The woman of the house locked up that part which let out upon the log steps, before she conducted her guests to supper. She was a partisan of Grandma Padgett's.

At table the brown-eyed child whom Grandma Padgett still held upon her lap, refused food and continued to demand her mother. She leaned against the old lady's shoulder seeing every crack in the walls, every dish upon the cloth, the lawyer who sat opposite, and the concerned faces of Bobaday and Corinne. Supper was too good to be slighted, in spite of Carrie's dangerous position. The man of the house was a Quaker, and while his wife stood up to wait on the table, he repeatedly asked her in a thee-and-thou language highly edifying to aunt Corinne, for certain pickles and jams and stuffed mangoes; and as she brought them one after the other, he helped the children plentifully, twinkling his eyes at them. He was a delicious old fellow; as good in his way as the jams.

"And won't thee have some-in a sasser?" he inquired tenderly of Carrie, "and set up and feed thyself? Thee ought to give thy grandame a chance to eat her bite—don't thee be a selfish little dear."

"I want my mamma," responded Carrie, at once taking this twinkle-eyed childless father into her confidence. "I'm waiting for my mamma. When she comes she'll give me my supper and put me to bed."

"Thee's a big enough girl to wait ort thyself," said the Quaker, not understanding the signs his wife made to him.

"She doesn't live at your house," pursued the, child. "She lives at papa's house."

"Where is papa's house?" inquired the lawyer helping himself to bread as if that were the chief object of his thoughts.

"It's away off. Away over the woods."

"And what's papa's name?"

Carrie appeared to consider the questioner rather than the question, and for some unexpressed reason, remained silent.

"Mother," said the Quaker from the abundant goodness of his heart, "doesn't thee mind that damson p'serve thee never let's me have unless I take the ag'y and shake for it? Some of that would limber a little girl's tongue, doesn't thee think?"

"It's in the far pantry on a high shelf," said the woman of the house, demurring slightly.

"I can reach it down."

"No, I'll bring it myself. The jars are too crowded on that shelf for a man's hands to be turned loose among 'em."

The Quaker smiled, sparkling considerably under his gray eyebrows while his wife took another light and went after the damson preserve. She had been gone but a moment when knocking began at the front door, and the Quaker rose at once from his place to answer it.



Robert Day and Corinne looked at each other in apprehension. They pictured a fearful procession coming in. Even their guardian gave an anxious start. She parted her lips to beg the Quaker not to admit any one, but the request was absurd.

Their innocent host piloted straight to the dining-room a woman whom Robert and Corinne knew directly. They had seen her in the show, and recalled her appearance many a time afterwards when speculating about Carrie's parents.

"Here you are!" she exclaimed to the child in a high key. "My poor little pet! Come to mamma!"



CHAPTER XIX.

FAIRY CARRIE DEPARTS.

Neither William Sebastian, the Quaker landlord, nor his wife, returning with the damson preserves in her hand—not even Grandma Padgett and her family, looked at Fairy Carrie more anxiously than the lawyer.

"Is this your mother, Sissy?" inquired Grandma Padgett.

"No," replied the child; A blank, stupid expression replacing her excitement. "Yes. Mamma?"

The woman sat down and took Carrie upon her lap, twisting her curls and caressing her.

"Where have you been, frightening us all to death!" she exclaimed. "The child is sick; she must have some drugs to quiet her."

"She's just come out of a spasm," said Grandma Padgett distantly. "Seems as if a young man scared her."

"Yes; that was Jarvey," said the woman. "'E found her here. Carrie was always afraid of Jarvey after he-tried to teach her wire-walking, and let her fall. Jarvey would've fetched her right away with him, But 'e knows I don't like to 'ave 'im meddle with her now."

"She says her name's Rose," observed the wife of William Sebastian, taking no care to veil her suspicion.

"'Tis Rose," replied the woman indifferently, passing her hand in repeated strokes down the child's face as it was pressed to her shoulder. "The h'other's professional—Fairy Carrie. We started 'igher. I never expected to come down with my child to such a miserable little combination. But we've 'ad misfortunes. Her father died coming over. We're English. We 'ad good engagements in the Provinces, and sometimes played in London. The manager as fetched us over, failed to keep his promises, and I had no friends 'ere. I had to do what I could."

An actual resemblance to Carrie appeared in the woman's face. She wiped tears from, the dark rings under her eyes.

William Sebastian's wife rested her knuckles on the table, still regarding Carrie's mother with perplexed distrust.

While returning none of the caresses she received, the child lay quite docile and submissive.

"Well," said Grandma Padgett, still distantly "folks bring up their children different. There's gypsies always live in tents, and I suppose show-people always expect to travel with shows. I don't know anything about it. But I do know when that child came to me she'd been dosed nearly to death with laudanum, or some sleepin' drug, and didn't really come to her senses till after her spasm."

The woman cast a piteous expression at her judge.

"She's so nervous, poor pet! Perhaps I'm in the 'abit of giving her too much. But she lives in terror of the company we 'ave to associate with, and I can't see her nerves be racked."

"Thee ought to stop such wrong doings," pronounced William Sebastian, laying his palm decidedly on the table. "Set theeself to some honest work and put the child to school. Her face is a rebuke to us that likes to feel at peace."

The woman glanced resentfully at him.

"The child is gifted," she maintained. "I'm going to make a hartist of her."

She smoothed Carrie's wan hands, and, as if noticing her borrowed clothing for the first time, looked about the room for the tinsel and gauze.



"The things she had on her when she come to us," said Grandma Padgett, "were literally gone to nothing. The children had run so far and rubbed over fences and sat in the grass. I didn't even think it was worth while to save the pieces; and I put my least one's clothes on her for some kind of a covering.

"It was her concert dress," said the woman, regarding aunt Corinne's pantalets with some contempt. "I suppose I hought to thank you, but since she was hinticed away, I can't. When one 'as her feelings 'arrowed up for nearly a week as mine have been 'arrowed, one can't feel thankful. I will send these 'ere things back by Jarvey. Well, ladies and gentlemen, let me bid you good evening. The performance 'as already begun and we professionals cannot shirk business."

"You give an exhibition in Greenfield to-night, do you?" inquired the lawyer.

"Yes, sir," replied the woman, standing with Carrie in arms. She had some difficulty in getting at her pocket, but threw him a handbill.

Then passing out through the hall, she shut the front door behind her.

There were two other front doors to the house, though only the central one was in constant use, being left open in the summer weather, excepting on occasions such as the present, when William Sebastian's wife thought it should be locked. One of the other front doors opened into the sitting-room, but was barred with a tall bureau. The third let into a square room devoted to the lumber accumulations of the house. A bar and shelves for decanters remained there, but these William Sebastian had never permitted to be used since his name was painted on the sign.

Mrs. Sebastian felt a desire to confuse the outgoing woman by the three doors and imprison her in the old store room.

"I don't think the child's hers," exclaimed Mrs. Sebastian.

"Thee isn't Solomon," observed the Quaker, twinkling at his wife. "Thee cannot judge who the true mother may be."

"She shouldn't got in here if I'd had the keeping of the door," continued Mrs. Sebastian. "I may not be Solomon, but I think I could keep the varmints out of my own chicken house."

Grandma Padgett set her glasses in a perplexed stare at the door.

"She didn't let us say good-by to Fairy Carrie," exclaimed aunt Corinne indignantly, "and kept her face hid away all the time so she couldn't look at us. I'd hate to have such a ma!"

"She'll whip the poor little thing for running off with us, when she gets her away," said Robert Day, listening for doleful sounds.

"Well, what does thee think of this business?" inquired William Sebastian of the lawyer who was busying himself drawing squares on the tablecloth with a steel fork. "It ought to come in thy line. Thee deals with criminals and knows the deceitfulness of our human hearts. What does thee say to the woman?"

The lawyer smiled as he laid down his fork, and barely mentioned the conflicting facts:

"She took considerable pains to tell something about herself: more than was necessary. But if they kidnapped the child, they are dangerously bold and confident in exhibiting and claiming her."



CHAPTER XX.

SUNDAY ON THE ROAD.

Aunt Corinne occupied with her mother a huge apartment over the sitting-room, in which was duplicated the fireplace below. At this season the fireplace was closed with a black board on which paraded balloon-skirted women cut out of fashion plates.

