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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Anything Once, by Douglas Grant
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Anything Once
+
+Author: Douglas Grant
+
+Illustrator: Paul Stahr
+
+Release Date: December 9, 2009 [EBook #30640]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANYTHING ONCE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: He drank deeply, then struggled to a sitting posture,
+his face whitening beneath its tan.]
+
+
+
+
+ANYTHING ONCE
+
+BY DOUGLAS GRANT
+
+AUTHOR OF "THE SINGLE TRACK," "BOOTY," "THE FIFTH ACE," ETC.
+
+Frontispiece by PAUL STAHR
+
+[Illustration]
+
+NEW YORK
+
+W. J. WATT & COMPANY
+
+PUBLISHERS
+
+
+
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY W. J. WATT & COMPANY
+
+PRESS OF BRAUNWORTH & CO.
+
+BOOK MANUFACTURERS BROOKLYN, N. Y.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+ CHAPTER                                              PAGE
+       I.  A Roadside Meeting                            1
+      II.  Partners                                     17
+     III.  The Vendor Of Everything                     41
+      IV.  Under The Big Top                            55
+       V.  Concerning An Omelet                         69
+      VI.  The Red Note-Book                            83
+     VII.  Revelations                                  99
+    VIII.  Journey's End                               118
+      IX.  The Long, Long Trail                        138
+
+
+
+
+ANYTHING ONCE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+A Roadside Meeting
+
+
+The white dust, which lay thick upon the wide road between rolling
+fields of ripened grain, rose in little spirals from beneath the heavy
+feet of the plodding farm-horses drawing the empty hay-wagon, and had
+scarcely settled again upon the browning goldenrod and fuzzy milkweed
+which bordered the rail fences on either side when Ebb Fischel's
+itinerant butcher-jitney rattled past. Ebb Fischel's eyes were usually
+as sharp as the bargains he drove, but the dust must have obscured his
+vision. Otherwise he would have seen the man lying motionless beside the
+road, with his cap in the ditch and the pitiless sun of harvest-time
+caking the blood which had streamed from an ugly cut upon his temple.
+
+But the meat-cart jolted on and out of sight, and for a long time
+nothing disturbed the stillness except the distant whirring of a reaper
+and nearer buzzing of a fat, inquisitive bluebottle fly, which paused to
+see what this strange thing might be, and then zoomed off excitedly to
+tell his associates.
+
+At length there came a dry rustling in the tall standing wheat in the
+field on the opposite side of the road, and a head and shoulders
+appeared above the topmost fence-rail. It was a small head covered with
+tow-colored hair, which had been slicked back and braided so tightly
+that the short, meager cue curled outward and up in a crescent, as
+though it were wired, and the shoulders beneath the coarse
+blue-and-white striped cotton gown were thin and peaked.
+
+The girl darted a swift, furtive glance up and down the road, and
+suddenly thrust a bundle tied in a greasy apron between the rails,
+letting it fall in the high, dusty weeds by the roadside. Next she
+climbed to the top of the fence, and for a moment perched there,
+displaying a slim length of coarse black stocking above clumping,
+square-toed shoes at least two sizes too large for her.
+
+She looked like a very forlorn, feminine _Monte Cristo_ indeed, as
+she scanned the world from her vantage-point, and yet there was a look
+of quiet satisfaction and achievement in her incongruously dark eyes
+which told of a momentous object accomplished.
+
+Then all at once they stared and softened as she caught sight of that
+still figure lying across the road, and in two bounds she was beside him
+and lifted his head against her sharp knees. She noted only casually
+that he was a clean-shaven, tanned young man with brown hair bleached by
+the sun to a warm gold, and that he wore shabby, weather-beaten clothes.
+
+Had she realized that those same worn, faded garments bore the stamp of
+one of New York's most exclusive tailors! that the boots were
+London-made, and the golf-stockings which met the corduroy
+knickerbockers came from one of Scotland's famous mills, it would have
+meant just exactly nothing in her young life.
+
+Her immediate attention was concentrated upon the jagged gash which ran
+unpleasantly close to his temple, and which had begun to bleed afresh as
+she raised his head.
+
+The girl looked about her again and saw that a short distance ahead the
+road was bisected by a bridge of planks with willows bordering it at
+either side. She pulled at the strings which held a blue sunbonnet
+dangling between her narrow shoulder-blades, regarded the sleazy
+headgear ruefully, and then spying the cap in the ditch, she deposited
+her burden gently upon the grass once more and scrambled over to
+investigate her find.
+
+The cap had an inner lining of something which seemed to be like rubber,
+and the girl flew off down the road to return with her improvised bowl
+filled with clear, cold spring water. Dropping on her knees beside the
+unconscious figure, she poured the contents of the cap over his face and
+head.
+
+The young man sputtered, gasped, moaned a little, and opened astonished
+brown eyes upon her.
+
+"How--how the devil did you come here?" he asked ungallantly.
+
+"Over the fence." Her reply was laconic, but it bore an unmistakable
+hint that further query along that line would be highly unwelcome. "Just
+you lay still while I git some more water, an' I'll tie up that head of
+yourn."
+
+The young man's hand went unsteadily to his aching brow and came away
+brightly pink, so he decided to take this uncomely vision's advice, and
+remained quiescent, wondering how he himself had come to be there, and
+what had happened to him.
+
+According to the map, he had surely been on the right road, yet it had
+as assuredly not looked like this one; the other had been a broad, State
+highway, while this----
+
+He closed his burning eyes to shield them from the glare of the sun, and
+a confused memory returned to him of that invitingly green, shady
+pasture which had tempted him as a short cut toward the next village,
+and of something which thundered down upon him from behind and lifted
+him into chaos. Good Lord, and he had only six days left!
+
+"You'd better take a drink of this first an' I kin use the rest on your
+head." A composed, practical voice advised by his side, and he looked up
+gratefully into the snub-nosed, freckled face of his benefactress as she
+held the brimming cap to his lips.
+
+He drank deeply, then struggled to a sitting posture, his face whitening
+beneath its tan at the sudden wrench of pain which twisted the muscles
+of his back.
+
+"Kin you hold the cap steady?" The girl thrust it into his hands without
+waiting for a reply, and, sitting down with her back to him, calmly
+turned back the hem of her gown and tore a wide strip from the coarse
+but immaculately white cambric petticoat beneath.
+
+Dipping it into the water, she bandaged his head not unskilfully, and
+then rose.
+
+"There! I gotta git you over to the shade of them trees, or you'll have
+sunstroke. Wait till I fetch somethin'."
+
+She ran across the road and returned with her greasy bundle under one
+arm, offering the other to him with a gesture as frank as it was
+impersonal.
+
+"Lean on me, an' try to git along--and please kinder hurry!"
+
+She added the last with a note of sudden urgency in her tones and the
+same furtively darting glance with which she had swept the road from the
+fence-top, but the young man was too deeply engrossed with his painful
+effort to rise to observe the look, although her change of tone aroused
+his curiosity. Was this scrawny but good-natured kid afraid some of her
+people would catch her talking to a stranger by the roadside?
+
+Somehow he managed to hobble, with her aid, across the little bridge and
+down the bank of the swiftly racing brook at its farther side to a nest
+in the dense thicket of willow-shoots which completely screened them
+from the road.
+
+The girl eased him down then upon the sward, and, seating herself beside
+him, unrolled the apron she had carried.
+
+"It's the ham that's greased it all up like that," she remarked. "I'd
+have brought a pail, only I didn't want to take any more 'n I had to."
+
+The young man gasped with astonishment as the contents of the
+apron-bundle were exposed: a whole ham glistening with the brown sugar
+in which it had been baked, a long knife, a huge loaf of bread, and,
+wrapped separately in a piece of newspaper, a bar of soap, a box of
+matches, and a bit of broken comb.
+
+"When there's lots of them, ham sandwiches, together with spring water,
+ain't so bad, an' it's near noon," the girl observed, beginning to cut
+the loaf into meager slices with a practised hand. "I should've made
+them thicker, but I forgot."
+
+A starving gleam had come into the young man's eyes at the sight of
+food, but he paused with the sandwich half-way to his lips to glance
+keenly at his companion.
+
+"You've enough here for an army," he declared. "Were you taking it to
+men working in the fields somewhere?"
+
+"No," she replied without hesitation, but with the same air of finality
+with which she had responded to his first question. "You can rest easy
+here till sundown, when the men begin to come in from the harvestin',
+an' then if you holler real loud some of them will maybe stop an' give
+you a lift on your way. There's a railroad about four miles from here,
+an' the slow freight goes by along about ten."
+
+The slow freight! So the girl thought he was a tramp! The young man
+smiled, and glanced down ruefully at his shabby attire. Well, so had
+others thought, whom he had encountered in his journey.
+
+But who and what was the girl herself? She had asked no questions as to
+how he had come to the condition in which she found him, but had nursed
+his hurt, brought him to this cool resting-place; and was sharing her
+food with him as unconcernedly as though she had known him all her life.
+
+That quantity of provisions, the package of humble toilet articles, and
+her furtiveness and haste to get away from the open road all pointed to
+one fact--the girl was running away. But from whom or what? She had
+taken him at his face value, and he had no right in the world to
+question her, at least without giving some sort of account of himself.
+
+"I have no intention of traveling by rail," he assured her. "A little
+while before you found me--I don't quite know how long--I was crossing
+that pasture which adjoins the wheat-field, thinking that this road
+might be a short cut to Hudsondale, when something came after me from
+behind and butted me over the fence. I think my head must have been cut
+open by striking against a stone, for I don't remember anything more
+until you poured that water over my face."
+
+The girl nodded.
+
+"I seen the stone with blood on it right near you; you must have bumped
+off it an' turned over," she averred. "Anybody who goes traipsin'
+through old Terwilliger's pasture is apt to meet up with that bull of
+his."
+
+So she had reasoned his predicament out without asking any of the
+questions that another girl would have heaped upon him.
+
+He turned to her suddenly with a fresh spark of interest in his eyes.
+
+"How did you know that I didn't belong here?" he demanded.
+
+The corners of her lips curled upward in a comical little grimace of
+amusement, and he realized that before they had been set in a straight
+line far too mature for her evident youth.
+
+"No grown men 'round these parts wears short pants, an', anyhow, I knew
+you were different from the way you talk; somethin' like the welfare
+workers, with the hell an' brimstone left out," the girl replied
+soberly. "I'm goin' to talk like you some day."
+
+It was the first remark she had made voluntarily concerning herself, and
+he was quick to seize his advantage.
+
+"Who are you, young lady? You've been awfully kind to me, and I don't
+know to whom my gratitude is due."
+
+"Not to anybody." She turned her head away slightly, but not before he
+saw a flush mount beneath the superficial coating of freckles, and
+marveled at the whiteness of her skin. Hers was not the leathery tan of
+the typical farmer's daughter, inured to all weathers, yet her hands,
+although small, were toil-worn, and there was an odd incongruity between
+her dark eyes and the pale, flaxen hue of that ridiculous wisp of a
+braid.
+
+"I didn't do any more for you than I'd do for a dog if I found him lyin'
+there."
+
+Her naive sincerity robbed the statement of its uncomplimentary
+suggestion, and the young man chuckled, but persisted.
+
+"What is your name? Mine is James--er--Botts."
+
+"Lou Lacey. It was 'L' day, you know, an' there was a teeny bit of lace
+on my dress. I ain't ever had any since."
+
+She added the last with unconscious pathos in her tones, but in his
+increasing interest and mystification the man who called himself "Botts"
+was unaware of it. What on earth could she mean about L day, and if she
+were running away why did she appear so serenely unconcerned about the
+future as her manner indicated?
+
+He felt that he must draw her out, and he seemed to have hit upon the
+right method by giving confidence for confidence; but just how much
+could he tell her about himself? James Botts's own face reddened.
+
+"I'm walking to my home in New York," he explained. "But I'm late; I
+ought to make it by a certain date, and I don't think I'll be able to,
+since my encounter with Terwilliger's bull. Where do you live? I mean,
+where are you going? Where is your home?"
+
+"Nowheres," Lou Lacey replied offhandedly, following with her eyes the
+graceful swoop of a dragonfly over the tumbling waters of the little
+stream.
+
+"Great Scott!" The astounded young man sat up suddenly, with his hand to
+his head. "Why, everybody has a home, you know!"
+
+"Not everybody," the girl dissented quietly.
+
+"But--but surely you haven't been walking the roads?"
+
+There was genuine horror in his tones. "Where did you come from this
+morning when you found me?"
+
+"From Hess's farm, back up the road a piece," she replied with her usual
+unemotional literalness. "I been there a week, but I didn't like it, so
+I came away. The welfare workers got me that place when my time was up."
+
+Her time! Good Heavens, could this little country girl with her artless
+manner and candid eyes be an ex-convict? Surely she was too young, too
+simple. Yet the gates of hideous reformatories had clanged shut behind
+younger and more innocent-appearing delinquents than she.
+
+His eyes wandered over her thin, childish figure as she sat there beside
+him, still intent upon the movements of the glittering dragonfly, and he
+shuddered. Those horrible, shapeless shoes might very well have been
+prison-made, and the striped dress was exactly like those he had seen in
+some pictures of female convicts. Her freckles, too, might have been the
+result of only a few days' exposure to the sun, and he had already
+observed the whiteness of the skin beneath; that whiteness which
+resembled the prison pallor.
+
+Could it be that her very gawkiness and frank simplicity were the result
+not of bucolic nature, but of dissimulation? Every instinct within the
+man cried out against the thought, but a devil of doubt and uncertainty
+drove him on.
+
+"I thought that didn't look like the dress of a farmer's daughter!" He
+essayed to laugh, but it seemed to him that there was a grating falsetto
+in his tones. "You haven't worked in the garden much, either, have you?"
+
+"Garden!" Lou sniffed. "They promised the welfare workers that they'd
+give me outdoor chores to build me up, but when I got there I found I
+had to cook for eighteen farm-hands, as well as the family, an' wait on
+them, an' clean up an' all. Said they'd pay me twelve dollars a month,
+an' I could take the first month's money out by the week in clothes, an'
+for the first week all they gave me was this sunbonnet an' apron. I left
+them the other dress an' things I had, an' I figgered the rest of the
+money they owed me would just about pay for this ham an' bread an' the
+knife an' soap. The comb was mine."
+
+She added the last in a tone of proud possession, and James Botts asked
+very soberly:
+
+"The welfare workers found this position for you, Lou Lacey? But where
+did they find you?"
+
+"Why, at the institootion," she responded, as though surprised that he
+had not already guessed. "I ain't ever been anywhere else; I've always
+been a orphin."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Partners
+
+
+For a moment James Botts turned his head away lest she see the deep red
+flood of shame which had suffused his face. Poor little skinny, homely,
+orphan kid, thrown out to buck the world for herself, and stopping in
+her first flight from injustice to help a stranger, only to have him
+think her a possible criminal! He was glad that his back twinged and his
+head throbbed; he ought to be kicked out into the ditch and left to die
+there for harboring such thoughts.
+
+He was a cur, and she--hang it! There was something appealing about her
+in spite of her looks. Perhaps it was the sturdy self-reliance, which in
+itself betrayed her utter innocence and ignorance of the world, that
+made a fellow want to protect her.
+
+In his own circle James Botts had never been known as a _Sir
+Galahad_, but he had been away from his own circle for exactly
+nineteen eventful days now, and in that space of time he had learned
+much. His heart went out in sympathy as he turned once more to her.
+
+But at the moment Lou Lacey seemed in no momentary need of sympathetic
+understanding. She was pursuing a hapless frog with well-directed shots
+of small pebbles, and there was an impish grin upon her face.
+
+"How old are you?" he asked suddenly.
+
+Lou shrugged.
+
+"I don't know. About seventeen or eighteen, I reckon; at least, they
+told me six years ago that I was twelve, an' I've kept track ever since.
