a young man came in to ask if we had more room, but I didn't like his looks and told him no, we had no more. Court-times we can fill our house if we want to. But I'm always particular. We don't take shows at all. The shows that come through here are often rough. There was a magic-lantern man we let put up with us. But circuses and such things can go to the regular tavern, says I. And if the regular tavern can't accommodate them, it's only twenty mile to Injunop'lis."

"I was afraid they might have got into the house," said Grandma Padgett. "And I wouldn't know what to do. I couldn't give her up to them again, when the bare sight throws her into spasms, unless I was made to do it."

"You couldn't prove any right to her," observed the lawyer.

"No, I couldn't," replied Grandma Padgett, expressing some injury in her tone. "But on that account ought I to let her go to them that would mistreat her?"

"She may be their child," said the lawyer. "People have been known to maltreat their children before. You only infer that they stole her."

Aunt Corinne told her nephew in a slightly guarded whisper, that she never had seen such a mean man as that one was.

"They ought to prove it before they get her, then," said Grandma Padgett.

"Yes," he assented. "They ought to prove it."

"And they must be right here in the place," she continued. "I'm afraid I'll have trouble with them."

"We could go on to-night," exclaimed Robert Day. "We could go on to Indianapolis, and that's where the governor lives, Zene says; and when we told the governor, he'd put the pig-headed folks in jail." Small notice being taken of this suggestion by the elders, Robert and Corinne bobbed their heads in unison and discussed it in whispers together.