The chimneys were built in two huge stacks at the gable-ends of the house, outside the weather boarding: a plan the architects of this day utterly condemn. The outside chimney was, however, as far beyond the stick-and-clay stacks of the cabin, as our fire-stone flues are now beyond it. This house with log steps no longer stands as an old landmark by the 'pike side in Greenfield. But on that June morning it looked very pleasant, and the locust-trees in front of it made the air heavy with perfume. There is no flower like the locust for feeding honey to the sense of smell. Half the bees from William Sebastian's hives were buzzing overhead, when Bobaday and aunt Corinne sat down by Zene on the log steps to unload their troubles. All three were in their Sunday clothes. Zene had even greased his boots, and looked with satisfaction on the moist surfaces which he stretched forth to dry in the sun.

He had not seen Carrie borne away, but he had been to the show afterwards, and heard her sing one of her songs. He told the children she acted like she never see a thing before her, and would go dead asleep if they didn't stick pins in her like they did in a woman he seen walkin' for money once. Robert was fain to wander aside on the subject of this walking woman, but aunt Corinne kept to Fairy Carrie, and made Zene tell every scrap of information he had about her.

"After I rubbed the horses this mornin'," he proceeded, "I took a stroll around the burg, and their tent and wagon's gone!"

"Gone!" exclaimed aunt Corinne. "Clear out of town?"

Zene said he allowed so. He could show the children where the tent and wagon stood, and it was bare ground now. He had also discovered the time-honored circus-ring, where every summer the tinseled host rode and tumbled. But under the circumstances, a circus-ring had no charms.

"Then they've got her," said Bobaday. "We'll never see the pretty little thing again. If I'd been a man I wouldn't let that woman have her, like Grandma Padgett did. Grown folks are so funny. I did wish some grand people would come in the night and say she was their child, and make the show give her up."

Aunt Corinne arose to fly to her mother and Mrs. Sebastian with the news. But the central door opening on the instant and Mrs. Sebastian, her husband and guest coming out, aunt Corinne had not far to fly.

"The woman is a stealer," she added to her breathless recital. "She didn't even send my things back."

"She's welcome to them," said Grandma Padgett, shaking her head, "but I feel for that child, whether the rightful owners has her or not."

"This is Lord's Day," said William Sebastian to the children, "along the whole length of the pike, and across the whole breadth of the country. Thy little friend will get her First Day blessing."

He wore a gray hat, half-high in the crown, and a gray coat which flapped his calves when he walked. His trousers were of a cut which reached nearly to his armpits, but this fact was kept from the public by a vest crawling well toward his knees. Yet he looked beautifully tidy and well-dressed. His wife, who was not a Quaker, had by no means such an air of simple grandeur.

Grandma Padgett and aunt Corinne, somewhat reluctantly followed by Zene, were going to the Methodist church. Already its bell was filling the air. But Robert hung back and asked if he might not go to Quaker meeting.

"Thee couldn't sit and meditate," said William Sebastian.

Bobaday assured William Sebastian he could sit very still, and he always meditated. When he ran after his grandmother to get her consent, it occurred to him to find out from Zene how the pig-headed man was, and if he looked as ugly as ever. But aunt Corinne scorned the question, and quite flew af him for asking it.

The Methodist services Robert knew by heart: the open windows, the high pulpit where the preacher silently knelt first thing, hymn books rustling cheerfully, the hymn given out two lines at a time to be sung by the congregation, then the kneeling of everybody and the prayer, more singing, and the sermon, perhaps followed by an exhortation, when the preacher talked loud enough for the boys sitting out on the fence to hear every word. Perhaps a few children whispered, or a baby cried and its mother took it out. Everybody seemed happy and astir. After church there was so much handshaking that the house emptied very slowly.

But on his return he described the Quaker meeting to aunt Corinne.

"They all sat and sat," said Bobaday. "It was a little bit of a house and not half so many folks could get in it as sit in the corners by the pulpit in Methodist meeting. And they sat and sat, and nobody said a word or gave out a hymn. The women looked at the cracks in the floor. You could hear everything outdoors. After a long time they all got up and shook hands. Mrs. Sebastian said to Mr. Sebastian when we came away, 'The spirit didn't appear to move anybody this morning.' And he said, 'No: but it was a blessed meeting.'"

"Didn't your legs cramp?" inquired aunt Corinne.

"Yes; and my nose tickled and I wanted to sneeze."

"But you dursn't move your thumb even. That lawyer that ate supper here last night would like such a meeting, wouldn't he?"

The lawyer was coming up the log steps while Robert spoke of him. And with him was a lady who looked agitated, and whom he had to assist.

Robert and Corinne, at the open sitting-room window, looked at each other with quick apprehension.

"Aunt Krin, that's her mother," said aunt Krin's nephew. His young relative grasped his arm and exclaimed in an awe-struck whisper:

"Bobaday Padgett!"



CHAPTER XXI.

HER MOTHER ARRIVES.

Both children regarded the strange lady with breathless interest when the lawyer seated her in the room. They silently classed her among the rich, handsome and powerful people of the earth. She had what in later years they learned to call refinement, but at that date they could give it no name except niceness. When Grandma Padgett and the landlord's wife were summoned to the room, she grew even younger and more elegant in appearance, though her face was anxious and her eyes were darkened by crying.

"This is Mrs. Tracy from Baltimore," said the lawyer. "She was in Chicago yesterday, and I telegraphed for her a half-hour or so before the child was taken out of the house. She came as far as Indianapolis, and found no Pan Handle train, this morning, so she was obliged to get a carriage and drive over. Mrs. Sebastian, will you be kind enough to set out something for her to eat as soon as you can? She has not thought of eating since she started. And Mrs.—what did I understand your name to be?"



"Padgett," replied the children's guardian.

"Yes; Mrs. Padgett. Mrs. Padgett, my client is hunting a lost child, and hearing this little girl was with you some days, she would like to make some inquiries."

"But the child's taken clear away!" exclaimed Grandma Padgett.

"If you drove out from Injunop'lis," said the Quaker's wife, "you must have met the show-wagon on the 'pike."

"The show-wagon took to a by-road," observed the lawyer. "We have men tracking it now."

"I knew it wasn't right for them to carry off that child," said the Quaker's wife, "and if I'd tended the door they wouldn't carried her off."

"It was best not to arouse their suspicions before she could be identified," said the lawyer. "It's easy enough to take her when we know she is the child we want."

"Maybe so," said the Quaker's wife.

"Easy enough. The vagabonds can't put themselves beyond arrest before we can reach them, and on the other hand, they could make a case against us if we meddle with them unnecessarily. Since Mrs. Tracy came West a couple of weeks ago, and since she engaged me in her cause, we have had a dozen wrong parties drawn up for examination; children of all ages and sizes."

"Did she," inquired Mrs. Tracy, bringing her chair close to Grandma Padgett and resting appealing eyes on the blue glasses, "have hair that curled? Rather long hair for a child of her years."

"Yes'm," replied Grandma Padgett with dignified tenderness. "Long for a child about five or six, as I took her to be. But she was babyish for all that."

"Yes—oh, yes!" said Mrs. Tracy.

"And curly. How long since you lost her?"

The lady from Baltimore sobbed on her handkerchief, but recovered with a resolute effort, and replied:

"It was nearly three months ago. She was on the street with her nurse, and was taken away almost miraculously. We could not find a trace. Her papa is dead, but I have always kept his memory alive to her. My friends have helped me search, but it has seemed day after day as if I could not bear the strain any longer."

Grandma Padgett took off her glasses and polished them.

"I know how you feel," she observed, glancing at Robert Day and Corinne. "I had a scare at Richmond, in this State."

"Are these your children?"

"My youngest and my grandson. It was their notion of running away with the little girl, and their gettin' lost, that put me to such a worry:"

Mrs. Tracy extended her hands to Bobaday and aunt Corinne, drawing one to each side of her, and made the most minute inquiries about Fairy Carrie. She knew that the child had called herself Rose, and that she had been in a partially stupified state during her stay with the little caravan. But when Robert mentioned the dark circles in the child's face, and her crying behind the tent, the lady turned white and leaned back, closing her eyes and groping for a small yellow bottle in her pocket. Having smelled of this, she recovered herself.