+When I was sixteen, though, and it was time for me to be got a place
+somewhere, the matron put me back a couple of years; we were gettin'
+more babies from the poor-farm than usual, an' I was kinder handy with
+them. She had to let me go now because one of the visitin' deaconesses
+let out that she'd seen me there sixteen years ago herself, an' I was
+toddlin' round then. Oh, I missed him!"
+
+The frog, with a triumphant _plop_, had disappeared beneath a flat,
+submerged stone, and Lou turned to note her companion's pain-drawn face.
+
+"I'm goin' to fix that bandage on your head again," she declared as she
+sprang to her feet. "Is your back hurtin' you very much?"
+
+"Not very." He forced a smile, but his face was grave, for, despite his
+suffering, the problem which this accidental meeting had forced upon him
+filled his thoughts. What was he to do with this girl? In spite of the
+statement that she had "kept track" of her last few years he could not
+credit the fact that she was approximately eighteen; fourteen would be
+nearer the guess he would have made, and it was unthinkable that a child
+like that should wander about the country alone.
+
+He could not bear the thought of betraying her innocent confidences by
+handing her over to the nearest authorities; it would mean her being
+held as a vagrant and possibly sent to the county poor-farm. Perhaps the
+people with whom she had been placed were not so bad, after all; if he
+took her back and reasoned with them, insisted upon their keeping to
+their bargain, and giving her lighter tasks to perform.
+
+Then he remembered his own appearance, and smiled ruefully. Instead of
+listening they would in all probability set the dog on him. Perhaps he
+could persuade her to return of her own accord.
+
+"The people you were working for; their name was 'Hess'?" he asked.
+
+She nodded as she finished fastening the cool compress about his
+forehead.
+
+"Henry Hess an' his wife, Freida, an'--an' Max."
+
+Something in the quality of her tone more than her hesitation made him
+demand sharply:
+
+"Who is Max?"
+
+"Their son." Her voice was very low, but for the first time it trembled
+slightly.
+
+"You don't like him, do you?" He waited a moment, and then added
+abruptly: "Why not?"
+
+"Because he's a--a beast! I don't want to talk about him! I don't want
+even to remember that such _things_ as he is can be let live!"
+
+James Botts turned and looked at her and then away, for the childish
+figure had been drawn up tensely with a sort of instinctive dignity
+which sat not ill upon it, and from her dark eyes insulted womanhood had
+blazed.
+
+"I'd like to go back and lick him to a standstill!" to his own utter
+amazement Botts heard his own voice saying thickly.
+
+The fire had died out of Lou's face and she replied composedly:
+
+"What for? He don't matter any more, does he? We're goin' on."
+
+The last sentence recalled his problem once more to his mind. What in
+the world was he to do with this young creature whom fate had thrust
+upon his hands? Four quarters and a fifty-cent piece represented his
+entire capital at the moment, and if he did put her into the hands of
+the county authorities until his journey was completed and he could make
+other arrangements for her, it would mean a delay on his part now, when
+every hour counted for so much just now.
+
+"Do you know how far we are from Hudsondale?" he asked.
+
+"Not more'n two miles, the farm-hands used to walk there often of an
+evenin' to the movies."
+
+The girl had cleaned her knife in the brook and was now wrapping it in
+the apron, together with the remains of their repast.
+
+"They say that not more'n twenty miles from there you can see the big
+river, but I ain't ever been."
+
+"That's the way I was going," he observed thoughtlessly. "From
+Hudsondale to Highvale, and right on down the west bank of the river to
+New York."
+
+Lou sat back on her heels reflectively.
+
+"All right," she said at last. "I ain't ever figgered on goin's far as
+New York, but I might as well go there as anywhere, and I guess I kin
+keep up with you now your back's kinder sprained. We'll go along
+together."
+
+James Botts gulped.
+
+"Certainly not!" he retorted severely, when he could articulate. "It's
+utterly out of the question! You're not a little child any longer, and
+I'm not old enough to pose as your father. You must think what people
+would say!"
+
+"Why must I?" Her clear eyes shamed him. "What's it matter? I guess two
+kin puzzle out the roads better than one, an' if I have been in a brick
+house with a high fence an' a playground between where never a blade of
+grass grew, for about eighteen years, it looks to me as if I could take
+care of myself a lot better 'n you kin!"
+
+"But you don't understand!" he groaned. "There are certain conditions
+that I can't very well explain, and if I did you'd think I had gone
+crazy."
+
+"Maybe," Lou observed non-committally, but she settled herself on the
+bank once more with such an air of resigned anticipation that he felt
+forced to continue.
+
+"You know an army has to obey orders, don't you?" he floundered on
+desperately. "Well, I'm like a one-man army; there are a lot of rules
+I've got to follow. This is Monday afternoon, and I must reach New York
+by midnight on Saturday; that's ninety miles or more, and you never
+could make it in the world. I've got just a dollar and a half, and I
+mustn't beg, borrow, or steal food or a lift or anything, but work my
+way, and never take any job that'll pay me more than twenty-five cents.
+
+"Of course, if people invite me to get up and ride with them for a
+little I can accept, or if they offer me food, but I can't ask. Even the
+money I earn in quarters here and there I mustn't use for traveling, but
+only to buy food or medicine or clothes with. And the worst of it is
+that I cannot explain to a soul why I'm doing all this."
+
+Lou regarded him gravely, and opened her lips to speak, but closed them
+again and for an appreciable moment there was silence.
+
+"Well, I don't see anythin' in that that says you can't have somebody
+travelin' along with you," she remarked, and that odd little smile
+flashed again across her face. "It don't make any difference to me what
+you can or can't do. _I'm_ foot-loose!"
+
+Not until later was the meaning of that final statement to be made
+manifest to her companion; the one fact upon his mind was that nothing
+he had said had moved her an iota from her original decision. They would
+go along together.
+
+Well, why not? It was obvious that he could not send her back to the
+Hess farm nor hand her over to the authorities. His own appearance would
+not be conducive to confidence in his assurances if he attempted to
+leave her in the care of some country woman until he could return and
+make proper arrangements for her, and the only alternative was that she
+must tramp the roads by herself until she found work, and that was out
+of the question.
+
+At least, he could protect her, and she looked wiry in spite of her
+skinniness; it was as possible that she might make the distance as he,
+with his aching back. But on one point he was determined: when they
+neared the suburbs of New York he would telephone to a certain
+gray-haired, aristocratically high-nosed old lady and persuade her to
+send out her car for this waif.
+
+The child had been kind to him, and he would protect her from all harm,
+but not for all the gilt-edged securities in Wall Street would he have
+the story of his knight-errantry get abroad, nor the unprepossessing
+heroine of it revealed to his friends.
+
+The old lady would find some suitable position for her, and, as she
+evidently possessed no reputation of any sort at the moment, a six-day
+journey in his company could harm it no more if the truth became known
+than if she had tramped upon her way alone.
+
+"All right," he said. "We'll be partners, and I'll do my best to look
+out for you."
+
+She laughed outright, a merry, tinkling little laugh like the brook
+rippling over the pebbles at her feet, and the man involuntarily stared.
+It was the sole attractive thing about her that he had observed.
+
+"Reckon it'll be me that'll look after you!" she retorted. "Oh, there's
+somethin' comin'! Duck in here, quick!"
+
+Seizing her bundle, she wiggled like an eel through the willow thicket
+until she was completely hidden from view, and Botts followed as well as
+he was able, with one hand fending off the supple young shoots from
+whipping back upon his wounded forehead.
+
+He had heard nothing, yet the girl's quick ears had caught the faint
+creaking of a cart along the road, and now a cheerful but somewhat
+shrill whistle came to him in a vaguely reminiscent strain.
+
+"That's Lem Mattles," Lou whispered as she reached behind him and drew
+the willows yet more screeningly about their trail. "He's whistlin'
+'Ida-Ho'; it's the only tune he can remember."
+
+"Who is he?" demanded her companion.
+
+"The Hess's next-door neighbor. She'll stop him right away an' ask if
+he's seen me on the road, an' they'll all be after me, but they'll never
+think of the old cow-trail; one of the hands showed it to me an' told me
+it led clear to Hudsondale, an' came out by the freight-yards."
+
+For a moment she paused with a little catch in her breath. "Think you
+kin make it, Mr. Botts?"
+
+"Sure!" He smiled and held out his hand. "We're partners now, and I'm
+'Jim' to my friends, Lou."
+
+"All right, Jim," she responded indifferently, but she laid her little
+work-worn hand in his for a brief minute. "Come on."
+
+With the bundle under her arm once more she led the way, and her partner
+followed her to where the brook dwindled and the thicket gave place to a
+stretch of woodland, between the trees of which a faint, narrow trail
+could be discerned.
+
+"We're all right now if we kin keep on goin'," announced Lou. "Nobody
+comes this way any more, an' the feller said that the tracks runs
+through the woods clear to the Hunkie settlement by the yards. Feelin'
+all right, Jim?"
+
+"I guess so." Jim put his hand to his side, where each breath brought a
+stab of pain, but brought it down again quickly lest her swift glance
+catch the motion. "It's pretty in here, isn't it?"
+
+"It's longer," replied Lou practically. "An' the sun's gittin' low.
+Let's hurry."
+
+There was little further talk between them, for Jim had already
+discovered that his companion was not one to speak unless she had
+something to say, and he was breathing in short snatches to stifle the
+pain. The track wound endlessly in and out among the trees, and in the
+dim light he would have lost it altogether more than once had it not
+been for her light touch upon his arm.
+
+At length the track turned abruptly through the thinning trees and led
+down to a rough sort of road, on either side of which ramshackle wooden
+tenements leaned crazily against each other, with dingy rags hanging
+from lines on the crooked porches. Slatternly, dark-skinned women gazed
+curiously at them as they passed.
+
+From somewhere came the squalling of a hurt child and a man's oath
+roughly silencing it, while through and above all other sounds came the
+bleating of a harmonica ceaseless reiterating a monotonous, foreign air.
+
+The sun had set, and from just beyond the squalid settlement came the
+crash and clang of freight-cars being shunted together. In spite of his
+pain, Jim realized that nowhere in this vicinity could his
+self-constituted companion rest for the night; open fields or dense
+woodland were safer far for her.
+
+"Let us cross the tracks and push on up that hill road a little," he
+suggested. "We can't stay here, and they'll think we are tramps if they
+catch us by the railroad."
+
+"I guess that's what we are." Lou wrinkled her already upturned nose.
+"But the country would be nicer again, if you ain't give out."
+
+He assured her doggedly that he had not, and they crossed the tracks and
+started up the steep hill road past the coal-dump and the few scattered
+cottages to where the woodland closed in about them once more.
+
+Jim picked up a stout stick and leaned heavily upon it as they plodded
+along, while the twilight deepened to darkness and the stars appeared.
+The girl's step lagged now, but she kept up in little spurts and set her
+lips determinedly.
+
+At length they came to another stream, a rushing mill-race this time,
+with an old mill, moss-covered and fallen into decay beside it, and by
+tacit consent they sank down on the worn step.
+
+"I don't believe we can go any farther," Jim panted. "I guess this is as
+good a place as any to camp for the night, and you can sleep in there."
+
+He indicated the sagging door behind him, and Lou followed his gesture
+with a reluctant eye. Jim noted the glance and, misunderstanding it,
+added hastily:
+
+"I don't believe there are any rats in there, but if you'll lend me your
+matches I'll see."
+
+"Rats!" she repeated in withering scorn. "There was plenty of them in
+the insti--where I come from. I was just thinkin' maybe somebody else
+was sleepin' there already."
+
+She handed over the matches and Jim pushed open the door and entered,
+feeling carefully for rotten boards in the decayed flooring. A prolonged
+survey by the flickering light of the matches assured him that the
+ancient, cobwebbed place was deserted, and he turned again to the door,
+but its step was unoccupied and nowhere in the starlight could he
+discern a flutter of that blue-and-white striped dress.
+
+Could she have run away from him? At the thought a forlorn sense of
+loneliness swept over him greater than he had known since he had started
+upon his tramp. She was tired out; could he in some way have frightened
+her, or had a mad spirit of adventure sent her on like a
+will-o'-the-wisp into the night?
+
+"Lou!" he called, and his voice echoed back. "Lou!"
+
+All at once he noticed what he had not observed before--a single light
+by the roadside in a clearing ahead. Perhaps she had gone there for more
+secure shelter.
+
+His cogitations were abruptly interrupted by a dog's excited barking,
+subdued by distance, but deep-throated. The sound came from the
+direction of the clearing, and, taking up his heavy stick, Jim hobbled
+to the road. If Lou had got into any trouble----
+
+The barking turned to growls; horrible, crunching growls which brought
+his heart up into his throat as he broke into a run, forgetting his
+pain. He had not gained the top of the rise in the road, however, when
+the growls gave place to wild yelps and howls which rapidly diminished
+in the distance and presently Lou appeared holding carefully before her
+something round and white which gleamed in the starlight.
+
+"Good Heavens!" he exclaimed when she neared him. "What on earth have
+you been doing?"
+
+"Git on back 'round the other side of the mill!" ordered Lou. "I gotta
+go slow or I'll spill it."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+But she vouchsafed him no reply until they reached a ledge of rock over
+the tumbling stream, well out of sight of that light on the hill. Then
+she set down the object she was carrying and he saw that it was a bright
+tin pan, filled almost to the brim with milk.
+
+"I thought it would go good with our bread an' ham," she explained
+ingenuously. "I figgered from what I learned at that Hess place that
+they'd leave some out in the summer cellar to cream, for they ain't got
+any spring-house, an' they won't be likely to miss one pan out of
+fifteen. Besides, there's nothin' in them rules you told me that stops
+_me_ from beggin' or borrowin', or stealin', either, an' if I
+_give_ you some of this you ain't got any call to ask me where it
+come from."
+
+This feminine logic left Jim almost speechless, but he managed to gasp
+out:
+
+"The dog! Didn't he attack you?"
+
+"I guess that was what he intended, but I put down the pan an' fit him
+off." She added, with evident pride. "I never spilled a drop, either!"
+
+"Good Lord!" Jim ejaculated. "I believe you'd do anything once!"
+
+"I b'lieve I would, provided I wanted to," Lou agreed placidly. Then her
+tone changed. "There's somebody comin' up the road from Hudsondale like
+all in creation was after 'em."
+
+Indeed, the sound of a horse's mad gallop up the steep road by which
+they had come was plainly to be heard increasing in volume, and the
+grating jar of wheels as though a wagon were being thrown from side to
+side.
+
+"Think it's a runaway?" Jim rose and strained his eyes into the darkness
+at the farther end of the bridge.
+
+"No; driver's drunk, maybe," Lou responded. "The horse's dead beat an'
+he's lashin' it on. Listen!"
+
+Jim heard the wild gallop falter and drop into a weary trot, only to
+leap forward again with a wild scramble of hoofs on the rocky road as
+though the wretched animal was spurred on by sudden pain, and he
+clenched his hands.
+
+As though reading his thoughts, Lou remarked:
+
+"Only a beast himself would treat a horse that way. The folks at the
+farm where I was treated theirs somethin' terrible. If he don't look out
+he'll go over the side of the bridge."
+
+Jim had already started for the road in front of the mill, and Lou
+followed him, just as a perilously swaying lantern came to view, showing
+an old-fashioned carriage of the "buggy" type containing a single
+occupant and drawn by a horse which was streaked with lather.
+
+The light wagon hit the bridge with a bounce which almost sent it
+careening over into the rushing stream below, and at the same moment Lou
+uttered an odd exclamation, more of anger than fear, and straightened up
+to her full height.
+
+"It's Max!" she informed Jim. "You git back behind the mill; you ain't
+fit to fight----"
+
+"What do you take me for?" Jim demanded indignantly. "Max Hess, eh? The
+fellow who treated you so badly back at that farm? I wanted to get him
+this morning, the hound! You go straight back into the mill yourself,
+and leave me to handle him."
+
+But he was too late. The wagon had crossed the bridge and halted in
+front of them so suddenly that the horse slid along for a pace upon his
+haunches.
+
+"Got yer!" a thick voice announced triumphantly, as a burly figure
+wrapped the reins around the whip socket and lumbered to the ground.