But aunt Corinne, in spite of her passionate sympathy, could barely keep from tittering at the latter action. Though the smelling bottle was yellow, instead of a dull blue, like the one Ma Padgett kept in the top bureau drawer at home, aunt Corinne recognized her enemy and remembered the time she hunted out that treasure and took a long, strong, tremendous snuff at it, expecting to revel in odors of delight. Her head tingled again while she thought about it; she felt a thousand needles running through her nose, and saw herself sitting on the floor shedding tears. How anybody could sniff at a hartshorn bottle and find it a consolation or restorative under any circumstances, she could not understand.

Mrs. Sebastian, in her First Day clothes, and unwilling to lose a word of what was going on in the sitting-room, had left the early dinner to her assistant. But she brought in a cup of strong tea, and some cream toast, begging the bereaved mother to stay her stomach with that until the meal's victuals was ready. Mrs. Tracy appeared to have forgotten that her stomach needed staying, but she thanked the landlady and drank the tea as if thirsty, between her further inquiries about the child.

"Are you not sure," she asked the lawyer, "that we are on the right track this time?"

He said he was not sure, but indications were better than they had been before.

"I don't wish to reproach you," said Mrs. Tracy, "but it is a fearful thought to me, that they may be poisoning my child with opiates again and injuring her perhaps for life. You might have detained her."

"That's what I've said right along," exclaimed Mrs. Sebastian.

"But there was that woman who pretended to be her rightful mother," observed Grandma Padget, who, though not obliged to set up any defence, wanted the case seen in all its bearings. "There she set, easy and deliberate, telling her story, how the little thing's father died comin' over the water, and how hard, it was for her to do the right thing by the child. She maintained she only dosed the child to keep her from sufferin'. I didn't believe her, but we had nothing to set up against her."

Mrs. Tracy became as erect and fierce in aspect as such a delicate creature could become. The long veil of crape which hung from her bonnet and swept the floor, emphasizing the blackness of all her other garments, trembled as she rose.

"Why am I sitting here and waiting for anything, when that woman is claiming my child for her own? The idea of anybody's daring to own my child! It is more cruel than abuse. I never thought of their being able to teach her to forget me—that they could confuse her mamma with another person in her mind!"

"You're tired out," said the lawyer, "and matters are moving just as rapidly as if you were chasing over all the roads in Hancock County. You must quiet yourself, ma'am, or you'll break down."

Mrs. Tracy made apparent effort to quiet herself. She took hold of Grandma Padgett's arm when they were called out to dinner. Robert walked on the other side of her, having her hand on his shoulder and aunt Corinne went behind, carrying the end of the crape veil as if Fairy Carrie's real mother could thus receive support and consolation through the back of the head.

Nobody was more concerned about her trouble than William Sebastian. And he remembered more tempting pickles and jellies than had ever been on the table before at once. Yet the dinner was soon over.

Grandma Padgett said she had intended to go a piece on the road that afternoon anyhow, but she could not feel easy in her mind to go very far until the child was found. Virginia folks and Marylanders were the same as neighbors. If Mrs. Tracy would take a seat in the carriage, they would make it their business to dally along the road and meet the word the men out searching were to bring in. Mrs. Tracy clung to Grandma Padgett's arm as if she knew what a stay the Ohio neighbors had always found this vigorous old lady. The conveyance which brought her from Indianapolis had been sent back. She was glad to be with, the Padgetts. No railroad trains would pass through until next day. William Sebastian helped her up the carriage steps, and aunt Corinne set down reverently on the back seat beside her. Zene was already rumbling ahead with the wagon. Mrs. Sebastian came down the steps of log and put a hearty lunch in. It was particularly for the child they hoped to find.



"Make her eat something," she counselled the mother. "She hardly tasted a bite of supper last night, and according to all accounts, she ain't in hands that understands feedin' children now."

"The Lord prosper all thy undertakings," said William Sebastian, "and don't thee forget to let us know what hour we may begin to rejoice with thee."

The lawyer touched his hat as Hickory and Henry stepped away on the plank 'pike. He remained in Greenfield, and was to ride after them if any news came in about Fairy Carrie.



CHAPTER XXII.

A COUNTRY SUNDAY-SCHOOL.

However we may spend our Sabbath, it is different from the other days of the week. I have often thought the little creatures of field and woods knew the difference. They run or sing with more gladness and a less business-like air. The friskiest lambs, measuring strength with each other by stiff-legged jumps, are followed by gentle bleats from their mothers, and come back after a frolic to meditate and switch their tails. The fleecy roll of a lamb's tail, and the dimples which seem to dint its first coat, the pinkness of its nose, and the drollery of its eye, are all worth watching under a cloudless Sunday sky.

As the carriage and wagon rolled along the 'pike, they met other vehicles full of people driving for an outing, or going to afternoon Sunday-school held in schoolhouses along the various by-roads.

Mrs. Tracy leaned forward every time a buggy passed the wagon, and scanned its occupants until they turned towards the right to pass Grandma Padgett.

The first messenger they met entered on the 'pike from a cross-road some distance ahead of them, but was checked in his canter toward Greenfield by Zene, who stopped the wagon for a parley. Mrs. Tracy was half irritated by such officiousness, and Grandma Padgett herself intended to call Zene to account, when he left the white and gray and came limping to the carriage at the rider's side. However, the news he helped to bring, and the interest he took in it, at once excused him. This man, scouring the country north and south since early morning, had heard nothing of the show-wagon.

It might be somewhere in the woods, or jogging innocently along a dirt road. It was no longer an object to the searchers. He believed the woman and child had left it, intending to rejoin it at some appointed place when all excitement was over. He said he thought he had the very woman and child back here a piece, though they might give him the slip before he could bring anybody to certainly identify them.

"My little one 'give me the slip'!" exclaimed Mrs. Tracy indignantly.

The man said his meaning was, she might be slipped off by her keeper.

"Where have you got them?" inquired Grandma Padgett.

"He saw 'em goin' into Sunday-school, marm," explained Zene. "There's a meetin'-house over yonder three or four mile," pointing with his whip.

"It's the unlikeliest place that ever was," said the messenger, polishing his horse's wet neck. "And I suppose that's what the woman thought when she slipped in there. If I hadn't happened by in the nick of time I wouldn't mistrusted. She didn't see me. She was goin' up the steps, with her back to the road, and the meetin'-house sets a considerable piece from the fence. They was all singin' loud enough to drown a horse's feet in the dust."

"And both were like the descriptions you had?" said Mrs. Tracy.

"So nigh like that I half-pulled up and had a notion to go in and see for myself. Then, thinks I, you better wait and bring-the ones that would know for sure. There ain't no harm in that."

Before the mother could speak again, Grandma Padgett told the man to turn back and direct them, and Zene to fall behind the carriage with his load. He could jog leisurely in the wake of the carriage, to avoid getting separated from it: that would be all he need attempt. She took up her whip to touch Hickory and Henry.

After turning off on the by-road, Grandma Padgett heard Zene leisurely jogging in the wake of the carriage, and remembered for a moment, with dismay, the number of breakable things in his load. He drove all the way to the meeting-house with the white and gray constantly rearing their noses from contact with the hind carriage curtains; up swells, when the road wound through stump-bordered sward, and down into sudden gullies, when all his movables clanged and rumbled, as if protesting against the unusual speed they had to endure. Zene was as anxious to reach the meeting-house as the man who cantered ahead.

They drew up to where it basked on the rising ground, an old brown frame with lichens crusting the roof. There were two front doors, a flight of wooden steps leading up to each, and three high windows along the visible side. All these stood open letting out a pleasant hum, through which the cracked voice of an old man occasionally broke. No hump of belfry stood upon its back. The afternoon sun was the bell which called that neighborhood together for Sunday-school. And this unconscious duty performed, the afternoon sun now brightened the graves which crowded to the very fence, brought out the glint and polish of the new marble headstones, or showed the grooved names in the old and leaning slate ones. Some graves were enclosed by rails, and others barely lifted their tops above the long grass. There were baby-nests hollowing into the turf, and clay-colored piles set head and foot with fresh boards. And on all these aunt Corinne looked with an interest which graves never failed to rouse in her, no matter what the occasion might be.