+"Yah! I thought there was a feller in it, somewheres!"
+
+He approached them with menacingly clenched fists, but Jim asked coldly:
+
+"Are you addressing this young woman?"
+
+"Young thief, you mean! She's gotter come----"
+
+But Jim, too, had advanced a pace.
+
+"Take that back and get in your wagon and beat it," he announced
+distinctly, with a calmness which the other mistook for mildness. "If
+your name is Hess, this young woman is not going back with you, and I
+warn you now to be off."
+
+"So that's it, is it?" the heavy voice sneered. "She's my mother's hired
+girl, an' she stole a lot o' food an' ran away this mornin'. Comes o'
+takin' in an asylum brat----"
+
+"Take that back, too, you blackguard!" Jim's voice was beginning to
+shake.
+
+"Take nothin' back, 'cept Lou! What's she doin' with you, anyway? Might
+ha' knowed she was this sort----"
+
+He got no further, for something landed like a hammer upon his nose and
+the blood streamed down between his thick lips, choking him. With an
+inarticulate roar of rage he lowered his bull neck and drove at the
+other man, but the other man wasn't there! Then another light, stinging
+blow landed upon his fat face and he flailed out again with a force that
+turned him completely around, for again his adversary had danced out of
+his way.
+
+Every drop of bad blood in the lout was aroused now, for he was the
+bully and terror of his community, and he could not understand this way
+of fighting, nor why his own blows failed to land when this tramp could
+dodge in and punish him apparently whenever he chose.
+
+Jim was many pounds lighter, and although the science of boxing was not
+unknown to him, he was dog-tired and his wrenched back agonized him at
+every move. The sheer weight of the other man was bearing him down, and
+Hess seemed to realize it, for with a grunt of satisfaction he swung in
+and landed a stiff body blow which staggered his adversary.
+
+Hess's left eye was closed, and his lips split, but he hammered at his
+man relentlessly, and at length caught him with a blow which brought him
+to his knees. All the bully's blood-lust boiled at sight of his
+half-fallen victim, and he drew back his heavily shod foot for a
+murderous kick, but it was never delivered.
+
+Something caught that foot from behind and tripped him heavily into the
+dust, then landed upon him like a wildcat and bit and tore at him until
+with a scream of pain he managed to throw it off. Even as he struggled
+to his feet it sprang again upon him, kicking and clawing, and he turned
+quickly, and scrambling into the buggy seat, gathered up the reins.
+
+Lou stood where he had torn himself from her grasp, listening to the
+volley of oaths and clatter of horses's feet until both had been
+swallowed up in the distance. Then she turned to where Jim stood
+swaying, with one hand pressed to his side, and the blood from the
+reopened cut upon his forehead making his face look ghastly in the
+starlight.
+
+"Well," she remarked with satisfaction. "I guess he got more 'n he come
+for, an' we've seen the last of _him!_"
+
+"But Lou!" There was admiration and awe in his tones. "Your method of
+fighting isn't in the Queensberry rules, although I must say it was
+effective. I was going to try to protect you, and it turned out the
+other way!"
+
+"Don't know what queen you're talkin' about, nor what rules she made,
+but when _I_ fight, I fight with everything I've got," Lou declared
+with finality. "Come and let me fix up your head again, an' we'll have
+supper."
+
+An hour later and throughout the night, a slim little figure, rolled in
+a man's shabby coat, lay sleeping peacefully in a corner of the mill,
+while on the doorstep in his shirt sleeves and with a stout cudgel
+across his knees, a weary man drowsed fitfully, on guard.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+The Vendor of Everything
+
+
+When Lou awakened the next morning at dawn it was her turn to find
+herself deserted, but the fact failed to arouse any misgivings in her
+mind. She had found in her brief experience with menfolks that they were
+mostly queer, one way or another, but this one was dependable, and she
+felt no doubt that he would turn up when he got ready.
+
+Unwrapping her bundle, she took the apron, soap, and broken comb, and
+wandered down the bank of the stream until in the seclusion beneath the
+bridge she came upon a pool formed by outjutting rocks, where she
+performed her limited toilet. Then, scrubbing the greasy apron
+vigorously, she hung it on a bramble bush behind the mill to dry, and
+scuttling across the road, made for the woods back of the house where
+she had committed her nocturnal depredation.
+
+An hour later when Jim came slowly up the hill road from the direction
+of Hudsondale, he saw a tiny smudge of smoke rising from a rock well
+hidden in the rank undergrowth at the edge of the stream, and
+approaching it found Lou industriously brushing her coat with a broom
+which she had improvised of small twigs tied together. Beside her,
+carefully cradled in her sunbonnet, were half a dozen new-laid eggs.
+
+"Good morning." He greeted her with a little bow, and sank down on the
+rock. "Were you frightened to find yourself left all alone?"
+
+"Oh, no. I knew you would come back," she replied serenely. Then, as she
+noted his glance fall upon the eggs she added in swift self-defense:
+"You needn't think I stole those; I found them back in the woods a
+piece. O-oh!"
+
+He had carried a large paper package under his arm, and now as he
+unwrapped it her wonderment changed to swift rapture. It contained an
+overall apron of bright pink check, a cheap straw hat, and a remnant of
+green ribbon.
+
+"I ain't had a pink dress since I was ten!" Her dark eyes were
+perilously glistening. "I'd almost have died for one, but you had to
+wear blue after that, 'count of doin' work 'round. Oh, an' that hat! I
+kin put that ribbon on it as easy as----"
+
+She halted suddenly and lowered her eyelashes, adding:
+
+"But you hadn't any call to buy them for me; I can't pay you back right
+now."
+
+Jim's reply was irrelevant.
+
+"Why, your eyes aren't black, after all! They're violet-blue, the
+deepest blue I ever saw!" Then he caught himself up, reddening
+furiously, and after a moment said in a casual tone: "That's all right
+about the things, Lou; you can pay me when you get some work to do. Now,
+go fix yourself up, and we'll have breakfast."
+
+When she had disappeared into the mill he cursed himself for a fool. The
+child had trusted him as a comrade; what would she think if he began
+paying her compliments? What had come over him, anyway? He had seen
+women with violet-blue eyes in more countries than one; beautiful women
+with every enhancement which breeding and wealth could bestow. It must
+have been sheer surprise in discovering any attribute of prettiness at
+all about so uncompromisingly homely a girl as poor little Lou.
+
+With this reassuring reflection he set about replenishing the fire, and
+presently his companion reappeared. The large, flapping hat sat oddly
+upon her small head with its tightly drawn-back hair, but the straight
+lines of the all-enveloping pink gown brought out the slender curves of
+her childish figure, and she didn't seem quite so gawky, after all, as
+she moved toward him over the rocks.
+
+"My, you look nice!" he said cheerfully. "I've brought some rolls
+from----"
+
+"We'll keep them for later," Lou interrupted him firmly. "There's still
+the end of the bread left, and goodness knows where we'll eat again!"
+
+They breakfasted gaily, drinking the remainder of the milk first and
+then boiling the eggs in the pan, but Lou's remark about their next meal
+had made Jim think seriously of the immediate future. He had assumed a
+responsibility which he must fulfill, and his progress thus far under
+the handicaps he had spoken of had been difficult enough alone.
+
+The little pink apron-frock had cost half of his capital, the hat
+twenty-five cents more, and the ribbon a dime. Five cents in addition
+for the rolls had left but thirty-five of the preciously hoarded
+pennies, and he was ninety miles from home, with a host of petty, but
+formidable, restrictions barring his way, and an adopted orphan on his
+hands.
+
+He had been forced to turn his head sharply away when he passed the
+village tobacco store, for every nerve cried out for the solace of a
+good pipe, but he felt more than repaid for the sacrifice by Lou's
+honest rapture over the poor things he had been able to get for her.
+
+Breakfast finished, and the remainder of the ham stowed away in the
+milk-pan, they carefully skirted the house on the rise of the hill, and
+coming out once more upon the road, they forged ahead. The strained
+muscles of Jim's back and side were still sore, but they troubled him
+less than the lack of a smoke, and for Lou it was as though a new world
+had opened before her eyes.
+
+The pleasant, wheat-growing valley had been left behind them, and the
+road from being hilly grew steeper and more steep until it became a mere
+rutted trail over the mountains. More or less dilapidated farm-houses,
+each with its patch of cleared ground, appeared now and then, and before
+the gate of one of these a huge, canvas-covered wagon stood, bearing the
+ambitious legend:
+
+TRAVELING DEPARTMENT STORE
+
+BENJ. PERKINS
+
+A genial-looking fat man in a linen duster and a wide-brimmed hat was
+just clambering in over the wheel when he spied the two pedestrians
+gazing at the turnout, and called good-naturedly:
+
+"Want a lift? I'm goin' inter New Hartz."
+
+"Thanks. That is just where we are going, too," Jim replied promptly.
+"It's awfully good of you to take us along."
+
+"Git right in; plenty of room with me on the front seat here," the
+proprietor of the extraordinary department store responded heartily.
+"Yer sister 'd be nigh tuckered out ef you tried ter walk her inter town
+on a hot day like this."
+
+Jim hoisted Lou in over the big wheel and as he climbed up beside her
+the driver slapped the reins over the broad backs of the two horses, and
+they were off.
+
+"You are Mr. Perkins?" Jim asked, ignoring the assumption of Lou's
+relationship to him.
+
+"That's me!" The other glanced at the fresh bandage about the young
+man's head which Lou had applied just before they started out, and
+inquired: "You git hurt, some ways?"
+
+Jim explained briefly, and changed the subject with a haste which would
+have been significant to a less obtuse host.
+
+"You seem to have a little of everything back here in the van, Mr.
+Perkins."
+
+"Reckon I hev," the other agreed complacently. "From a spool of thread
+to a pitchfork, and from a baby rattle to wax funeral wreaths, there
+ain't nothin' the folk hereabout hev use for that I don't carry. The big
+ottermobile order trucks don't hurt my business none; I ben workin' up
+my trade around here fer twenty year."
+
+Mr. Perkins paused to draw a pipe and tobacco sack from his pocket, and
+Jim's throat twitched. After filling the pipe the genial pedler offered
+the sack. "Hev some?"
+
+Jim hesitated, and his face reddened, but at last he shook his head
+determinedly.
+
+"Thanks; I--I don't smoke."
+
+Lou, who had hunched about in her seat to stare at the assorted array of
+articles in the body of the van, turned and looked curiously at him.
+Surely that hard bulge in the coat upon which she had slept on the
+previous night had been the bowl of a pipe! The eyes which Jim had
+called "violet blue" narrowed for an instant in puzzled wonderment, then
+blurred as with swift understanding she glanced down at the new pink
+apron and stroked it softly. But Jim had gone on talking rather
+nervously.
+
+"You don't get much trade around here, do you? Not many houses in these
+mountains."
+
+"Oh, here and thar," Mr. Perkins replied easily. "Here and thar."
+
+The conversation which ensued was all Greek to Lou, who took off her
+hat, leaned her head against the side of the van, and went peacefully to
+sleep.
+
+She was awakened by a hand gently shaking her shoulder and found that
+the van had been halted in the middle of a maple-lined street before a
+big house which bore a sign labeled: "Congress Hotel." Busy little shops
+shouldered it on either side, and a band-stand stood in the open square.
+
+"Come down, Lou." Jim stood on the sidewalk reaching up for her hands.
+"This is New Hartz."
+
+Mr. Perkins was not in the van, but as Lou scrambled over the wheel he
+appeared from the door of the hotel.
+
+"Young man, I wish I was goin' further, but I ain't, and I want ter talk
+a little business with you." He drew Jim aside. "You and your sister
+wouldn't ha' ben walkin' it in from Hudsonvale if you could ha' paid ter
+come any other way."
+
+"No, Mr. Perkins." Jim backed away smilingly. "We couldn't think of--of
+borrowing, but thanks for the ten-mile lift into New Hartz."
+
+"Glad ter hev your company." Mr. Perkins suddenly dived around to the
+back of the van and his voice came to them muffled from the depths of
+its interior. "Wait jest a minute."
+
+He emerged, red and perspiring, with a small package wrapped in a square
+of something shimmering and white in his hands, which he offered to the
+wondering Lou.
+
+"It's jest a little present fer you, miss," he said.
+
+Lou accepted it gravely.
+
+"Thank you, sir," she said primly. "You ain't got any call to give me
+this, not after bringin' us all the way from Hudsondale."
+
+"I guess I can make a little present if I'm a mind ter, ter a pretty
+little girl like you." Mr. Perkins turned to Jim. "Wish yer both luck on
+your way."
+
+They took leave of the kindly little fat man and moved off up the
+village street and beyond the inevitable car tracks to the dwindling
+country road once more. In the shade of a big tree at a crossroads, Lou
+glanced up at her companion.
+
+"Could we set down here for a spell?" she asked. "I ain't tired, Jim,
+but I feel like I'd die if I can't open this!"
+
+She gestured with Mr. Perkins's gift, and Jim dropped laughingly on the
+grass.
+
+"Of course. Let's see what's in it."
+
+Gravely she seated herself beside him and unknotted the square of white.
+It contained three little handkerchiefs with pink borders, a small
+bottle of particularly strong scent, and a string of beads remotely
+resembling coral. The square in which the articles had been wrapped
+proved to be a large white silk handkerchief with an American flag
+stamped in the corner.
+
+"That must be for you, Jim," Lou said slowly. As in a trance she slipped
+the string of beads over her head, opened the bottle, and poured a few
+drops of its contents upon one of the little handkerchiefs, inhaling the
+rank odor in ecstasy.
+
+Jim watched her, amused but touched also. To that luxury-starved little
+soul the coarse handkerchiefs and cheap perfume meant rapture, and he
+resolved to see that the gray-haired lady in New York provided something
+better for Lou than a servant's position. Education, perhaps----
+
+"It must be past noon, for the shadows have started to go the other
+way." Her voice broke in upon his meditations. "We'd better eat the
+rolls an' ham now. How far is it to where we're goin'?"
+
+"Eight miles; I'm afraid it is a long way for you----"
+
+"Then the sooner we git started the better," the girl interrupted. "I'll
+take the pan an' run back to that yellow house we just passed for some
+water."
+
+Without waiting for a reply she tilted the little scent bottle carefully
+against the tree-trunk and departed, while Jim stretched himself out
+luxuriously in the grateful shade. He was tired, and the still heat of
+noon had a stupefying effect. Lou seemed long in returning, and his
+thoughts grew nebulous until he finally drifted off into slumber.
+
+When he awakened the shadows had lengthened to those of mid-afternoon,
+and there was a delicious, unaccustomed aroma in the air. He gazed about
+him in a bewildered fashion to find Lou sitting cross-legged in the
+grass, and spread upon it on the apron between them were the rolls and
+ham, and a huckleberry pie, still warm, and fairly exuding juice.
+
+"Good Lord, where did you get it?" he demanded.
+
+"Remember that yellow house where I went to git water?" Lou laughed, but
+there was a new note of shyness in her voice. "When we passed it first I
+saw that the currant bushes were just loaded down, an' a woman was out
+pickin' them, though it's ironin' day. I figgered if I pick for her
+she'd maybe pay me, an' she did. I--I guessed you was out of--this."
+
+The freckles disappeared in a rosy blush as with a red-stained hand she
+held out a bag of tobacco.
+
+"Lou! Why, you--you precious kid!" Jim stammered. "You worked in all
+this heat, while I lay here and slept."
+
+"It wasn't far back to New Hartz, an' I'd seen where the cigar-store was
+when we came by. The woman at the house, she give me the pie, an' I've
+got ten cents left besides. I never had ten cents of my own before!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+Under the Big Top
+
+
+A very weary and dust-covered couple trudged to the top of the last hill
+just before sundown and paused, with Lou's hand instinctively clutching
+Jim's arm.
+
+"Is that it; the Hudson?" She pointed over the fringe of treetops below
+them to the broad, winding ribbon of sparkling gray-blue, touched here
+and there with the reflection of the fleecy pink clouds drifting far
+overhead.
+
+Jim turned to look at her, wondering what reaction the view would have
+upon the emotions of this child who, until a brief week ago, had known
+only the "brick house with a high fence and a playground where never a
+blade of grass grew."
+
+Her big eyes followed the river's course until it was lost in a creeping
+mist behind high hills, and she drew a deep breath.
+
+"How far does it go?" she asked.
+
+"To New York; to the sea," he responded. "The ocean, you know."
+
+"My!" There was wonder and a certain regret in her tone. "What a waste
+of good wash-water!"
+
+Jim emitted an inarticulate remark, and added hastily:
+
+"Let us get along down into Highvale. I must try to find a place for you
+to sleep, and remember, Lou, you're my sister if anyone starts to
+question you."
+
+"All right; I don't mind, if you don't." She gave the floppy hat a yank
+that slued the ridiculous green bow to a more rakish angle, and then
+stopped suddenly in the road. "O-oh, look!"
+
+A barn had been built close up to the side of the fence, and freshly
+pasted upon it was the vividly colored poster of a circus. The
+enthusiastic admiration which she had denied to her first view of the
+great river glowed now in Lou's eyes, and she stood transfixed.
+
+"What is it, Jim? The pretty lady on the horse an' the other one up on
+the swing thing without--without any skirt to her, and the man with the
+funny pants an' the big hat that's shootin'----"
+
+"There must be a circus in Highvale--yes, the date says to-night," Jim
+replied.
+
+"'Trimble & Wells Great Circus & Sideshow,'" she read slowly. "I heard
+about them circuses; some of the children seen them before they came
+to--to where I was, an' once one come to town an' sent free tickets to
+us, but the deaconesses said it was sinful an' so we couldn't go. It
+don't look sinful to me; it looks just grand--grand!"
+
+She could have stood for an hour drinking in all the wonders of the
+poster, but Jim hurried her on although he was filled with sympathy.
+Poor little kid! What a rotten, black sort of life she must have had,
+and how he wished that he might take her to this tawdry, cheap affair
+and watch her naive enjoyment.
+
+But their combined capital would not have covered the price of the
+tickets, and there was supper to be thought of, and the hazards of the
+immediate future. For the present the circus must remain an unattained
+dream to Lou.
+
+The steep little hill down to the village seemed very long, and twilight
+was almost upon them when they came to a big, open lot upon which a
+circular tent was in process of erection, with lesser oblong ones
+clustered at one side.
+
+A fringe of small boys and village loungers lined the roadway watching
+the corps of men who were working like beavers within the lot, urged on
+by a bawling, cursing voice which seemed to proceed from a stout,
+choleric man who bounded about, alternately waving his arms and cupping
+his hands to improvise a megaphone.
+
+Jim was tired, and his side throbbed dully, but a sudden inspiration
+came to him, and he drew Lou over to the other side of the road.
+
+"Sit down here and wait for me," he told her. "I won't be long. That's
+where the circus is going to be, and perhaps I can fix it for you to see
+it."
+
+Turning, he shouldered his way through the knot of loungers, and
+entering the lot, approached the stout gentleman.
+
+"Want an extra hand?" he asked. "Anything from a ballyhoo to a
+rough-rider?"
+
+The stout man wheeled and surveyed him in momentarily speechless wrath
+at the interruption. Then his eyes narrowed appraisingly as he noted the
+tall, lean, well-knit figure before him, and he demanded:
+
+"How the h--l did you know that the Wild West act was all knocked to
+pieces?"
+
+"It isn't now," Jim smiled. "Lend me a horse and a pair of chaps, and
+I'll show you in five minutes what's going to be your star act
+to-night."
+
+"You're no circus man, nor a Westerner, neither." The boss still stared.
+"And you don't look like a bum. What's your game, anyway?"
+
+"To pick up a little loose change and get a horse between my knees
+again."
+
+The thought of the forlorn little figure which he had left by the
+roadside kept Jim's smile steady, and added a desperate artificial
+buoyancy to his tired tones:
+
+"Never mind who I am or where I came from; I can ride, and that's what
+you want, isn't it?"
+
+There was an instant's pause, and then the boss bawled a stentorian
+order and grabbed him by the arm.
+
+"Come on. I'll give you a chance to show me what you can do, but if
+you're takin' up my time on a bluff I'll break every bone in your ----
+---- body!"
+
+He led Jim to an open space behind the tents where presently there
+appeared a living convulsion in the shape of a bucking, squealing bronco
+seemingly held down to earth by two sweating, shirtless men.
+
+As Jim surveyed that wickedly lowered head with its small eyes rolling
+viciously, his heart misgave him for a moment. What if he should fail?
+It was long since he had practiced those rough-riding stunts that had
+made him in demand for those society circuses of the ante-bellum days,
+and longer yet since he had learned to break a bronco on the ranch,
+which had been Bill Hollis's hobby for a season.
+
+What if that devil of a pony should best him in the struggle, and he
+should be thrown ignominiously from the lot before the eyes of the girl
+who was waiting patiently for him?
+
+The next instant he had vaulted lightly into the high, Western saddle,
+the two men had jumped back, and the fight was on. The bronco lashed out
+viciously with his heels, leaped sidewise, and then, after a running
+start, attempted to throw his rider over his head, but Jim clung to him
+like a burr; he flung himself down and rolled over, but the young man
+jumped clear and was back into the saddle as the enraged animal regained
+his feet.
+
+The struggle was strenuous but brief, and Jim found himself rejoicing
+that none of the old tricks had failed him, and that the wicked little
+brute was realizing that he had at length been mastered.
+
+When the bronco was thoroughly subjected, Jim rode quietly up to where
+the boss stood with the two other men.
+
+"Want me to pick up a handkerchief for you, or any other of the old
+stunts, now?" he asked. "Don't want to tire this old plug too much for
+the show."
+
+The boss chuckled.
+
+"Get down and talk business with me, young feller," he said. "You won't
+ride Jazz in the ring to-night; he's the rottenest, most treacherous
+little wretch with the outfit, and I only put you on him to call your
+bluff. Want to join the show? We had to leave our rough-rider back in
+the last town with a broken leg."
+
+Jim shook his head.
+
+"Only for to-night," he replied. "My sister and I are beating it South."
+
+"Well, I'll give you five dollars----"
+
+"No, you won't," Jim smiled. "I'll work for you to-night for just
+twenty-five cents."
+
+"Say, you ain't bughouse, are you?" The boss stared again.
+
+"The fourth part of a dollar, two bits!" Jim replied doggedly. Then his
+gaze wandered as though casually over to the cook tent, and he added:
+"However, if you could suggest anything to two hungry people, and
+something else for a little girl who has never seen a circus, Mr.
+Trimble-and-Wells, and who is waiting for me in the road----"
+
+The boss roared.
+
+"D--d if I don't think you're dippy, but you certainly can ride like
+h--l!" he exclaimed. "I'll take you up on that; go get the kid and bring
+her in to supper, and I'll see that she gets a reserved seat for the
+show. Holy smoke! A feller that can stick on Jazz, and wants to work for
+a quarter!"
+
+Thus it was that when the clown came tumbling into the ring to the
+blaring of the band that night, a girl with the green bow all askew upon
+her hat and her violet-blue eyes a shade darker and snapping with
+excitement was perched on one of the front row planks which served as
+seats, clutching a bag of peanuts and waiting in an ecstasy for the
+wonders about to be unfolded.
+
+The ride in the pedler's van, the hours of currant-picking, and the hot,
+hilly, eight-mile trudge were forgotten, and she felt like pinching
+herself to see if she would wake up all of a sudden to find herself once
+more back in the attic at the Hess farm.
+
+The beautiful lady with the fluffy skirts rode round the ring on tiptoe
+and jumped through the flaming hoops at the behest of the gentleman with
+the high silk hat and the long whip; the other lady "without any skirt
+to her" flew dizzily through the air from one trapeze to the other, and
+the performing elephant went through his time-worn tricks with the air
+of a resigned philosopher, and still Lou sat entranced.
+
+Then the dingy curtains parted, and a man loped easily into the ring on
+a wiry, little Western horse. He was the same man she had seen in the
+poster that afternoon; the one with the funny pants and the big hat and
+the red handkerchief knotted around his throat, and he proceeded to do
+marvelous things.
+
+It is highly probable that many a better exhibition of rough-riding had
+been given beneath the big top, but to Lou, as to the villagers
+surrounding her in densely packed rows, it was a supreme display of
+horsemanship, and they expressed themselves with vociferous applause
+when he uncoiled a rope from the peak of his saddle and dexterously
+brought down the bewildered steer which had been chivvied into the ring.
+
+In the row directly in front of Lou sat a quartet who were obviously out
+of place among their bucolic neighbors, but as obviously bent on amusing
+themselves. The ladies of the party wore brilliant sweaters beneath
+their long silk motor coats, and veils floated from their small round
+hats, and the gentlemen wore long coats, too, and had goggles pushed up
+on their caps.
+
+Bits of their chatter, and low-voiced, well-bred laughter drifted back
+to the girl's ears between pauses in the louder comments of her
+immediate neighbors and the intermittent din of the band, and Lou was
+amazed.
+
+Could it be that they were laughing at this glorious, wonderful thing
+that was called a "circus?" Were they ridiculing it, trying to pretend
+that they had seen anything more marvelous in all the world?
+
+They didn't laugh at the rough-rider, she noticed. The ladies applauded
+daintily, and once the stouter of the two gentlemen called out: "Good
+work!" as the rider executed a seemingly daring feat, and the other
+gentleman consulted his flimsy play bill.
+
+Then all thought of the four was banished from Lou's mind, for the rider
+had cantered from the ring and dropped a large white handkerchief upon
+the sawdust of the outer circle just before her. Wasn't that bit of
+color in a corner of a handkerchief an American flag? Jim had told her
+that he was to do some work outside for the circus people that night,
+and the boss had kindly offered her a seat, but that handkerchief----
+
+Suddenly the rider swept by with his horse at a dead run, and swooping
+down, seized the square of white in his teeth, and while the tent rang
+with applause, Lou sat very still. It was Jim! It was he, her "partner,"
+whom the people were all clapping their hands at, who was doing all
+these wonderful things! But his face had looked somewhat pale beneath
+that big hat, and his smile sort of fixed.
+
+The bandage was gone from his head, and the plaster which had replaced
+it was hidden, but she could not have been mistaken. What if he were
+suffering, if his back and side were paining him again? She recalled the
+exhaustion with which he had slept at noontime, and the long, weary hike
+that followed it, and her heart contracted within her. It was for her
+that he was doing this, so that she might see the show!
+
+One of the ladies in the seats before her leaned forward and exclaimed:
+
+"Didn't he look like Jimmie Abbott? If we didn't know that he was on a
+fishing trip up in Canada----"
+
+Lou did not catch the rest of the remark. Her eyes were glued upon the
+rider and her ears stilled to everything around her. With a final
+flourish he dashed for the dingy curtain at the exit and it parted to
+let him pass. It did not close quickly enough behind him, however; not
+quickly enough to conceal from the gaping audience his lurching fall
+from the saddle into the group of acrobats waiting to come on in their
+turn.
+
+Then it was that a small, pink-checked cyclone whirled through the rows
+of closely packed humanity and half-way round the arena to the curtain,
+while above the clamor of the band arose a shrill cry; "Jim! Jim!"
+
+"Did you see her?" The lady who had commented upon the rider's
+appearance demanded of the gentleman beside her. "She called him Jim,
+too; isn't that odd? Do you suppose, Jack, that she is with the circus;
+that little country girl?"
+
+"Oh, it was only part of the show," the stout gentleman replied in a
+bored tone. "Or else the chap was tight. He certainly rode as if he had
+some red-eye tucked under his belt; wonder where he got it around here?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+Concerning an Omelet
+
+
+There was a confused babel of sound in Jim's ears when he awoke
+Wednesday morning; hammering and clanging and the squeak of ropes,
+shouting and cursing, and now and then the roar or yell of some
+protesting animal.
+
+He was lying on a narrow bunk in a tent, and opposite him a
+husky-looking individual was climbing into a pair of checked trousers
+and yawning vociferously.
+
+Jim's head ached confoundedly, and he was stiff and sore, but his mind
+cleared rapidly from the mists of slumber. What sort of a place was
+this, and how had he got there? Then all at once he remembered, and
+there came a horrifying thought. What had become of Lou?
+
+"Where's Lou? M--my sister?" he demanded, sitting bolt upright.
+
+"Hello, there! Come out of it all right, did you?" The occupant of the
+tent hitched a suspender over one shoulder and grinned cheerfully. "The
+kid's took care of! She's with Ma Billings. That was a nasty header you
+took last night. O. K. now? We gotter pull out in an hour."
+
+"Oh, I'm all right; but say, did I pull that bonehead stuff out there
+before all of them?" Jim reddened beneath his tan at the thought. "Fall
+off the horse like that, I mean?"
+
+"In the ring? No, you made a grand exit, and then slumped; nobody saw it
+but the little girl, and she beat it right down to the ring and out
+after you. Fit like a wildcat, too, when we tried to keep her away from
+you till we could find out what had struck you." The other grinned once
+more.
+
+"Some sister, ol'-timer! When we found that big muscle bruise on your
+side, and she told us that you had been tossed by a bull a couple of
+days ago, we didn't wonder you keeled over."
+
+Jim sat up dizzily.
+
+"It was mighty good of you people to take us in for the night," he said.
+"Who is Ma Billings?"
+
+"Marie LaBelle she used to be; worked up on the flyin' rings until she
+got too hefty," his companion explained. "Now she takes care of the
+wardrobes and sort of looks out that the Human Doll don't get lost in
+the shuffle; the midget, you know. Now peel, and I'll give you a
+rub-down with some liniment."
+
+Jim tried to protest, but the husky individual only grinned the broader.
+
+"You may be some boy when it comes to bronco-bustin', but I'm the Strong
+Man in the sideshow, and you haven't a chance."
+
+Meekly Jim submitted to his companion's kindly ministrations, and then
+dressing quickly, made his way out into the glare of the early morning
+sun.
+
+The big top was down, and poles and animal cages were being loaded on
+long trucks as he emerged. An appetizing odor of fried pork floated upon
+the air from the direction of the cook tent, and people seemed to be
+rushing all over the lot in wildest confusion, but Jim caught a glimpse
+of a bit of pink-and-white check through the melee, and headed for it.
+
+Lou was sitting on the grass in cordial confab with a
+melancholy-looking, lantern-jawed man, but at his approach she jumped up
+precipitately and ran to him.
+
+"Oh, Jim, you feelin' all right?" There was a little tremble in her
+voice. "I knew it was you the minute you rode past an' picked up that
+handkerchief Mr. Perkins give you yesterday, an' when you pitched off
+that horse I thought you was dead. You hadn't no call to take any chance
+like that with your back hurt an' that long tramp an' all; but it was
+splendid."
+
+She paused, breathless, and he patted her shoulder. Somehow she didn't
+look so downright homely this morning, or else he was growing used to
+her little, turned-up nose. Her tow-colored hair was looser about her
+face, and where the sun struck a strand of it, it shone like spun gold.
+
+"I'm fine," he assured her. "But who was that man you were talking to
+just now?"
+
+"Him? Oh, that was the clown," Lou replied. "He says the old man is just
+crazy 'bout your ridin', an' if you'll stay along with the show he can
+teach me to stand still for the knife-thrower; the last girl got scared,
+an' quit just because she got a little scratch on the neck. The clown
+says I got the nerve for it, an' I guess I have, only they ain't goin'
+towards New York."
+
+She added the last almost reluctantly, and Jim shuddered. The
+knife-thrower! What wouldn't the little dare-devil be willing to try
+next?
+
+"I guess you have got the nerve," he admitted grimly. "But we're going
+to be in New York by Saturday night, remember. As soon as I get my
+quarter from the stout gentleman over there with the striped vest, we'll
+be on our way."