The horses switched their tails along the outside of the fence. One backed his vehicle as far as his hitching-strap would let him, against the wheels of another's buggy, that other immediately responding by a similar movement. Some of them turned their heads and challenged Hickory and Henry and the saddle-horse with speaking whinneys. "Whe-hee-hee-hee! You going to be tied up here for the grass-flies to bite too? Where do you come from, and why don't you kick your folks for going to afternoon meeting in hot June time?"

The pilot of the caravan had helped take horse-thieves in his time, and he considered this a similar excursion. He dismounted swiftly, but with an air of caution, and as he let down the carriage steps, said he thought they better surround the house.

But Mrs. Tracy reached the ground as if she did not see him, and ran through the open gate with her black draperies flowing in a rush behind her. Robert Day and aunt Corinne were anxious to follow, and the man tied Grandma Padgett's horses to a rail fence across the road, while some protest was made among the fly-bitten row against the white cover of Zene's moving-wagon.

Although Bobaday felt excited and eager as he trotted up the grass path after Mrs. Tracy, the spirit of the country Sunday-school came out of doors to meet him.

There were the class of old men and the class of old women in the corner seats each side of the pulpit, and their lesson was in the Old Testament. The young ladies listened to the instruction of the smart young man of the neighborhood, and his sonorous words rolled against the echoing walls. He usually taught the winter district and singing schools. The young girl who did for summer schoolmiss, had a class of rosebud children in the middle of the meetinghouse, and they crowded to Her lap and crawled up on her shoulders, though their mothers, in the mothers' class, shook warning heads at them. Scent of cloves, roses and sweetbrier mingled with the woody smell of a building shut close six days out of seven. Two rascals in the boys' class, who, evading their teacher's count, had been down under the seats kicking each other with stiff new shoes, emerged just as the librarian came around with a pile of books, ready to fight good-naturedly over the one with the brightest cover. The boy who got possession would never read the book, but he could pull it out of his jacket pocket and tantalize the other boy going home.

The Sunday-school was a wholesome, happy place, even for these young heathen who were enjoying their bodies too much to care particularly about their souls. And when the superintendent stood up to rap the school to order for the close of the session, and line out one of Watts's sober hymns, there was a pleasant flutter of getting ready, and the smart young man of the neighborhood took his tuning-fork from his vest pocket to hit against his teeth so he could set the tune. He wore a very short-tailed coat, and had his hair brushed up in a high roach from his forehead, and these two facts conspired to give him a brisk and wide awake appearance as he stepped into the aisle holding a singing book in his hand.

But no peaceful, long-drawn hymn floated through the windows and wandered into the woods. The twang of the tuning-fork was drowned by a succession of cries. The smart young man's eyebrows went up to meet his roach while he stood in the aisle astonished to see a lady in trailing black clothes pounce upon a child strange to the neighborhood, and exclaim over, and cover it with kisses.



CHAPTER XXIII.

FORWARD.

Some of the boys climbed upon seats to look, and there was confusion. A baby or two in the mothers' class began to cry, but the mothers themselves soon understood what was taking place, and forgot the decorum of Sunday-school, to crowd up to Mrs. Tracy.

"The child is hers," one said to another. "It must have been lost. Who brought it in here?"

The fortunate messenger who had been successful in his undertaking, talked in undertones to the superintendent, telling the whole story with an air of playing the most important part in it. In return, the superintendent mentioned the notice he had taken of those two strangers, his attempt to induce the woman to go to the mothers' class, her restlessness and the child's lassitude.

The smart young man stood close by, receiving the correct version of the affair, and holding his tuning-fork and book behind him; and all the children, following their elders, flocked to seats around Mrs. Tracy, gazing over one another's shoulders, until she looked up abashed at the chaos her excitement had made.

"It's really your child?" said Grandma Padgett, sitting down beside the mother with a satisfied and benevolent expression.

"Oh, indeed, yes! Don't you know mamma, darling?"

For reply, the little girl was clinging mutely to her mother's neck. Her curls were damp and her eyes very dark-ringed. But there was recognition in her face very different from the puzzled and crouching obedience she had yielded to the one who claimed her before.

"They've been dosing her again," pronounced Grandma Padgett severely.

"And she's all beat out tramping, poor little thing!" said one of the neighborhood mothers. "Look at them dusty feet!"

Mrs. Tracy gathered the dusty feet into her lap and wiped them with her lace handkerchief.

Word went forth to the edge of the crowd that the little girl needed water to revive her, and half a dozen boys raced to the nearest house for a tin pailful.

With love-feast tenderness the neighborhood mothers administered the dripping cup to little Rose Tracy when the boys returned. Her face and head were bathed, and hands and feet cooled. The old women all prescribed for her, and her mother listened to everybody with distended eyes, but fell into such frequent paroxysms of kissing her little girl that some of the boys ducked their heads to chuckle. This extravagant affection was more than they could endure.

"But where's that woman?" inquired Robert Day. He stood up on the seat behind his grandmother and Mrs. Tracy, and could see all over the house, but his eyes roamed unsuccessfully after the English player. The people having their interest diverted by that question, turned their heads and began to ask each other where she was. Nobody had noticed her leave the church, but it was a common thing to be passing in and out during Sunday school. She had made her escape. Half the assembly would have pursued her on the instant; she could not be far away. But Mrs. Tracy begged them to let her go; she did not want the woman, could not endure the sight of her, and never wished to hear of her again. Whatever harm was done to her child, was done. Her child was what she had come in search of, and she had it.

So the group eager to track a kidnapper across fields and along fence-corners, calmed their zeal and contented themselves with going outdoors and betting on what direction the fugitive from punishment had taken.

Perhaps she had grown to love little Rose, and was punished in having to give her up. In any case, the Pig-headed man and the various people attached to his show, no more appeared on the track followed by Grandma Padgett's caravan. Mrs. Tracy would not have him sought out and arrested, and he only remained in the minds of Robert and aunt Corinne as a type of monster.

When they left the meeting-house, the weather had changed. People dismissed from Sunday-school with scanter ceremony than usual, got into their conveyances to hurry home, for thunder sounded in the west, and the hot air was already cooled by a rush of wet fragrance from the advancing rain.



It proved to be a quick shower, white and violent while it lasted, making the fields smoke, and walling out distant views. Spouts of water ran off the carriage top down the oil cloth apron which protected Robert and his grandmother. Mrs. Tracy held her little girl in her lap, and leaned back with an expression of perfect happiness. The rain came just as her comfort had come, after so much parching suspense. Aunt Corinne wondered in silence if anything could be nicer than riding under a snug cover on which the sky-streams pelted, through a wonderland of fragrance. Every grateful shrub and bit of sod, the pawpaw leaves and spicewood stems, the half-formed hazel-nuts in fluted sheaths, and even new hay-stacks in the meadows, breathed out their best to the rain. The world never seems so fresh and lovable as after a June shower.

Presently the sun was shining, and the ground-incense steaming with stronger sweetness, and they came to the wet 'pike stretching like a russet-colored ribbon east and west, and turned west toward Indianapolis.

On the 'pike they met another of the men sent out by Mrs. Tracy and the lawyer. His horse's coat was smoking. Mrs. Tracy took up a gold pencil attached to her watch, and wrote a note to the lawyer. She was going on to the city, and would return directly home with her child. The note she sent by the men, after thanking them, and paying them in what Robert and his aunt considered a prodigal and wealthy manner.

So large a slice out of the afternoon had their trip to the meeting-house taken, that it was quite dark when the party drove briskly into Indianapolis.

It was a little city at that date. Still, Bobaday felt exalted by clanging car-bells and railroad crossings. It being Sunday evening, the freights were making up. The main street, called Washington, was but an extension of the 'pike, stretching broad and straight through the city. He noticed houses with balconies, set back on sloping lawns. Here a light disclosed a broad hall with dim stairs at the back. And in another place children were playing under trees; he could hear their calls, and by straining his eyes, barely discern that they wore sumptuous white city raiment. The tide of home-makers and beautifiers had not then rolled so far north of East Washington street as to leave it a mere boundary line.

Grandma Padgett and her party stopped at a tavern on Illinois street. Late in the night they were to separate, Mrs. Tracy taking the first train for Baltimore. So aunt Corinne and Robert, before going to bed, bade good-by to the child who had scarcely been a playmate to them, but more like a delicate plaything in whose helplessness they had felt such interest.

Rose, obeying her mamma, put her arms around their necks and kissed them, telling them to come and see her at home. She looked brighter than hitherto, and remembered a dollhouse and her birds at mamma's house; yet, her long course of opiates left her little recognition of the boy and girl she had so dimly seen.

Her mamma hugged them warmly, and Bobaday endured his share of the hugging with a very good grace, though he was so old. Then it seemed but a breath until morning, and but another breath until they were under way, the wagon creaking along the dewy 'pike ahead of them, an opal clearness growing through the morning twilight, and no Fairy Carrie asleep, like some tiny enchanted princess, on the back seat.

"The rest of the way," observed Robert Day to his aunt, "there won't be anything happening—you see if there will. Zene says we're half across the State now. And I know we'll never see J. D. Matthews again. And nobody will be lost and have to be found, and there's no tellin' where that great big crowd Jonathan and his folks moved with, are."

"I feel lonesome," observed aunt Corinne somewhat pensively. "When Mrs. Tracy was sending back word to the Quaker tavern man, I wished we's going back to stay awhile longer. Some places are so nice!"

"Now it's a pretty thing for you to begin at your time of life," said Grandma Padgett, "to set your faces backward and wish for what's behind. That's a silly notion. Folks that encourage themselves in doin' it don't show sound sense. The One that made us knew better than to let us stand still in our experience, and I've always found them that go forward cheerfully will pretty generally keep the land of Beulah right around them. Git up, Hickory!"

Thus admonished, the children entered the lone bridge over White River, or that branch of White River on which Indianapolis is situated. The stream, seen between chinks in the floor, appeared deep, but not particularly limpid. How the horses' feet thundered on the boards, and how long they trod before the little star at the other end grew to an opening quite large enough to let any vehicle out of the bridge!



CHAPTER XXIV.

THE TOLL-WOMAN.

Still, as crossing the Sciota at Columbus, had been entering a land of adventure, crossing the White River at Indianapolis, seemed at first entering a land of commonplace.

The children were very tired of the wagon. Even aunt Corinne got permission to ride stretches of the road with Robert Day and Zene in the wagon. It gave out a different creak and jolted her until she was grateful for springs and cushions when obliged to go back to them. The landscape was still hazy, the woods grew more beautiful. But neither of the children cared for the little towns along the route: Bellville, Stilesville, Meridian, Manhattan, Pleasant Garden. Hills appeared and ledges of rock cropped out in them. Yet even hills may be observed with indifference by eyes weary of an endless panorama.

They drove more rapidly now to make up for lost time. Both children dived into the carriage pockets for amusement, and aunt Corinne dressed her rag doll a number of times each day. They talked of Rose Tracy, still calling her Fairy Carrie. Of the wonderful clothes her mother laid out to put upon her the night of her departure, in place of aunt Corinne's over-grown things, and the show woman's tawdry additions. They wondered about her home and the colored people who waited on her, and if she would be quite well and cured of her stupor by the time she reached Baltimore. Grandma Padgett told them Baltimore was an old city down in Maryland, and the National 'Pike started in its main street. From Baltimore over the mountains to Wheeling, in the Pan Handle of Virginia, was a grand route. There used to be a great deal of wagoning and stage-coaching, and driving droves of horses and cattle by that road. Perhaps, suggested aunt Corinne, Fairy Carrie would watch the 'pike for the Padgett family, but Bobaday ridiculed the idea. When he grew up a man he meant to go to Baltimore but the railroad would be his choice of routes.

Both Robert and his aunt were glad the day they stopped for dinner near a toll-house, and the woman came and invited them to dine with her.

The house stood on the edge of the 'pike, with its gate-pole ready to be lowered by a rope, looking like any other toll place. But the woman was very brisk and Yankee-like, and different from the many slatternly persons who had before taken toll. She said her people came from "down East," but she herself was born in Ohio. She thought the old lady would like a cup of strong tea, and her dinner was just ready, and it did get lonesome eating by a body's self day after day.

The Padgetts added their store to the square table set in a back room, and the toll-woman poured her steaming tea into cups covered with flower sprigs. Everything about her was neat and compact as a ship's cabin. Her bed stood in one corner, curtained with white dimity. There were two rooms to the toll-house, the front one being a kind of shop containing a counter, candy jars set in the windows, shoestrings and boxes of thread on shelves, and a codfish or two sprawled upon nails and covered with netting. From the back door you could descend into a garden, and at the end of the garden was a pig-sty, occupied by a white pig almost as tidy and precise as his owner. In the toll-woman's living room there was a cupboard fringed with tissue paper, a rocking-chair cushioned in red calico, curtains to match, a cooking-stove so small it seemed made for a play-thing, and yellow chairs having gold-leaf ornaments on their backs. She herself was a straight, flat woman, looking much broader in a front or back view than when she stood sidewise toward you. Her face was very good-natured. Altogether she seemed just the ready and capable wife for whom the man went to London after the rats and the mice led him such a life. Though in her case it is probable the wheelbarrow would not have broken, nor would any other mishap have marred the journey.

"You don't live here by yourself, do you?" inquired Grandma Padgett as the tea and the meal in common warmed an acquaintance which the fact of their being from one State had readily begun.

"Since father died I have," replied the toll-woman. "Father moved in here when about everything else failed him, and he'd lost ambition, and laws! now I am used to it. I might gone back to Ohio, but when you fit me into a place I never want to pull up out of it."

"And don't you ever get afraid, nights or any time, without men folks about?"

"Before I got used to being alone, I did. And there's reason yet every little while. But I only got one bad scare."

A wagon paused at the front door, so near the horses might have put their heads in and sniffed up the merchandise, and the woman went to take toll, before telling about her bad scare.

"How do you manage in the nights?" inquired her guest.

"That's bad about fair-times, when the wild young men get to racin' late along. The pole's been cut when I tied it down, and sometimes they've tried to jump it. But generally the travellers are peaceable enough. I've got a box in the front door like a letter-box, with a slit outside for them to drop change into, and the pole rope pulls down through the window-frame. There ain't so much travel by night as there used to be, and a body learns to be wakeful anyhow if they've ever had the care of sick old people."

"You didn't say how you got scared," remarked aunt Corinne, sitting straight in one of the yellow chairs to impress upon her mind the image of this heroine of the road.

"Well, it was robbers," confessed the toll-woman, "breakin' into the house, that scared me."

Robbers! Aunt Corinne's nephew mentally saw a cavern in one of the neighboring hills, and men in scarlet cloaks and feathers lurking among the bushes. If there is any word sweeter to the young male ear than Indian or Tagger, it is robbers.

"Are there many robbers around here?" he inquired, fixing intent eyes on the toll-woman.

"There used to be plenty of horse-thieves, and is, yet," she replied. "They've come huntin' them from away over in Illinois. I remember that year the milk-sick was so bad there was more horse-thieves than we've ever heard of since."

"But they ain't true robbers, are they?" said aunt Corinne's nephew in some disgust, his scarlet bandits paling.

"Not the kind that come tryin' the house when I got scared," admitted the toll-woman.

"And did they get in?" exclaimed Robert Day's aunt.

"I don't like to think about it yet," remarked the toll-woman, cooling her tea and intent on enjoying her own story. "'Twasn't so very long ago, either. First comes word from this direction that a toll-gate keeper and his wife was tied and robbed at the dead o' night. And then comes word from the other direction of an old man bein' knocked on the head when he opened his door. It wouldn't seem to you there'd be enough money at a toll-gate to make it an object," said the woman, looking at Zene's cross eyes with unconcealed disfavor. "But folks of that kind don't want much of an object."

"They love to rob," suggested Bobaday, enjoying himself.

"They're a desp'rate, evil set," said the toll-woman sternly. "Why, I could tell things that would make your hair all stand on end, about robberies I've known."

Aunt Corinne felt a warning stir in her scalp-lock. But her nephew began to desire permanent encampment in the neighborhood of this toll-gate. Robber-stories which his grandmother not only allowed recited, but drank in with her tea, were luxuries of the road not to be left behind.