+
+But it was nearly an hour before they took to the road again. The boss
+insisted on starting them off with a hearty breakfast, and there were
+good-bys to be said to the rough, kindly folk who had taken them in as
+friends. Except for the litter of hand-bills and peanut-shells, the last
+vestiges of the circus were being removed from the lot as they finally
+departed, and what had been to Lou a wondrous, glittering pageant had
+become but a memory.
+
+"I dunno but I'd as lief join a circus," she observed, meditatively,
+after they had traveled a mile or more. "Maybe I could learn in New York
+how to do some of them tricks. I could git the hang of that business up
+on them swings in no time, only I don't like the way that girl
+dressed----"
+
+"Nonsense!" Jim snapped, and wondered at his own indignation. "We'll
+find something suitable for you to do, or you can go to school----"
+
+"School!" she interrupted him in her turn. "I--I'd like to learn things
+an' be like other folks, but I ain't--I mean I'm not--goin' to any
+institootion."
+
+He glanced at her curiously. This was the first time she had made any
+conscious effort to correct herself, the first evidence she had given
+that she had noted the difference between his speech and hers.
+
+"I didn't mean an institution, but a real school, Lou," he explained
+gently. "One where you'll have no uniform to wear, and no work to do
+except to learn."
+
+"I quit learnin' when I was twelve." There was an unconscious note of
+wistfulness in her tones. "I kin read an' do a little figgerin', but I
+don't know much of anythin' else. I couldn't go to school an' begin
+again where I left off, Jim; I'd be sort of ashamed. Oh, look at that
+big wagon drivin' out of that gate! Maybe we'll git a lift."
+
+She had turned at the creak of wheels, and now, as the cart loaded with
+crates and pulled by two lean, sorry-looking horses passed, she gazed
+expectantly at the driver. He was as lean as his team, with a sharp nose
+and a tuft of gray hair sticking out from his chin, and his close-set
+eyes straight ahead of him, as though he were determined not to see to
+the two wayfarers.
+
+"He looks kinder mean, don't he?" Lou remarked. Then impulsively she ran
+after the wagon: "Say, mister, will you give us a lift?"
+
+The old man pulled in his horses and regarded her sourly.
+
+"What'll you pay?" he demanded.
+
+"What's in them crates," she parried.
+
+"Eggs." The response was laconic. "What you gittin' at, sis?"
+
+"Who unloads them when you git to where you're goin'?" Lou persisted.
+
+"At the Riverburgh dock? I do, unless I'm late, an' then I have to give
+a couple o' them loafers around there a quarter apiece to help. I'm late
+to-day, an' if you ain't got any money to ride--Giddap!"
+
+But Lou halted him determinedly.
+
+"If you'll give me and Jim--I mean my brother--a ride, he'll unload the
+crates for you for nothin' when we git there. You'll be savin' fifty
+cents, and the ride won't cost you nothin'."
+
+"Well"--the old man considered for a moment--"I'll do it, if it's only
+to spite them fellers that's allus hangin' 'round the docks. Reg'lar
+robbers, they be. Quarter apiece, an' chicken-feed gone up the way't is.
+Git in."
+
+Jim had overtaken the wagon in time to hear the end of the brief
+conversation, and he wasted no further time in parley, but hoisted Lou
+up over the wheel and climbed in beside her.
+
+As the reluctant horses started off once more the driver turned to him:
+
+"Hope you're a hustler, young man; got to git them eggs off the wagon in
+a jiffy when we git to Riverburgh, in time to ketch the boat. Don't you
+try no scuttlin' off on me after I give you the ride; Riverburgh's a
+reg'lar city, an' they's a policeman on the docks."
+
+"I'll keep the bargain my sister made for me," Jim answered shortly. He
+had observed the poultry-farm from which the old man had started, with
+its miserable little hovel of a house and immense spread of
+chicken-runs, and drawn his own conclusions as to the character of its
+owner. "You needn't be afraid I'll shirk."
+
+"Well," grumbled the other, "I don't hold with pickin' up tramps in the
+road, but I'm sick of handin' out good money to them loafers at the dock
+to unload, an' I ain't got a hired man to take along no more; they're
+allus lazy, good-for-nothin' fellers that eat more'n they work out, let
+alone their wages goin' sky-hootin'!"
+
+"But you must be making a handsome profit, with the price of eggs going
+up, too, all the time," Jim remarked.
+
+The old man gave him a sly glance.
+
+"That's how you look at it," he replied. "They oughter go up twice the
+price they be. My wife's doin' the hired man's work now, an' she's allus
+pesterin' me to git an incubator, but them things cost a powerful sight
+of money, an' I don't hold with new-fangled notions; too much resk to
+them. You can allus sell hens when they git too old to set or lay, but
+what're you going to do with a wore-out incubator?"
+
+He cackled shrilly at his own witticism and then grew morose again. "The
+way things is, there ain't no profit skeercely in nothin'."
+
+They jogged along drowsily through the slumberous heat, while the old
+man continued his harangue against the cost of everything except his own
+commodity, and the underfed horses strained to drag their burden over
+the hilly road. The mountains had been left behind, and all over the
+rolling hillsides about them on either hand the vineyards stretched in
+undulating lines, each heavy with the load of purpling grapes.
+
+Mile after mile passed slowly beneath the creaking wheels of the wagon;
+noon came, and still Riverburgh remained tantalizingly ahead. At last,
+on the rise of a hill, the old man pulled up and pointed with his whip
+to the spreading sweep of brick buildings fronting on the river's edge
+below.
+
+"There's the town," he announced, adding, with a touch of regret: "We're
+ahead of time, after all, an' I could have unloaded by myself. Well, it
+don't matter noways except for the extra drag on the horses. Giddap!"
+
+"There's--there's an ottermobile comin' up behind," Lou ventured. "They
+been tootin' at you for some time, mister."
+
+"Let 'em," the old man cackled shrilly once more. "I've been drivin' on
+these roads afore them things was heard of, an' I don't calc'late to
+turn out for 'em."
+
+The warning of the siren sounded again disturbingly close, and the rush
+of the oncoming car could be plainly heard. Jim glanced at the old man,
+and, noting the stubborn set of his jaw, said nothing; but Lou spoke
+again, and her voice held no note of alarm, but rather indignation at
+the obvious lack of fair play.
+
+"But they got a right; you're on their side of the road," she exclaimed.
+"If you'd give them their half, mister, they could pass easy."
+
+"Don't calc'late to let 'em," he responded obstinately. "Ain't goin' to
+take their dust if I kin help it."
+
+Deliberately he tugged on the left reins and headed the team straight
+across the road. Lou gave a quick glance over the side of the wagon and
+behind, and then gripped Jim's arm. He turned and caught one glimpse of
+her set face, and then with a roar and a grinding crash they both felt
+themselves lifted into the air and landed in some golden, slimy fluid in
+the ditch.
+
+"Lou, are you hurt?" Jim tried to wipe the clinging stuff from his eyes
+and ears with his sleeve. "Where are you?"
+
+The rapidly diminishing clatter of horses' hoofs down the hill, and the
+old man's vigorously roared recriminations assured him of the safety of
+the rest of the entourage even before Lou replied.
+
+"Not hurt a mite, but I'm laughin'!" she exclaimed breathlessly. "Oh,
+Jim, you--you should have seen it. That ottermobile hit square in the
+middle of the wagon, and there ain't--isn't--a single egg----"
+
+"Here, you!" the old man, dripping from head to foot with the golden
+slime, rushed up and tugged excitedly at Jim's arm. "Come on an' help me
+to ketch them horses! What'd I bring you along for? Let the girl be, I
+don't ker if her neck's broke! I got to lodge a complaint against them
+rascals, an' have 'em stopped! You're my witnesses that they run into
+me, an' I'll make 'em pay a pretty penny----"
+
+"I care whether my sister's neck is broken or not!" Jim retorted grimly.
+"Go after your own horses. I engaged to unload eggs, and it looks as if
+the job was finished. Lou, are you sure you're all right?"
+
+The old man danced up and down in the road, spattering flecks of egg
+about him.
+
+"We'll see about that," he shrilled. "You come along with me! You're my
+witnesses----"
+
+"We'll be your witnesses that you were on the wrong side of the road,
+and knew it," Jim helped Lou to her feet. "They warned you, and you
+wouldn't turn out."
+
+With an outburst of inarticulate rage the old man dashed off down the
+road, and Lou, helpless with laughter, clung to Jim's slippery sleeve.
+
+"Don't mind him," she gasped. "Old skinflint! Oh, Jim, you l-look like
+an omelet."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+The Red Note-Book
+
+
+For a moment Jim laughed with her; then the seriousness of their
+situation was borne in upon him, and his face sobered.
+
+"It's the kind of an omelet that won't come off in a hurry, I'm afraid,"
+he said. "How on earth are we going to walk into Riverburgh like this?"
+
+It was the first time that he had appealed to her, and Lou's laughter
+ceased also, but her cheerful confidence did not fail her.
+
+"We gotter find some place where we can git cleaned up, that's all," she
+replied practically. "Most anybody would let you do that, I guess, if
+you told them what happened, an' if you can't ask--why, I kin. Anybody
+'cept a mean old thing like that! I s'pose I ought to be sorry that his
+wagon's broke an' his eggs are all over us instead of where they was
+goin', but I'm not a mite. Long's he wasn't hurt, I'm kinder glad."
+
+"Still, those people in the car ought to have stopped to see the extent
+of the damage they had done, even if they did have the right-of-way,"
+Jim observed. "The old fellow had his grievance, but he got my goat when
+he said he didn't care if your neck was broken or not, and I wouldn't
+have helped him if I could."
+
+"'Goat'?" Lou repeated.
+
+Jim had no opportunity to explain, for at that moment a woman in a faded
+gingham gown toiled hurriedly over the brow of the hill, and, on seeing
+them, stopped, with one hand at her breast.
+
+"Oh!" she gasped. "There's wasn't anyone hurt, was there? I saw the
+accident from my porch, and I came just as quick as I could."
+
+Jim explained, and the woman listened, wide-eyed.
+
+"You both come straight along with me," she invited when he had
+finished. "I'll lend you some overalls, and you and the little girl can
+just sit around while your clothes dry."
+
+She led the way back to a tiny but very neat cottage, with flowers
+blooming in the door-yard and a well-tended truck-garden in the rear.
+Broad hay-fields stretched on either side, but only two little boys were
+visible, tossing the hay awkwardly with pitchforks almost bigger than
+they were themselves.
+
+The woman left them standing for a minute on the back porch, and then
+came out to them, bearing a cake of soap, a towel, and a pair of
+overalls and shirt, which, although immaculately clean, bore many
+patches and darns, and were deeply creased, as though they had been laid
+away a long time.
+
+"Take these down to the barn." She handed them to Jim. "You'll find a
+spigot there, and cold water's best for egg-stains. I left some rags in
+the empty box-stall that you can use to clean your shoes, and then, if
+you'll give me your clothes that you've got on now, I'll soak them and
+get them out while the sun's high; corduroy takes a long time to dry."
+
+When Jim had expressed his gratitude and departed for the barn, the
+woman led Lou into the kitchen, and, providing her also with clean
+garments, she dragged a wash-tub out on the porch.
+
+"I--if you'll let me, I'd like to wash my own things and Jim's." Lou
+appeared shyly in the door in a gown several sizes too large for her.
+"He'd like it, too, I think, and he can help with the hayin' till the
+things git dried out enough, so's we kin go on."
+
+"Oh, would he?" the woman asked quickly. "I'd pay him well if he's
+looking for work; I can't get any hands, though I've tried, and the hay
+is rotting for want of being turned. I didn't think I'd seen you two
+around here before, but I've known old Mr. Weeble always."
+
+"You mean that--that with the egg-wagon? He was givin' us a lift into
+Riverburgh; we're just traveling through," Lou added shortly.
+
+"Did he pick you up back near his place?" At Lou's nod the woman
+exclaimed: "Then you two haven't had a bite of dinner! You put your
+things to soak and I'll go right in the house and get you up a little
+something; it's past two."
+
+Lou started to protest, but the woman disappeared into the kitchen, and
+Jim appeared from the barn. He was attired in a shirt which strained at
+his broad shoulders, and overalls which barely reached his shoe-tops.
+
+The girl noticed something else also as he turned for a moment to look
+toward the field where the little boys were so valiantly at work; a
+red-leather note-book, which she had never known that he carried, bulged
+now from the all too small overall-pocket.
+
+"You can bet I'll pitch hay for her till sundown," he declared, when Lou
+had explained the situation to him. He dropped beside the tub the bundle
+of egg-soaked clothing which he carried, and added: "It is mighty good
+of her to do all this for us, isn't it? I tell you, Lou, the credit side
+of the list is going up even if it did have a bit of a jolt this
+morning, and you're the biggest item on it."
+
+This speech was wholly unintelligible to the girl, but she bent over the
+tub without reply, and Jim went on hurriedly, aware that he had made a
+slip of some sort.
+
+"I wonder where all the men of the family are? She can't get any
+hands----"
+
+"_There_ are all the men of the family." The woman had reappeared
+in time to catch his last remark, and she pointed out toward the two
+small toilers with a faint smile. "There was another, their father--my
+son--but he died; so we're doin' the best we can by ourselves. But
+there's a little bite ready for you on the end of the kitchen-table, and
+it's getting cold."
+
+The food tasted good, and the little red cloth beneath the dishes was
+clean, but the signs of carefully concealed poverty were everywhere
+visible to Jim's eyes, and he suspected another reason for the lack of
+farm-hands than scarcity of labor. He hurried through his meal, and went
+at once to the hay-field, while Lou, after insisting on clearing the
+dishes away, went back to the wash-tub, and their hostess returned to
+her own belated ironing.
+
+Upon the girl's usually serene brow there was a frown of perplexity as
+she worked, and her thoughts were far afield, for in that backward
+glance which she had given from the egg-wagon to the approaching car
+just before the crash came she had recognized in its occupants the
+quartet who sat in front of her at the circus the previous evening. The
+ladies were closely swathed in their veils, but she remembered the
+distinctive plaids of their silk coats, and the stout gentleman who sat
+between them in the tonneau, with goggles and hat snatched off in the
+excitement of the impending smash-up, was unmistakably the one who had
+called out "Good work!" when Jim was performing on the horse.
+
+The other gentleman who had made up the quartet was the one who drove
+the car, and her quick glance showed her that he was even then trying to
+avoid the crash.
+
+The details had been photographed upon her brain with instantaneous
+clarity, but it was not with these that her thoughts were busied; the
+remark which the younger lady had made at the circus just before Jim
+rode toward the exit-flap of the curtain had returned and could not be
+banished from her mind:
+
+"Didn't he look like Jimmie Abbott?"
+
+Her companion had told the girl that his name was Botts, but beyond
+that, and the fact that he was on the way to New York, he had vouchsafed
+no further information about himself, nor had Lou asked. She could not
+understand why his journey was hedged about with so many silly rules,
+nor why he chose to obey them; that was his affair, and he was just a
+part of this wonderful adventure which had started with her departure
+from the Hess farm.
+
+Yet away down in her heart was a little hurt feeling for which she could
+not have assigned a cause even to herself. Of course she trusted him,
+and he would not have lied to her, but could there really be another
+"Jim" in the world who looked quite like him, and whose name was so
+nearly the same?
+
+She had sensed instinctively, and the more clearly perhaps because of
+her lack of worldly experience, that he was different, not only from
+herself, but from all whom they had encountered upon their journey, yet
+could he really be that grand young lady's "Jimmie," after all?
+
+As she stepped aside to lift the basket into which the sodden garments
+had fallen from the wringer, her foot chanced to crunch upon something
+that yielded with a crisp rustle, and she glanced down. It was the
+little red note-book which she had seen in Jim's overall-pocket when he
+came from the barn; it must have fallen out as he crossed the porch to
+go to the hay-field.
+
+It had opened, and the front cover was pressed back, with the stamp of
+her heel, showing plainly upon the first page, and as she stooped slowly
+and picked it up Lou could not help reading the three words which were
+written across it in a bold, characteristic hand:
+
+                        JAMES TARRISFORD ABBOTT
+
+There was something else, an address, no doubt, written below, but Lou
+closed the book quickly and dropped it upon a near-by bench, as though
+it burned her fingers. For a moment she stood very still with her eyes
+closed and her little water-shriveled hands tightly interlocked, and in
+that instant of time the happy, careless co-adventurer of the last two
+marvelous days vanished, and in his place there appeared a stranger, a
+man of the world, in which that young lady of the motor-car moved.
+
+For the first time in Lou's life a panic seized her, a desperate longing
+to run away. She opened her eyes and looked across the hay-fields to
+where that tall, stalwart figure worked beside the two smaller ones.
+Even from that distance he looked different, somehow; he wasn't the same
+Jim.
+
+Slowly, with a mist before her eyes she picked up the heavy basket, and,
+descending the steps of the porch, spread the garments upon the
+bleaching grass to dry. The glittering glories of the circus had turned
+all at once to a black shadow in her memory, and she wished fervently
+that she had never seen it nor those rich people who had come to make a
+mock of it, but had stayed to applaud Jim.
+
+But why shouldn't they, even if they hadn't recognized him? He belonged
+to their world, not hers. Then a new, inexpressibly forlorn thought came
+to her; what was her world, anyway? She didn't belong anywhere; there
+was no place for her unless she made one for herself, some time.
+
+With that, in spite of this strange, new weariness which dragged at her
+heart, Lou's indomitable spirit reasserted itself, and her small teeth
+clamped together. She _would_ make herself a place somewhere,
+somehow.
+
+Returning to the house, she took the ironing from her tired hostess's
+hands, and worked steadily until at sundown the high treble of childish
+voices came to her ears, and Jim's merry, laughing tones in reply sent a
+quick stab through her, but she put down the iron and went determinedly
+out on the porch.
+
+The two little boys came shyly on up the steps, but Jim had paused to
+feel of his coat, as it lay on the grass, and looked ruefully at her.
+
+"It's wet still, I'm afraid," she remarked composedly, as she picked up
+the red note-book and held it out to him. "Is this yourn? It looks as
+though it must have dropped out of your pocket an' somebody stepped on
+it."
+
+If the girl noted the swift change which came over his face she gave no
+sign as he came forward and took the book from her hands.
+
+"Yes, it's mine." He opened and closed it again, and then looked up
+uncertainly into her face as she stood on the steps above him, but Lou
+was gazing in seeming serenity out over the fields, which were still
+shimmering in the last rays of the sun. "I--I'll tell you about this
+some time, Lou. It's funny."
+
+"What's funny?" she asked, with a little start, as though he had
+interrupted some train of thought of her own, far removed from hateful
+little red books.
+
+"If you think it's goin' to be funny to travel in wet clothes to-night,
+just wait till you git started."
+
+But they did not start upon their journey again that night, after all.
+Their kindly hostess insisted upon their remaining until the morning, at
+least, and when the supper dishes were cleared away Lou wandered off by
+herself down the little lane which led to the pasture.
+
+There would be three days more, and then their journey's end. Upon one
+thing she had decided: there would be no school for her! She was going
+to work as quickly as she could find something to do. Mr. James Abbott
+must be paid back for the little pink-checked frock and the hat with the
+green bow, and then she would drop from his sight. Surely in that great
+city, with its hundreds and hundreds of people, she would be able to
+disappear.
+
+Reaching the pasture, she stood at the gate with her arms resting upon
+the topmost rail, and was so deep in reflection that she did not hear a
+step behind her until a hand touched her shoulder, and Jim's voice asked
+quietly:
+
+"What are you doing off here by yourself, Lou? Mrs. Bemis didn't know
+what had become of you, and I've been looking everywhere."
+
+"I dunno," Lou answered truthfully enough. "I been thinkin' 'bout the
+institootion where I come from; it was seein' them little boys put me in
+mind of it, I reckon. I was kinder wonderin' what it would be like to
+really belong to anybody."
+
+There was neither pathos nor self-pity in her tone, but rather a cold,
+dispassionate speculation that froze the words of awkward sympathy which
+rose to his lips, and he remained silent.
+
+"I did once, you know," she continued, "belong to some--body, I mean. I
+had on a white dress all trimmed with lace when they found me in the
+station at the junction an' took me up to the institootion; it was the
+only white dress I ever had."
+
+"Where was this institution, Lou?" Jim asked. "You've never told me, you
+know."
+
+Lou shrugged.
+
+"Oh, it was 'way up at a place called Mayfield's Corners; I was most
+three hours on the train before I got to the station nearest Hess's
+farm."
+
+A vicious desire came over her to shock and repulse that inexplicable
+thing in him which set him apart from her and made him one with the
+world in which those others moved; that stout gentleman and the young
+lady who had called him Jimmie. She added deliberately:
+
+"I told you what I did there--at the institootion, I mean: scrubbed an'
+cooked an' washed an' tended babies an' wore a uniform, just like any
+other norphin, I guess. Slep' in the garret with the rats runnin' over
+the floor, an' got up in the mornin' to the same old work. It warn't a
+State institootion, you see; just a kind of a charity one, run by the
+deacons of the church; I ain't got much use for charity."
+
+"I shouldn't think you would have," he exclaimed. "But it's all behind
+you now, Lou. We made fourteen miles to-day from Highvale--or will have
+when we walk down the hill to Riverburgh to-morrow, and it is only sixty
+miles further to New York."
+
+"That's good," Lou said, but without enthusiasm. "Do we start at
+sun-up?"
+
+"I thought I'd like to work for Mrs. Bemis for a couple of hours first
+and get the hay turned in that south field," Jim answered. "She's been
+so good to us, and she'll need the stuff this winter for those two old
+plugs out there."
+
+He pointed out into the pasture, where two horses made mere blotches of
+deeper shadow beneath a tree.
+
+Lou laughed suddenly, softly, but it seemed to him that the rippling,
+liquid note had vanished.
+
+"What's funny?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, nothin'. I was just thinkin' of you last night in that circus. You
+rode so--so wonderfully. I wasn't laughin' at that, but it just come to
+me how funny it would have been if any of your friends was to have seen
+you!"
+
+Jim glanced at her sharply, but in the starlight her face seemed merely
+amused as at a whimsical thought.
+
+"Why would it have been funny?" he insisted. "Of course I never rode in
+a real circus before, and I guess I was pretty rotten, but why would my
+friends have laughed?"
+
+"I dunno." Lou dropped her arms from the fence-rail and turned away.
+"Let's go back to the house. I--I'm pretty tired."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+Revelations
+
+
+The next morning was a trying one for them both. Jim felt dully that
+something was the matter, but the girl's manner baffled him, and he
+could not make up his mind as to whether she had glanced in the
+note-book or not. It did not seem like her to do so deliberately, but if
+she had he could only make things worse by broaching the subject, since
+he was not at the moment in a position to explain.
+
+As for Lou, she was trying her best to appear her old self with him, but
+dissimulation was an art in which she was as yet unversed, and her whole
+nature rebelled against playing a part. Only her pride kept her from
+betraying her disappointment in him and running away. She told herself
+fiercely that he didn't care what she thought of him; they were only
+partners met by chance on the road, and perhaps never to see each other
+again after the city was reached.
+
+If he had lied to her about his name that was his own business, and she
+would not admit even to herself that this deception was not the only
+reason for the strange, hurt feeling about her heart.
+
+She rose at dawn, and, creeping down from the clean little room which
+Mrs. Bemis had given her, she had the stove going and breakfast on the
+table by the time the little family was awake, and Jim appeared from the
+barn, where he had slept in the loft.
+
+While he worked in the field during the early morning hours, she
+finished the ironing, and by ten o'clock they were ready once more to
+start upon their way.
+
+Mrs. Bemis insisted upon paying them both for their work, but it was
+only out of consideration for her pride that Jim would accept fifty
+cents of the two dollars she offered him.
+
+"I only work for a quarter a time," he told her gravely. "One for
+yesterday and one for this morning; my sister can tell you that. I--I
+would like to write to you if I may when we reach home, Mrs. Bemis. Will
+you tell me what address will find you? You see, I want to thank you
+properly for all your kindness to us, and I don't know whether this is
+the township of Riverburgh or not."
+
+"It's the Stilton post-office," the little woman stammered. "Of course,
+I'd like to hear from both of you, but you mustn't thank me! I don't
+know what I should have done without your help with the hay! And your
+sister, too; I do hope you both find work where you're going."
+
+To Lou's amazement Jim produced the little red note-book and wrote the
+address carefully in it, adding what appeared to be some figures at one
+side. Then he thanked their good Samaritan and they took their leave.
+
+"That makes a dollar and ten cents!" he remarked confidentially as he
+and Lou went down the hill road together toward the bustling little city
+nestled at the river's edge. "Quite a fortune, isn't it?"
+
+"She gave me a quarter for helping with the ironing, too, so that's
+thirty-five that I've got." Lou exhibited a hard knot tied in the corner
+of her handkerchief. "I couldn't get all of the egg out of my hat, but
+it's good enough. Where do we go from Riverburgh?"
+
+Jim gave a groan of mock despair.
+
+"That's the dev--I mean, the deuce of it!" he exclaimed. "We've got to
+cross the river there someway, and go on down on the other side. We
+can't keep on this, or we will run into New Jersey and--and I mustn't
+leave the State."
+
+He blurted the last out in a dogged, uncomfortable way, but Lou did not
+appear to notice his change of tone.
+
+"Well, there look to be plenty of boats goin' back an' forth," she
+observed placidly. "I guess we can get over."
+
+"But you don't understand. I--I can't pay our way over; that's another
+of the things I mustn't do." Jim flushed hotly.
+
+"I wish I could tell you all about it."
+
+"It don't make any difference." Lou kept her eyes fixed straight ahead
+of her. "There ought to be some way for you to work your way across."
+
+The road dipped sharply, and became all at once a pleasant, tree-lined
+street with pretty suburban cottages on either hand. To the east and
+north hung the smoke cloud of countless factories, but their way led
+them through the modest residential quarter. The street presently turned
+into a paved one, and trolley lines appeared; then brick buildings and
+shops, and before they knew it they were in the busy, crowded business
+thoroughfare.
+
+Lou would have paused, gaping and wondering if New York could be
+anything like this, but Jim hurried her down the steep, cobbled way
+which led to the ferry. Once there, he took her to a seat in the
+waiting-room.
+
+"Sit here and wait for me," he directed. "I'm going to run back up to
+the shops and get some provisions for us to carry along, and then I'll
+arrange about getting across. I shan't be long."
+
+When he came down the hill again some twenty minutes later laden with
+packages, he found Lou waiting for him at the door of the ferry-house,
+with a little exultant smile about her lips.
+
+"Come on," she commanded shortly. "I've fixed it for us to get over, but
+we gotta hurry. The boat's a'most ready to start."
+
+"How in the world----" he began, but without deigning to explain she led
+him to the gate. It was only after he had perforce preceded her that he
+saw her hand two tickets to the officials at the turnstile.
+
+"Lou!" he exclaimed reproachfully.
+
+"Well, it's all right, isn't it?" she demanded. "You kin ride if anybody
+asks you, can't you? I'm invitin' you to ride on this boat with me, Mr.
+Botts!"
+
+In spite of her assumed gaiety, however, the trip across the river was a
+silent one, and when the landing was reached and they hurried out of the
+settlement to the open country once more, both were acutely aware that
+the intangible rift was widening. It was as though they walked on
+opposite sides of the road, and neither could bridge the distance
+between.
+
+Both doggedly immersed in their own reflections, they walked on rapidly
+in spite of the heat and with no thought of time or distance until Jim
+realized that his companion was lagging, and glanced up to see that the
+sun had started well upon the western trail.
+
+"By Jove! You must be almost starved!" he cried. "I never thought--why
+didn't you wake me out of this trance I seem to have been in, and tell
+me it was long past time for chow? We must have walked miles!"
+
+"I didn't think, either." Lou glanced about her wearily. "I don't see
+any house, but I kinder think I hear a little brook somewhere, don't
+you? Let's find it, an' then hurry on; if we've got to do sixty miles by
+the day after to-morrow we got to be movin' right steady."
+
+They found the little brook, and ate of their supplies and drank
+heartily, for they were both famished by the long walk, but all the
+carefree joyousness seemed to have gone out of the adventure, and when
+Lou discovered that the knot in the corner of her handkerchief had
+become untied and the remainder of her capital was gone, it appeared to
+be the last cloud needed to immerse her in gloom.
+
+Her feet were blistered and every muscle ached with fatigue, but she
+shook her head when Jim asked if she were too tired to go on, and limped
+determinedly out into the road after him. She had accepted his
+companionship to New York, and she would drop in her tracks before she
+would be a drag on him and prevent his reaching there in the time which
+was so mysteriously important to him.
+
+A mile farther on, however, an empty motor van picked them up, and
+seated at the back with her feet hanging over, Lou promptly fell asleep,
+her head sagging unconsciously against Jim's shoulder. He did not touch
+her, but moved so that her head should fall into a more comfortable
+position, and looked down with new tenderness at the tow-colored hair.
+The ridiculous, outstanding braid was gone, and instead, a soft knot
+appeared low on the slender, sun-burned neck, with tiny tendrils of
+curls escaping from it.
+
+What a game little sport she had proved herself to be! He wondered how
+many girls of his own set would have had the courage and endurance for
+such a test. Then to his own amazement he found himself thinking of them
+with a certain sense of disparagement, almost contempt. They would not
+have had the moral courage, let alone physical endurance.
+
+Of course, this sort of vagabondage would be outrageous and utterly
+impossible from a conventional standpoint, but with Lou it had been a
+mere venture into Arcady, as innocent as the wanderings of two children.
+And Saturday it must end!
+
+At the outskirts of Parksville he called to the good-natured truckman
+who sat behind the wheel, and the latter obligingly put on the brakes.
+
+"My sister and I don't want to go right into the town, so we'll get out
+here if you don't mind," Jim said. "This lift has been a godsend, and I
+can't thank you, but I've got the name of the company you're working for
+in New York and I'll drop around some night when I'm flush and you're
+knocking off, and we'll see if the old burg is as dry as it's supposed
+to be."
+
+"You're on!" The driver grinned. "Got a job waitin' for yer? We need
+some helpers."
+
+"I've got a job." Jim thought of that "job" in the mahogany-lined suite
+of offices which bore his name on the door, but he did not smile. "I'll
+look you up soon. Come on, Lou; here's where we change cars."
+
+She rubbed her eyes and gazed about her bewilderedly in the gathering
+darkness as he lifted her to the ground and the truck rumbled off.
+
+"Where--where are we now?" she asked sleepily.
+
+"Just outside Parksville; see those lights over there?" he replied. "We
+must have walked more than ten miles before that motor van came along,
+so it isn't any wonder that you were tired, even if you wouldn't admit
+it. Just think, nineteen miles to-day!"
+
+He was wondering, even as he spoke, what they were to do for the night.
+He had not enough money to secure even the humblest of lodgings for her,
+and he knew that if they ventured as vagrants into the town they would
+be in danger of apprehension by the authorities. But Lou solved the
+question quite simply.
+
+"Isn't that big thing stickin' up in that field a haystack? I--I'd like
+a piece of that sponge cake that's left from what we ate at noon, and
+then crawl in there an' sleep straight through till to-morrow," she
+declared. "Did you want to go on any further to-night?"
+
+"Heavens, no. I was just wondering--I don't see why it couldn't be
+done," he replied somewhat haltingly. "There isn't any house near, and I
+don't think anything will hurt you."
+
+The latter probability seemed of no moment to Lou. She fell asleep again
+with her sponge cake half eaten, and he picked her up and nestled her in
+the hay as though she were in very truth a child. Then, as on the first
+night at the deserted mill near Hudsondale, he sat down at the foot of
+the haystack, on guard.
+
+It was well for them, however, that the haying was done in that
+particular field, and no farmer appeared from the big white house just
+over the hill, for in spite of his most valiant efforts Jim, too,
+slumbered, and it was broad day when he awoke.