"Tell some of them," he urged.

"I'll tell you about their comin' here," said the toll-woman. "'Twas soon after father's death. They must known there was a lone woman here, and calculated on findin' it an easy job. He'd kept me awake a good deal, for father suffered constant in his last sickness, and though I was done out, I still had the habit of wakin' regular at his medicine-hours. The time was along in the fall, and there was a high wind that night. Fair time, too, so there was more travel on the 'pike of people comin' and goin' to the Fair and from it, in one day, than in a whole week ordinary times.



"I opened my eyes just as the clock struck two and seemed like I heard something at the front door. I listened and listened. It wasn't the wind singin' along the telegraph wires as it does when there's a strong draught east and west. And it wasn't anybody tryin' to wake me up. Some of our farmers that buys stock and has to be out early and late in a droviete way, often tells me beforehand what time o' night they'll be likely to come by, and I set the pole so it'll be easy for them that knows how to tip up. Then they put their money in the box, and tip the pole back after they drive through, to save wakin' me, for the neighbors are real accommodating and they knew father took a heap of care. But the noise I heard wasn't anybody droppin' coppers in the box, nor raisin' or lowerin' the pole. The rope rasps against the hole when the gate goes up or down. It was just like a lock was bein' picked, or a rattly old window bein' slid up by inches.

"I mistrusted right away. It wouldn't do any good for me to holler. The nearest neighbor was two miles off. I hadn't any gun, and never shot off a gun in my life. I would hate to hurt a human bein' that way. Still, I was excited and afraid of gettin' killed myself; so if I'd had a gun I might have shot it off, for by the time I got my dress and stockin's on, that window was up, and somethin' was in that front room. I could hear him step, still as a cat.

"I thought about the toll-money. Everybody knew the box's inside the door, so I was far from leavin' it there till the collector came. I always took the money out and tied it in a canvas sack and hid it. A body would never think of lookin' where I hid that money."

"Where did you hide it?" inquired aunt Corinne.

The toll-woman rose up and went to collect from a carriage at the door. The merry face of a girl in the carriage peeped through the house, and some pleasant jokes were exchanged.

"That's the daughter of the biggest stock man around here," said the toll-woman, returning, and passing over aunt Corinne's question. "She goes to college, but it don't make a simpleton of her. She always has a smile and a pleasant word. Her folks are real good friends of mine. They knew our folks in Ohio."

"And did he come right in and grab you?" urged Bobaday, keeping to the main narrative.

"I was that scared for a minute," resumed the toll-woman, "that I hadn't any strength. The middle door never is locked. I leave it on the latch like, so I can hear wheels better. What to do I didn't know, but a body thinks fast at such times. First thing I knew I was on the back doorstep, hookin' the door on the outside. Then a gust of wind like, came around the corner of the house, and voices came with it, and I felt sure there were more men waitin' there to ketch me, if I tried to run."



CHAPTER XXV.

ROBBERS.

It was a light night, but the new moon looked just like it was blowed through the sky by the high wind. I noticed that, because I remembered it afterwards.

"Now I was outside, I didn't know which way to turn. If I run to either side, there were the men, and if I took toward the pig-pen they'd see me. And they'd be comin' around and 'd ketch me where I was."

"What did you do?" exclaimed aunt Corinne, preserving a rigid attitude.

The toll-woman laughed cheerfully as she poured out more tea for herself, Grandma Padgett having waved back the teapot spout.

"I took the only chance I saw and jumped for that there cave."

Both Robert and his aunt arose from their chairs to look out of the back door.

The cave was a structure which I believe is peculiar to the West, being in reality a kind of dug-out. It flourished before people built substantial houses with cellars under them, and held the same relation to the family's summer economy as the potato, apple, and turnip holes did to its winter comfort. Milk, butter, perishable fruit, lard, meats, and even preserves were kept in the cave. It was intended for summer coolness and winter warmth. To make a cave, you lifted the sod and dug out a foot of earth. The bottom was covered with straw. Over this you made boards meet and brace each other with the slope of the roof. The ends were boarded up, leaving room for a door, and the whole outside sodded thickly, so that a cave looked like a sharp-printed bulge in the sward, excepting at that end where the heavy padlocked door closed it. It was a temptation to bad boys and active girls; they always wanted to run over it and hear the hollow sound of the boards under their feet. I once saw a cave break through and swallow one out of such a galloping troup, to his great dismay, for he was running over an imaginary volcano, and when he sat down to his shoulders in an apple-butter jar, the hot lava seemed ready made to his hand.

From the toll-woman's cave-roof, spikes of yellow mustard were shooting up into the air. The door looked as stout as the opening to a bank vault, though this comparison did not occur to the children, and was secure with staple and padlock and three huge hinges. Evidently, no mischievous feet had cantered over the ridge of this cave.

It stood a few yards from the back door.

"I had the key in my pocket," said the toll-woman, "and ever since then I've never carried it anywhere else. I clapped, it into the padlock and turned, but just as I pulled the door I heard feet comin' around the house full drive. Instead of jumpin' into the cave I jumped behind it. I thought they had me, but I wasn't goin' to be crunched to death in a hole, like a mouse. My stocking-feet slipped, and I came down flat, but right where the shadow of the house and the shadow of the cave fell all over me. If I hadn't slipped I'd been runnin' across that field, and they'd seen me sure. Folks around here made a good deal of fuss over the way things turned out, but I don't, take any more credit than's my due, so I say it just happened that I didn't try to run further.

"The two men outside unlocked the back door and the one inside came on to the step.

"'There's nothin' in the box and nobody in here,' says he. 'She's jumped out o' bed and run and carried the cash with her.'

"'Did you look under the bed?' says one of the outsiders. And he ran and looked himself; anyway, he went in the house and came out again. I was glad I hadn't got under the bed.

"'This job has to be done quick,' says the first one. 'And the best way is to ketch the woman and make her give up or tell where the stuff is hid. She ain't got far, because I heard her open this door.'

"Then they must have seen the cave door stannin' open. I heard them say something about 'cave,' and come runnin' up.

"'Hold on,' says one, and he fires a pistol-shot right into the cave. I was down with my mouth to the ground, flat as I could lay, but the sound of a gun always made me holler out, and holler I did as the ball seemed to come thud! right at me; but it stuck in the back of the cave.

"'All right. Here she is!' says the foremost man, and in they all went. I heard them stumble as they stepped down, and one began to blame the others for crowdin' after him when they ought to stopped at the mouth to ketch me if I slipped through his fingers.

"I don't know to this hour how I did it," exclaimed the toll-woman, fanning herself, "nor when I thought of it. But the first thing I felt sure of I had that door slammed to, and the key turned in the padlock, and them three robbers was ketched like mice in a trap, instead of it's bein' me!"

Robert Day gave a chuckle of satisfaction, but aunt Corinne braced herself against the door-frame and gazed upon the magic cave with still wider eyes.

"Did they yell?" inquired Bobaday.

"It ain't fit to tell," resumed the toll-woman, "what awful language them men used; and they kicked the door and the boards until I thought break through they would if they had to heave the whole weight, of dirt and sod out of the top. Then I heard somebody comin' along the 'pike, and for a minute I felt real discouraged; for, thinks I, if there's more engaged to help them, what's a poor body to do?

"But 'twas a couple of stock-men, riding home, and they stopped at the gate, and I run through the open house to tell my story, and it didn't take long for them with pistols in their pockets and big black whips loaded with lead in the handles, to get the fellows out and tie 'em up firm. I hunted all the new rope in the house, and they took the firearms away from the robbers, and drove 'em off to jail, and the robbers turned out to be three of the most desp'rate characters in the State, and they're in prison now for a long term of years."

"What did you do the rest of the night?" inquired Grandma Padgett.

"O, I locked everything tight again, and laid down till daylight," replied the toll-woman, with somewhat boastful indifference. "Folks haven't got done talkin' yet about that little jail in my back yard," she added, laughing. "They came from miles around to look into it and see where the men pretty nigh kicked the boards loose."