+
+Lou had vanished from the haystack, but he found her at a little spring
+in a strip of woodland on the other side of the road, and they
+breakfasted hastily, conserving the last fragments of food for their
+midday meal, and started off.
+
+They had left the last chimney of Parksville well behind them when Jim
+suddenly observed:
+
+"You're limping, Lou. Let me see your shoes."
+
+She drew away from him.
+
+"It's nothin'," she denied. "My shoes are all right. I--I must've slept
+too long last night an' got sort of stiffened up."
+
+The freckles were swamped in a deep flood of color, but Jim repeated
+insistently: "Hold up your foot, Lou."
+
+Reluctantly she obeyed, disclosing a battered sole through the worn
+places of which something green showed.
+
+"I--I stuffed it with leaves," she confessed, defensively. "They're real
+comfortable, honestly. I'm just stiff----"
+
+Jim groaned.
+
+"I suppose they will have to do until we reach the next town, but you
+should have told me."
+
+"I kin take care of myself," Lou asserted. "I've walked in pretty near
+as bad as these in the institootion. We'd better get along to where
+there's some houses 'cause it looks to me like a storm was comin' up."
+
+The sun was still blazing down upon them, but it was through a murky
+haze, and the air seemed lifeless and heavy. Great, white-crested
+thunder heads were mounting in the sky, and behind them a dense
+blackness spread.
+
+"You're right; I never noticed----" Jim paused guiltily. After leaving
+the vicinity of Parksville he had purposely led her on a detour back
+into the farming country to avoid the main highway, for along the river
+front were the estates of some people he knew and he shrank from meeting
+them in his tramplike condition if they should motor past. There was
+Lou, too, to be considered. He might have offered some possible
+explanation for his own appearance, but no interpretation could be
+placed upon her presence at his side save that which he must prevent at
+all costs.
+
+Rolling fields and woodland stretched away illimitably on both sides of
+the road, and not even a cow shed appeared as they hurried onward, while
+the clouds mounted higher, and the rumble of thunder grew upon the air.
+The sun had vanished, and a strange, anticipatory stillness enveloped
+them, broken only by that hollow muttering.
+
+"It's comin' up fast." Lou broke the silence with one of her seldomly
+volunteered remarks. "Shall we git into the woods? I'd as lief dodge
+trees as be drowned in the road."
+
+"No!" Jim shook his head. "There is some kind of a shack just ahead
+there; I think we can make it before the storm comes."
+
+They were fairly running now, but the darkness was settling fast and a
+fork of lightning darted blindingly across their path. The object which
+Jim had taken for a shack proved to be merely a pile of rotting
+telegraph poles, but no other shelter offered, and they crouched in the
+lee of it, awaiting the onslaught of rain.
+
+"Take this, Lou." Jim wrapped his coat about her in spite of her
+protestations. "You're not afraid, are you?"
+
+"No, I ain't--I'm not--but you're goin' to get soaked through! I heard
+you coughin' once or twice at the bottom of that haystack last night."
+He thrilled unconsciously to the motherliness in her tone. Then she
+added reflectively: "I don't guess I'm afraid of anythin' I've seen yet,
+but I ain't--I haven't seen much."
+
+She ended with a sharp intake of her breath as a sudden gust of wind
+whirled the dust up into their faces and another streak of white light
+flashed before their eyes. Then with a rush and roar the storm burst.
+
+The woods marched straight down to the roadside at this point, and the
+trees back of the heap of poles moaned and writhed like tortured
+creatures while great branches lashed over their heads with now and then
+an ominous crackle, but it was lost in the surge of the winds and the
+ceaseless crash and roar of the thunder. Jagged forks of lightning
+played all about them like rapiers of steel, and at last the rain came.
+
+The brim of Lou's hat, hopelessly limp since its cleansing of the
+previous day, now flopped stringily against her face until she tore it
+off and gasping, buried her head in her arms as the sheets of rain
+pelted down. Jim's coat was sodden, and the thin cotton gown beneath
+clung to her drenched body, but she crouched closer to the poles while
+each volley of thunder shook her as with invisible hands.
+
+Her lashes were glued to her cheeks, but she forced them open and turned
+to see how Jim was faring. He had flattened himself against the poles at
+their farther end, and just as she looked his way a flash of lightning
+seemed to split the air between them and the huge old tree which reared
+its branches just above his head, snapped like a dry twig beneath some
+giant heel.
+
+Lou saw the great oak totter and then sway, while a sickening swirl of
+branches filled the air, and scarcely conscious of her own act she
+hurled herself upon Jim. With all the strength borne of her terror she
+pushed him from the heap of poles, sending him rolling out into the
+middle of the road, to safety. Then she tried to spring after him, but a
+hideous, waiting lethargy seemed to encompass her, and then with a
+mighty crash the tree fell athwart the poles.
+
+Half stunned by the unexpected onslaught upon him and the rending blast
+of the falling tree, Jim lay motionless for an instant, then with a
+sharp cry sprang to his feet and turned to look for Lou, but the pile of
+telegraph poles was hidden beneath a broad sweep of branches and across
+the place where she had crouched the great trunk of the tree lay prone.
+
+"Lou!" The cry burst from his very heart as he sprang forward and began
+to tear frantically at the stout limbs which barred his way. "Oh, God,
+she isn't crushed! Don't take her now, she's so little and young, and I
+want her, I need her so! God!"
+
+He was unconscious that he was praying aloud, unconscious of the words
+which issued sobbingly from his lips. He tugged and tore at the branches
+while the skin ripped like ribbons from his hands and the boughs whipped
+back to raise great welts upon his face.
+
+He was unconscious, too, of a stir at the other side of the fallen tree
+and a rustle of sodden leaves, as, very much after the manner of a
+prairie dog emerging from his hole, Lou crawled out into the rain, and
+sitting up, sneezed.
+
+At the sound of that meek sternutation Jim whirled about.
+
+"Lou!"
+
+"Jim! Oh, Jim! You're not killed!" A muddy, bedraggled little figure
+that once had been pink and white flew straight to him, and two soft
+arms swept about him and clung convulsively. "I seen it comin', an'--an'
+I tried to shove you out of the way----"
+
+"Thank God, little girl! Thank God you aren't hurt!" he murmured
+brokenly. "I thought the tree had fallen on you!"
+
+"Only the boughs of it, but they held me down. Oh, Jim, if you'd been
+killed I wouldn't 'a' cared what happened to me!"
+
+His heart leaped, and his own arms tightened about her at the naive,
+unconscious revelation which had issued from her lips. Then all at once
+he realized what it had meant, that hideous feeling of loss when he
+thought that she lay buried beneath the tree. It had come to them both,
+revealed as by a flash of the lightning which was now traveling toward
+the east, and in the wonder and joy of it he held her close for a moment
+and then put her gently from him.
+
+Sternly repressing the words which would have rushed from his heart, he
+said quietly:
+
+"Thank God we were both spared. Come, little Lou, we must find shelter."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+Journey's End
+
+
+The rain had ceased, and as they walked down the muddy road the sun came
+out even before the final mutterings of the thunder had died away in the
+distance, and so they came at last upon a little house which sat well
+back among a group of dripping trees.
+
+"Take your coat, Jim," Lou said, breaking a long silence which had
+fallen between them. "That porch is so wet now that we can't get it any
+wetter an' I'm goin' to ask for a chance to get dry."
+
+But they had scarcely passed through the gate when the front door opened
+and a young woman rushed out.
+
+"Oh! Will you run to the next house for me and telephone for the
+doctor?" she cried, all in one breath. Her eyes were staring and her
+breast heaved convulsively.
+
+Jim quickened his pace.
+
+"Where is the next house, and what doctor shall I send for?" he asked
+pleasantly.
+
+"It's just over the ridge there; the Colberts. They know Dr. Blair's
+number. My husband would go himself but he can't step on his hurt foot
+and I don't dare leave. Tell the Colberts that it's the baby! He's
+dying, and I don't know what to do!"
+
+Jim turned, and hurried off over the ridge, but Lou took a step forward.
+
+"Baby! I've been takin' care of babies all my life, seems like. You let
+me look at it, ma'am."
+
+"Oh, do you think you could do anything, a little thing like you?"
+
+The young woman eyed the forlornly drenched figure before her rather
+doubtfully, but something she read in Lou's steady, confident gaze
+seemed to reassure her, and she threw wide the door. "Come in, please!
+He's all blue."
+
+Lou unceremoniously pushed past her down the clean little hallway and
+paused for a moment upon the threshold of the room at its end. It was a
+kitchen, small, but as immaculately clean as the hall, and in a
+rocking-chair near the window sat an anxious-eyed young man with his
+bandaged foot up on another chair before him, and in his arms a tiny,
+rigid little form.
+
+Lou went straight to him and unceremoniously possessed herself of the
+baby.
+
+Its small face was waxen, with a bluish tinge about the mouth, and
+half-closed, glazing eyes.
+
+"How long's it been like this?" Lou demanded sharply.
+
+"Only just a few minutes. It--it seemed like a sort of fit that he had."
+The young woman turned to her husband. "Jack, this little girl stopped
+by and said she knew all about babies, and the man with her, he's gone
+for----"
+
+"I want some hot water, quick!" Lou interrupted the explanations
+brusquely. "Boiling hot, and a tub or a big pan. Have you got the kettle
+on?"
+
+"Y-yes, but I'm afraid I've let the fire go out," the woman faltered. "I
+was so worried----"
+
+With an exclamation of impatience Lou rewrapped the baby which she had
+been examining and thrust it into the man's arms. Then turning to the
+woman with exasperation in her eyes and voice she demanded:
+
+"I s'pose you can find some dry chips, somewhere, can't you? If I don't
+get this baby into a hot bath right away it'll be all up with him."
+
+The woman gasped, and ran out of the back door while the young man in
+the chair groaned:
+
+"It's awful to sit here helpless and watch him suffer! If I could only
+put my foot to the floor----"
+
+"How old is he, anyway?" Lou, who was busily searching the shelf of
+groceries, asked over her shoulder. "He looks to be under a year."
+
+"Ten months, miss," he answered. "What do you think is the matter with
+him?"
+
+"Convulsion," Lou replied succinctly, as the woman rushed in once more
+with her apron full of chips. "Git some more, it don't matter how you
+clog the stove with wood ashes; we gotta git boilin' water as quick as
+we kin."
+
+Meanwhile Jim found the Colbert house, explained his mission, and having
+accomplished it, hastened back. He pulled the bell, but no one came, and
+knocking, found that the door yielded to his touch. Entering, he went
+down the hall and paused at the kitchen door just as the woman
+stammered:
+
+"I d-don't think there are any dry kindlings left."
+
+"Then chop some! Ain't you got any old boxes? Oh, Jim!" Lou caught sight
+of him in the doorway. "Find a hatchet and some light, dry wood, will
+you?"
+
+The fire was roaring in the stove at last, but the water was long in
+boiling, and the little figure in the man's arms seemed to be undergoing
+a subtle but inevitable change. His lips were still parted, but no
+faintest stir of breath emanated from them, and the rigidity had taken
+on a marble-like cast.
+
+The mother bent over him, moaning once more, but Lou turned upon her in
+swift scorn.
+
+"For goodness' sake, where's that tub or pan I asked you for? He's got a
+chance, a _good_ chance if you don't waste any more time! What you
+been givin' him, anyway?" she added, as the woman flew to do her
+bidding.
+
+"Nothing but a little green corn. He relishes it, and it's so cute to
+see him try to chew it----"
+
+"Green corn!" Lou repeated, as she seized the heavy kettle and began
+pouring its steaming contents into the tub. "Ain't _nobody_ in your
+family ever had any babies before?"
+
+She hastily added to the tub a quantity of yellowish powder from a can
+which she had found upon the shelf of groceries, and marched
+determinedly over to the man who was seated in the chair.
+
+"Give me that baby!" she demanded.
+
+"But, miss, that water's boiling!" he gasped.
+
+"You're not going to put my baby in that?" The woman came quickly from
+her apathy of dismay and sprang forward, while Jim, too, advanced, his
+anxiety for another reason.
+
+"Lou! You'll blister yourself horribly----"
+
+"Let me alone, all of you!" Lou turned upon them even as she stripped
+the wrappings from the child. "Haven't I done this a hundred times? He
+ain't even goin' to feel the heat of the mustard, he's so far gone! I
+guess I know what I'm doin'!"
+
+The woman buried her face in her hands with a sob, and even Jim turned
+away his eyes, but no one thought to interfere further with the assured
+little nurse. There was a splash of water, a little gasp from Lou, and
+then after a period which seemed interminable her matter-of-fact voice
+remarked:
+
+"He's comin' round."
+
+The tiny body was scarcely tinged with pink, but it had lost its
+dreadful rigidity, and a faint cry came from it as Lou wrapped it in a
+shawl and laid it in its mother's arms.
+
+"He'll do now, anyway till that doctor comes."
+
+Amid the rejoicing of the parents Jim advanced to Lou and demanded:
+
+"Let me see your arms."
+
+"They're all right--" She tried to put them behind her as she spoke, but
+he drew them forward. A network of blisters covered them almost to the
+shoulders.
+
+"Oh, Lou! Lou!" he murmured brokenly. "What won't you do next?"
+
+She smiled faintly.
+
+"You said I'd do anything once, but I've done this lots of times
+before----"
+
+"Well, well, good people! What's going on here?" A kindly voice sounded
+from the doorway, and the woman turned with a little cry.
+
+"Oh, Dr. Blair, she saved the baby! Put him down in that scalding water
+and held him right there with her hands, and she's burned herself
+something terrible, but she saved him! I never saw a braver----"
+
+"Let me see."
+
+The doctor examined the baby with professional gravity and then looked
+up.
+
+"I should say you did save him, young woman! I couldn't have done better
+for him myself! Now let me have a look at those arms of yours."
+
+After he had bandaged her blisters the woman prepared food and coffee
+for them all and then took Lou upstairs with her, while Jim dried his
+soaking clothes by the kitchen fire and the three men talked in a
+desultory way of the topics of the countryside.
+
+Dr. Blair had just ascertained that Jim and his "sister" were strangers,
+traveling toward New York, and had offered to drive them both to the
+trolley line in his little car, when the woman of the house reappeared
+with Lou, and Jim stared with all his eyes.
+
+Could this be the little scarecrow of a girl he had met on the road only
+five days before; this unbelievably tall, slender young woman in the
+dark blue silk gown with filmy ruffles falling about her neck and
+wrists, and soft puffs of blond hair over her ears?
+
+"It's me, though I kin hardly believe it myself!" Lou answered his
+unspoken thought. Then drawing him aside she added: "Mis' Tooker--that's
+her name--gave me a pair of shoes, too, an' a hat an' five whole
+dollars! Are we goin' to a place called Pelton?"
+
+Jim nodded.
+
+"That is where I hoped we would be by to-night, but it must be at least
+twelve miles away."
+
+"Well, Mis' Tooker says the trolley goes right into Pelton, and she gave
+me a letter to a friend of hers there who'll take us in for the
+night----"
+
+The doctor interrupted with an intimation of another patient to be
+visited, and they bade farewell to the grateful young couple and started
+away. The sun was still high, and save for the mud which splashed up
+with each turn of the wheels, all traces of the storm had vanished.
+
+"Jennie Tooker always was a fool!" Dr. Blair grumbled. "How many babies
+have you taken care of, young woman?"
+
+"More'n twenty, I guess, off an' on," Lou responded. "I--I used to work
+in an institootion up-State."
+
+Fearing further revelations, Jim hastily took a hand in the
+conversation, and he and the doctor chatted until the trolley line was
+reached. There, when they had descended from the little car Lou turned
+to Jim and asked a trifle shyly:
+
+"You--you're goin' to let me ask you to ride, aren't you? You bought all
+the food in Riverburgh, you know."
+
+"And you seem to have financed all the rest of the trip," he said with a
+rueful laugh. "I thought, when you suggested that we should travel
+together, I would be the one to take care of you, but it has been the
+other way around. Oh, Lou, I've so much to say to you when we reach our
+journey's end!"