This narrative was turned over and over by the children after they resumed their journey, and the toll-woman and her cave had faded out in distance. If they saw a deserted cabin among the hollows of the woods, it became the meeting place of robbers. Now that aunt Corinne's nephew turned his mind to the subject, he began to think the whole expedition out West would be a failure—an experience not worth alluding to in future times—unless the family were well robbed on the way. Jonathan and Thrusty Ellen, in the great overland colony, would have Indians to shudder at, a desert and mountains to cross, besides the tremendous Mississippi River. Robert would hate to meet Jonathan in coming days—and he had a boy's faith that he should be constantly repassing old acquaintances in this world—and have no peril to put in the balance against Jonathan's adventures. Of course he wanted to come out on the right side of the peril, it does not tell well otherwise.

But while aunt Corinne's mind ran as constantly on robbers, they had no charms for her. She did not want to be robbed, and was glad her lines had not fallen in the lonely toll-house. Being robbed appeared to her like the measles, mumps, or whooping-cough; more interesting in a neighboring family than in your own. She would avoid it if possible, yet the conviction grew upon her that it was not to be escaped. The strange passers-by who once pleasantly varied the road, now became objects of dread. Though Zene got past them in safety, and though they gave the carriage a wide road, aunt Corinne never failed to turn and watch them to a safe distance, lest they should make a treacherous charge in the rear.

Had they been riding through some dismal swamp, the landscape's influence would have accounted for all these terrors. But it was the pretty region of Western Indiana, containing hills and bird-songs enough to swallow up a thousand stories of toll-gate robberies in happy sight and sound.

Grandma Padgett, indeed, soon put her ban upon the subject of caves and night-attacks. But she could not prevent the children thinking. Nor was she able to drive the carriage and at the same time sit in the wagon when they rode with Zene and stop the flow of recollection to which they stimulated him. While sward, sky, and trees became violet-tinted to her through her glasses, and she calmly meditated and chewed a bit of calamus or a fennel seed, Bobaday and aunt Corinne huddled at the wagon's mouth, and Zene indulgently harrowed up their souls with what he heard from a gentleman who had been in the Mexican war.

"The very gentleman used to visit at your grand-marm's house," said Zene to Robert, "and your marm always said he was much of a gentleman," added Zene to aunt Corinne. "Down in the Mexican country when they didn't fight they stayed in camp, and sometimes they'd go out and hunt. Man that'd been huntin', come runnin' in one day scared nigh to death. He said he'd seen the old Bad Man. So this gentleman and some more of the fine officers, they went to take a look for themselves. They hunted around a good spell. Most of them gave it up and went back: all but four. The four got right up to him."

"O don't, Zene!" begged aunt Corinne, feeling that she could not bear the description.

But to Robert Day's mind arose the picture of Apollyon, in Pilgrim's Progress, and he uttered something like a snort of enjoyment, saying:

"Go on, Zene."



"I guess it was a crazy darkey or Mexican," Zene was careful to explain. "He was covered with oxhide all over, so he looked red and white hairy, and the horns and ears were on his head. He had a long knife, and cut weeds and bark, and muttered and chuckled to himself. He was ugly," acknowledged Zene. "The gentleman said he never saw anything better calkilated to look scary, and the four men followed him to his den. They wouldn't shoot him, but they wanted to see what he was, and he never mistrusted. After a long round-about, they watched him crawl on all-fours into a hole in a hill, and round the mouth of the hole he'd built up a tunnel of bones. The bones smelt awful," said Zene. "And he crawled in with his weeds and bark in his hand, and they didn't see any more of him. That's a true story," vouched Zene, snapping his whip-lash at Johnson, "but your grandmarm wouldn't like for me to tell it to you. Such things ain't fit for children to hear."

Robert Day felt glad that Zene's qualms of repentance always came after the offence instead of before, and in time to prevent the forbidden tale.

Yet, having made such ardent preparation for robbers, and tuned their minds to the subject by every possible influence, the children found they were approaching the last large town on the journey without encountering any.

This was Terre Haute. One farmer on the road, being asked the distance, said, it was so many miles to Tarry Hoot. Another, a little later met, pronounced the place Turry Hut; and a very trim, smooth-looking man whom Zene classed as a banker or judge, called it Tare Hote. So the inhabitants and neighbors of Terra Haute were not at all unanimous in the sound they gave her French name; nor are they so to this day.



CHAPTER XXVI.

THE FAIR AND THE FIERCE BANDIT.

At Terra Haute, where they halted for the night, Robert Day was made to feel the only sting which the caravan mode of removal ever caused him.

The tavern shone resplendent with lights. When Grandma Padgett's party went by the double doors of the dining-room, to ascend the stairs, they glanced into what appeared a bower or a bazaar of wonderful sights. They had supper in a temporary eating-room, and the waiter said there was a fair in the house. Not an agricultural display, but something got up by a ladies' sewing-society to raise money for poor people.

Now Robert Day and Corinne knew all about an agricultural display. They had been to the State Fair at Columbus, and seen cattle standing in long lines of booths, quilts, and plows, and chickens, pies, bread, and fancy knitting, horses, cake stands, and crowds of people. They considered it the finest sight in the world, except, perhaps, a fabulous crystal palace which was or had been somewhere a great ways off, and which everybody talked about a great deal, and some folks had pictured on their window blinds. But a fair got up by a ladies' sewing-society to raise money for the poor, was so entirely new and tantalizing to them that they begged their guardian to take them in.

Grandma Padgett said she had no money to spare for foolishness, and her expenses during the trip footed up to a high figure. Neither could she undertake to have the trunks in from the wagon and get out their Sunday clothes. But in the end, as both children were neatly dressed, and the fair was to help the poor, she gave them a five-cent piece each, over and above admission money, which was a fip'ney-bit, for children, the waiter said. Zene concluded he would black his boots and look into the fair awhile also, and as he could keep a protecting eye on her young family, and had authority to send them up-stairs in one hour and a half by the bar-room time, Grandma Padgett went to bed. She was glad the journey was so nearly over, for every night found her quite tired out.

Zene, magnifying his own importance and authority, ushered aunt Corinne and Robert into the fair, and limped after them whenever he thought they needed admonition or advice. The landlord's pert young son noticed this and made his intimates laugh at it. Besides, he was gorgeously attired in blue velvet jacket and ruffles and white trousers, and among the crowds of grown people coming and going, other children shone in resplendent attire. Aunt Corinne felt the commonness of her calico dress. She had a "white" herself, if Ma Padgett had only let her put it on, but this could not be explained to all the people at the fair. And there were so many things to look at, she soon forgot the white. Dolls of pink and pearly wax, with actual hair, candy or wooden dogs, cats, and all domestic animals, tables of cakes, and lines of made-up clothing which represented the sewing society's labors. There was too much crowding for comfort, and too much pastry trodden into the floor; and aunt Corinne and her nephew felt keen anxiety to spend their five-cent pieces to the best advantage. She was near investing in candy kisses, when yellow and scarlet-backed books containing the history of "Mother Hubbard," or the "Babes in the Woods," or "Little Red Riding Hood," attracted her eye, and she realized what life-long regret she must have suffered for spending five cents on candy kisses, when one such volume might be hers for the same money.

Just as aunt Corinne laid her silver on the book counter, however, and gave her trembling preference to the "History of Old Dame Trot and her Cat," Bobaday seized her wrist and excitedly told her there was a magic-lantern show connected with the fair, which could be seen at five cents per pair of eyes. Dame Trot remained unpurchased, and the coin returned to aunt Corinne's warm palm. But she inquired with caution,

"What's a magic-lantern show?"

"Why, the man, you know," explained Robert, "has pitctures in a lantern, and throws light through 'em, and they spread out on a wet sheet on the wall. The room's all dark except the place on the wall. A Chinese man eatin' mice in his sleep: he works his jaws! And about Saul in the Bible, when he was goin' to kill the good people, and it says, 'Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?' And when they let him down in a basket. And there's a big star like grandma's star quilt, only it keeps turning all kinds of colors and working in and out on itself. And a good many more. Zene went in. He said he wanted to see if we ought to look at it. And he'll stand by the door and pay our money to the man if we want to go. There's such a crowd to get in."

Robert Day's aunt caught the fire of his enthusiasm and went straight with him to the door wherein the magic lantern performed. A crowd of children were pushing up, but Zene, more energetic than courteous pushed his charges ahead so that they gained chairs before the landlord's son could make his choice.



He sat down directly behind Robert and aunt Corinne, and at once began to annoy them with impertinent remarks.

"Movers' young ones are spry," said the landlord's son, who had been petted on account of his pretty face until he was the nuisance of the house. "I wouldn't be a movers' young one."

Robert felt a stinging throb in his blood, but sat still, looking at the wall. Aunt Corinne, however, turned her head and looked witheringly at the blue-jacketed boy.

"Movers' young ones have to wear calico," he continued, "and their lame pap goes lippity-clink around after them."

"He thinks Zene's our father!" exclaimed aunt Corinne, blazing at the affront she received.

"Don't mind him," said Robert, slowly. "He's the hostler's boy, and used to staying in the stable. He doesn't know how to behave when they let him into the house."

This bitter skirmishing might have become an open engagement at the next exchange of fires, for the landlord's son stood up in rage while his chums giggled, and Robert felt terribly equal to the occasion. He told Zene next day he had his fist already doubled, and he didn't care if the landlord put them all in jail. But just then the magic light was turned upon the wall, the landlord's son was told by twenty voices to sit down out of the way, the lantern man himself sternly commanding it. So he sunk into his seat feeling much less important, and the wonders proceeded though Aunt Corinne felt she should always regret turning her back on the Dame Trot book and coming in there to have Zene called her lame pap, while Robert wondered gloomily if any stigma did attach to movers' children. He had supposed them a class to be envied.

This grievance put the robbers out of his mind when they trotted ahead next day. The Wabash River could scarcely soothe his ruffled complacence. And never an inch of the Wabash River have I seen that was not beautiful and restful to the eye. It flows limpidly between varying banks, and has a trick of throwing up bars and islands, wooded to the very edges—captivating places for any tiny Crusoe to be wrecked upon. Skiffs lay along the shore, and small steamers felt their way in the channel. It was a river full of all sorts of promises; so shallow here that the pebbles shone in broad sheets like a floor of opals wherever you might wade in delight, so deep and shady with sycamore canopies there, that a good swimmer would want to lie in ambush like a trout, at the bottom of the swimming hole, half a June day.

Perhaps it was the sight of the Wabash River which suggested washing clothes to Grandma Padgett. She said they were now near the Illinois State line, and she would not like to reach the place with everything dirty. There was always plenty to do when a body first got home, without hurrying up wash-day.

So when they passed a small place called Macksville, and came to Sugar Creek, she called a halt, and they spent the day in the woods. Sugar Creek, though not sweet, was clear. Zene carried pails full of it to fill the great copper kettle, and slung this over a fire. The horses munched at their feed-box or cropped grass, wandering with their heads tied to their forefeet to prevent their cantering off. Grandma Padgett at the creek's brink, set up her tubs and buried herself to the elbows in suds, and aunt Corinne with a matronly countenance, assisted. All that day Robert went barelegged, and splashed water, wading out far to dip up a gourdful; and he thought it was fun to help stretch the clothes-line among saplings, and lift the scalded linen on a paddle into the tub, losing himself in the stream. Ordinary washdays as he remembered them, were rather disagreeable. Everybody had to wake early, and a great deal of fine-split wood was needed. The kitchen smelt of suds, and the school-lunch was scraps left from Sunday instead of new cake, turnovers and gingerbread.



But this woods wash-day was an experience to delight in, like sailing on a log in the water, and pretending you are a bold navigator, or lashing the rocking-chair to a sled for a sleighride. It was something out of the common. It was turning labor into fantastic tricks.

They had an excellent supper, too, and after dusk the clothes stood in glintly array on the line, the camp-fire shone ruddy in a place where its smoke could not offend them, and they were really like white stones encircling an unusual day.

But when Robert awoke in the night they gave him a pang of fright, and he was sorry his grandma had decided to let them bleach in the dew of the June woods. From his bed in the carriage he could see both the road and the lines of clothes. A horseman came along the road and halted. He was not attracted by the camp-fire, because that had died to ashes. He probably would not have heard the horses stamp in their sleep, for his own horse's feet made a noise. And the wagon cover was hid by foliage. But woods and sight were not dark enough to keep the glint of the washing out of his eyes. Robert saw this rider dismount and heard him walking cautiously into their camp.



CHAPTER XXVII.

A NIGHT PICTURE OF HOME.

Here at last was the robber. After you have given over expecting a robber, and even feel that you can do without him, to find him stealing up in the night when you are camped in a lonely place and not near enough either tent or wagon to wake the other sleepers for reinforcements, is trying to the nerves.

Bobaday sat up in the carriage, bracing his courage for the emergency. He could take a cushion, jump out and attack the man with that. It was not a deadly weapon, and would require considerable force back of it to do damage. The whip might be better. He reached for the whip and turned the handle uppermost. There was no cave at hand to trap this robber in, but a toll-woman should not show more spirit than Robert Day Padgett in the moment of peril.

Though the robber advanced cautiously, he struck his foot against a root or two, and stumbled, making the horse take irregular steps also, for he was leading his horse with the bridle over his arm.

And he came directly up to the carriage. Robert grasped the whip around the middle with both hands, but some familiar attitude in the stranger's dim outline made him lower it.

"Bobby," said the robber, speaking guardedly, "are you in here?"

"Pa Padgett," exclaimed Robert Day, "is that you?"

"Hush! Yes. It's me, of course. Don't wake your grandma. Old folks are always light sleepers."

Pa Padgett reached into the carriage, shook hands with his boy, and kissed him. How good the bushy beard felt against Bobaday's face.

He said nothing about robbers, while his father unsaddled his horse and tied the animal snugly to a limb.

Then Pa Padgett put his foot on the hub and sprang into the carriage.

"Is there room for me to stretch myself in here tonight too?"

"Of course there is. But don't you want to see grandma and aunt Krin?"

"Wait till morning. We'll all take an early start. Have they kept well?"

"Everybody's well," replied Bobaday. "But how did you know we were here?"

"I'd have passed by," said Pa Padgett, "if I hadn't seen all that white strung along. Been washing clothes?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then I made out the carriage, and something like a wagon back in the bushes. So I came up to examine."

"We thought you'd be at the State line," said Robert.

"Oh, I intended to ride out till I met you," replied his father. "But I'd have missed you on the plain road; and gone by to the next town to stop for you, if it hadn't been for the washing. You better go to sleep again now. Have you had a nice trip?"

"Oh, awful nice! There was a little girl lost, and we got her to her mother again, and Zene and the wagon were separated from us once"—

"Zene has taken good care of you, has he?"

"He didn't have to take care of us!" remonstrated Robert. "And last night when there was a fair, I thought he stuck around more than he was needed: There was the meanest boy that stuck up his hose at movers' children."

Aunt Corinne's brother Tip laughed under his breath.

"You'll not be movers' children much longer. The home is over yonder, only half a day's ride or so."

"Is it a nice place?"

"I think it's a nice place. There's prairie, but there's timber too. And there's money to be made. You go to sleep now. You'll wake your grandma, and I expect she's tired."

"Yes, sir, I'm going. Is there a garden?"

"There's a good bit of ground for a garden; and there's a planting of young catalpas. Far as the eye can see in one direction, it's prairie. On the other side is woods. The house is better than the old one. I had to build, and I built pretty substantial. Your grandma's growing old. She'll need comforts in her old age, and we must put them around her, my man."

Bobaday thought about this home to which he and his family were to grow as trees grasp the soil. Already it seemed better to him than the one he had left. There would be new playmates, new landscapes, new meadows to run in, new neighbors, new prospects. The home, so distant during the journey that he had scarcely thought about it at all, now seemed to inclose him with its pleasant walls, which the smell of new timbers made pleasant twice over.

Boswell and Johnson, under the carriage, waked by the cautious talk from that sound sleep a hard day's hunts after woods things induces, and perhaps sniffing the presence of their master and the familiar air of home, rose up to shake themselves, and one of them yawned until his jaws creaked.

"It's the dogs," whispered Bobaday.

"We mustn't set them to barking," cautioned Pa Padgett.

"Well, good-night," said the boy, turning on his cushion.

"Good-night. This caravan must move on early in the morning."

THE END