+
+They arrived at Pelton before dark and found Mrs. Tooker's friend, who
+ran a small boarding-house for store employees, and was glad to take
+them in at a dollar a head. Lou disappeared after supper, and although
+Lou waited long for him on the little porch, he did not return until
+through sheer fatigue she was forced to go to bed.
+
+In the morning, however, when they met before breakfast in the lower
+hall he jingled a handful of silver in his pocket.
+
+"However did you git it?" she demanded.
+
+"Garage," he responded succinctly. "Didn't know I was a chauffeur, did
+you, Lou?"
+
+A peculiar little smile hovered for a moment about her lips, but she
+merely remarked:
+
+"I thought you wouldn't only take a quarter----"
+
+"For each job," he interrupted her. "A lot of cars came in that needed
+tinkering with after the storm, and they were short of hands. I made
+more than two dollars, and we'll ride in state into Hunnikers!"
+
+Lou made no reply, but after breakfast she drew him out on the little
+porch.
+
+"Jim, I--I'm not goin' on."
+
+"What!" he exclaimed.
+
+"The woman that runs this place, she--she wants a girl to help her, an'
+I guess I'll stay." Lou's tones were none too steady, and she did not
+meet his eyes. "I--I don't believe I'd like New York."
+
+"You, a servant here?" He took one of her hands very gently in his. "I
+didn't mean to tell you until we were nearly there, and as it is, there
+is a lot that I can't tell you even now, but this much I want you to
+know. You're not going to work any more, Lou. You're going to a lovely
+old lady who lives in a big house all by herself, and there you are
+going to study and play until you are really grown up, and know as much
+as anybody."
+
+She smiled and shook her head.
+
+"This is the sort of place for me, Jim. I wasn't meant for anythin'
+else, an' if I should live to be a hundred I could never know as much as
+that lady at the circus who called you 'Jimmie Abbott.'"
+
+"What--" Jim exploded for the second time.
+
+"At least, she said you looked like him, and if she didn't know you were
+in Canada----"
+
+"Good Lord! What was she doing there?"
+
+"She was with another lady an' two gentlemen, an' I guess they come in
+an ottermobile," Lou explained. "They was in one the next day,
+anyway--the one that slammed into the egg-wagon."
+
+She described in detail the two occurrences, and added miserably:
+
+"I didn't mean to tell you, Jim, but as long as I'm not goin' on with
+you I might as well. It was me that walked on your note-book back there
+on Mrs. Bemis's porch. It had fallen open on the floor, an' when I
+picked it up I couldn't help seein' the name that was written across the
+page. It was your own business, of course, if you didn't want to give
+your real name to anybody----"
+
+"Listen, Lou." He had caught her other hand now and was holding them
+both very tightly. "You _are_ going on with me! I can't explain now
+about my name, but it doesn't matter; nothing matters except that you
+are not going to be a quitter! You said that you would go on to New York
+with me, and you're going to keep your word."
+
+"I know better now," she replied quietly. "It's--it's been a wonderful
+time, but I've got to work an' earn my keep an' try to learn as I go
+along. It isn't just exactly breakin' my word; I didn't realize----"
+
+"Realize what?" he demanded as she hesitated.
+
+"I thought at first that you were kinder like me; it wasn't until I saw
+that lady an' found you were a friend of hers, that I knew you were
+different."
+
+Her eyes were still downcast, and now a tinge of color mounted in her
+cheeks. "I couldn't bear to have you take me to that other lady in the
+city and be a-ashamed of me----"
+
+"Ashamed of you!" he repeated, and something in his tone deepened the
+color in her cheeks into a crimson tide. "Lou, look at me!"
+
+Obediently she raised her eyes for an instant; then lowered them again
+quickly, and after a pause she said in a very small voice:
+
+"All right, Jim. I--I'll go. I guess I wouldn't just want to be a--a
+quitter, after all."
+
+It was mid-afternoon when they walked into Hunnikers and although they
+had come ten long miles with only a stop for a picnic lunch between,
+they bore no traces of fatigue. Rather they appeared to have been
+treading on air, and although Jim had scrupulously avoided any further
+reference to the future, there was a certain buoyant assurance about him
+which indicated that in his own mind, at least, there remained no room
+for doubt.
+
+He needed all the assurance he could muster as, after ensconcing Lou at
+the soda counter in the drug-store, he approached the telephone booth
+farthest from her ears and closed the door carefully behind him. Lou
+consumed her soda to its last delectable drop, glanced down anxiously at
+the worn, but spotless, little silk gown to see if she had spilled any
+upon it, and then wandered over to the showcase.
+
+Jim's voice came to her indistinguishably once or twice, but it was a
+full half-hour before he emerged from the booth. He looked wilted but
+triumphant, and he beamed blissfully as he came toward her, mopping his
+brow. He suspected that at the other end of the wire a certain
+gray-haired, aristocratic old lady was having violent hysterics to the
+immediate concern of three maids and an asthmatic Pekinese, but it did
+not disturb his equanimity.
+
+"It's all right," he announced. "Aunt Emmy expects you; I didn't tell
+you, did I, that the lady I'm taking you to is my aunt? No matter. She's
+awfully easy if you get on the right side of her; I've always managed
+her beautifully ever since I was a kid, and you'll have her rolling over
+and playing dead in no time. Fifteen miles more to go, Lou, and we'll
+be----"
+
+"Hello, there, Jim." An oil-soaked and greasy glove clapped his shoulder
+and as he turned, the same voice, suddenly altered, stammered: "Oh, I
+beg your pardon----"
+
+"'Lo, Harry!" Jim turned to greet a tall, lean individual more tanned
+than himself, with little, fine, weather lines about his eyes and an
+abrupt quickness of gesture which denoted his hair-triggered nerves.
+"What are you doing in this man's town?"
+
+"Motoring down from the Hilton's," the other responded. "Pete was coming
+with me, but at the last minute he decided to stay over the week-end.
+I'm off to Washington to-night to see about my passport; sailing next
+Wednesday for Labrador, you know."
+
+"Then you're alone?" Jim turned. "Miss Lacey, let me present Mr. Van
+Ness; he spends his time trailing all over the earth to find something
+to kill. Miss Lacey is a young friend of my aunt's; I'm taking her down
+to her for a visit."
+
+The explanation sounded somewhat involved, but Mr. Van Ness seemed to
+grasp it, and bowed.
+
+"You're motoring, too?" he asked.
+
+"No. I--The fact is--" Jim stammered in his turn. "We were thinking of
+taking the train----"
+
+"Why not let me take you both down in the car?" The other rose to the
+occasion with evident alacrity. "Miss Lacy will like it better than the
+train, I'm sure, and I haven't seen you for an age, old man."
+
+Jim accepted with a promptitude which proclaimed a mind relieved of its
+final burden, and he turned to Lou. Mr. Van Ness had gone out to see to
+his car, and they were alone at a far corner of the counter.
+
+"How about it, Lou? The last lap! The last fifteen miles. It's been a
+long pull sometimes, and we've had some rough going, but it was worth
+it, wasn't it?"
+
+Her eyes all unconsciously gave him answer even before she repeated
+softly:
+
+"'The last lap.' Oh, Jim, shall I see you some time, at this lady's
+house where you are takin' me?"
+
+"Every day," he promised, adding with cheerful mendacity: "I dine with
+her nearly all the time; have for years. Come on, Lou. Harry's waving at
+us."
+
+Through the village and the pleasant rolling country beyond; past huge,
+wide-spreading estates and tiny cottages, and clusters of small shops
+with the trolley winding like a thread between, the big maroon car sped,
+while the two men talked together of many things, and the girl sat back
+in her corner of the roomy tonneau and gave herself up to vague dreams.
+
+Then the cottages gave place to sporadic growths of brick and mortar
+with more open lots between, but even these gaps finally closed, and Lou
+found herself being borne swiftly through street after street of
+towering houses out upon a broad avenue with palaces such as she had
+never dreamed of on one side, and on the other the seared, drooping
+green of a city park in late summer.
+
+It was still light when the big car swept into an exclusive street of
+brownstone houses of an earlier and still more exclusive period, and
+stopped before the proudest of these.
+
+Jim alighted and held out his hand.
+
+"Come, Lou," he said. "Journey's end."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+The Long, Long Trail
+
+
+Three hours later, in that same proudly exclusive house, an elderly lady
+with gray hair and an aristocratically high, thin nose paced the floor
+of her drawing-room with a vigor which denoted some strong emotion.
+
+"I must say, John, that I think the whole affair, whatever it may be, is
+highly reprehensible. I supposed James to be up in Canada on a fishing
+trip when he telephoned me this morning from somewhere near town with
+a--a most extraordinary message----"
+
+She broke off, glancing cautiously toward a room across the hall, and
+added: "He said he had something to tell me, and he would be here this
+evening. Now you come, and you appear to know something about it, but I
+cannot get a word out of you!"
+
+"All I can tell you, Mrs. Abbott, is that if Jimmie does come to-night,
+I've got to pay him a thousand bones--dollars, I mean. It was a sort of
+a wager, and that must be what he wants to tell you about."
+
+It was an exceedingly stout young man with a round, cherubic countenance
+standing by the mantel who replied to her, and the old lady glanced at
+him sharply.
+
+"A wager? H-m! Possibly." She paused suddenly. "There's the bell."
+
+A moment later James Tarrisford Abbott, in the most immaculate of dinner
+clothes, entered and greeted his aunt, halting with a slight frown as he
+encountered the beaming face of the young man who fell upon him.
+
+"Good boy, Jimmie! You made it, after all!"
+
+"With a few hours to spare." Jim darted a questioning glance at his
+aunt, and seemed relieved at her emphatic shake of the head.
+
+"I knew we'd lost when Mrs. Abbott told me that you had telephoned to
+her from just a little way out of town to-day," Jack Trimble responded.
+"I ran over on my way to the club to give her a message from my mother.
+Did you have a hard time of it, old man?"
+
+"Hard?" Jim smiled. "I've been a rough-rider in a circus----"
+
+Mrs. Abbott groaned, but Jack Trimble's eyes opened as roundly and wide
+as his mouth.
+
+"Thundering--So it was you after all!"
+
+"Me?" Jim demanded with ungrammatical haste.
+
+"You--rough-rider--circus!" Jack exclaimed. "Vera said the chap looked
+like you, but it never occurred to me that it could possibly be!"
+
+"So it was Vera, was it?" Jim smiled. "I heard what she said--I mean, it
+was repeated to me. You were one of that party?"
+
+"Yes. We were with the Lentilhons in their car, and the funniest thing
+happened the next day on the way home! Crusty old farmer wouldn't turn
+out on the road, and Guy Lentilhon lost control and smashed straight
+through his wagon!" Jack laughed. "W-what do you think it was loaded
+with?"
+
+"Eggs!" responded Jim crisply. "I happened to be on it at the time, my
+boy, and your sense of humor--I hope you all got what I did! But I must
+explain to Aunt Emmy here, or she will think that we are both quite
+mad!"
+
+"And I must be off to the club," Jack announced. "I'll break the news to
+Billy Hollis that we've lost. See you later, and we'll all settle up.
+Good evening, Mrs. Abbott."
+
+When the stout young man had taken his departure, Mrs. Abbott turned to
+her nephew between laughter and tears.
+
+"James, this is the maddest of all mad things that you have ever done!"
+
+"Jack doesn't know anything about Lou?" Jim demanded anxiously.
+
+"Certainly not. He has only been here a quarter of an hour, and I kept
+her out of the way. But, James, you cannot be serious! You cannot mean
+to marry this nameless waif?"
+
+"Stop right there, Aunt Emmy," he interrupted her firmly. "I'm going to
+marry, if she will have me, your ward whom you have legally adopted; I
+mean, you will have adopted her by the time she has grown up. But I
+don't intend to be nosed out by any of these debutante-grabbers; I'm
+going to have everything settled before her studies are finished and you
+bring her out. I saw her first!"
+
+"H-m. We shall see," Aunt Emmy remarked dryly, adding: "But that can
+wait for the moment. What was this ridiculous wager all about, and how
+did you get into such horrible scrapes?"
+
+"The whole thing came out of an idle discussion Jack Trimble, Billy
+Hollis and I had at the club one night concerning human nature. It
+drifted into a debate about charity in general and the kindness shown
+toward strangers by country folk in particular, with myself in the
+minority, of course," Jim explained.
+
+"They each wagered me a thousand against my five hundred that I couldn't
+walk from Buffalo to New York in twenty-five days with only five dollars
+in my pocket to start with, and work my way home without begging nor
+accepting more than a quarter for each job I managed to secure in any
+one time.
+
+"The idea was to see how many of these hard-boiled up-State farmers we
+hear so much about would offer you the hospitality reputed to be
+extended only by the rural population of the South and West, and how
+many would give a foot-sore and weary traveler a lift upon the way.
+There were other conditions, too; I was not to use my own surname, not
+to go a foot out of the State into either Pennsylvania or New Jersey. I
+was not to beg, borrow, or steal, and for the occasional twenty-five
+cents I might earn I could only purchase food or actual necessities, not
+use it for transportation, and I must not beat my way by stealing rides
+on boats or trains or any other conveyances."
+
+While Aunt Emmy sat staring at him in speechless amazement, Jim produced
+his little red note-book and laid it before her.
+
+"There's the route I chose over the mountains, my expense account for
+each day, and the names and addresses of the people who helped to prove
+my contention that, take them by and large, the people of my own State
+are as big-hearted as any in the Union, and Jack's money and Billy's
+says that they are!
+
+"I'm going to return some of that kindness, Aunt Emmy. There are two
+little boys near Riverburgh whose father is dead and who are trying to
+do the farm work of men. They are going to a good school this winter,
+and there are a few other people who are going to be surprised! By Jove,
+I never realized what money was for until now! But best of all, I found
+Lou!"
+
+"And what makes you so sure that I am going to adopt her and educate her
+and bring her out?" demanded Aunt Emmy. "My dear boy, when you started
+on this Canadian fishing trip of yours I knew that something
+extraordinary would come of it, but I did not anticipate anything so
+bizarre as this! Why do you think that I will interest myself in this
+child?"
+
+"Because you won't be able to help it." His face had sobered, and there
+was a note in his voice that his aunt had never heard before. "You won't
+be able to help loving her when you find out how courageous she is, and
+sincere and true! She is the biggest-hearted, most candid, naive
+little----"
+
+"She is quite that!" Aunt Emmy interrupted in her turn, with emphasis.
+"How I am ever to hide her away until I've had her coached not to drop
+her g's, and to realize that there is a 'u' in the alphabet I don't
+know, but I'll try. James--I think there are distinct possibilities
+there."
+
+"I knew it!" Jim cried. "I knew you wouldn't be able to resist her! For
+the Lord's sake, Aunt Emmy, don't let them spoil her! She's so sweet and
+simple-hearted, don't let them make her cynical and worldly-wise! I'll
+promise not to speak to her, not to let her know how I feel until you
+say that I may."
+
+"Will you, James?" There was a faint smile about the delicately lined
+lips. "She is a child in many ways, a blank page for most impressions to
+be made upon, but in other things she is very much of a woman, and I
+rather fancy that what you have to tell her will not be so much of a
+surprise."
+
+"You old dear!" Jim sprang to his feet and folded his aunt in his
+embrace which threatened her coiffure. "Where is she?"
+
+"In the library waiting for you, Jamie!"
+
+She used the old nursery name, and caught his arm. "She is very young,
+but the heart sometimes breaks easily then. Don't speak unless you
+yourself are very sure."
+
+Jim smiled, and throwing back his head looked straight into the kindly
+old eyes. Then without a word he turned and disappeared through the
+door.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+"And you're going to be happy here?" It was some time later when Jim had
+explained about the wager, and they were sitting together in the
+window-seat.
+
+"Happy? Why, Jim, I can't believe I'm awake! I'm going to study an' work
+an' try my best to be like her. Seems to me it'll take the rest of my
+life, but she says that in a year or two there won't anybody hardly tell
+the difference."
+
+"And then, Lou, when the time is past? What then?"
+
+"I don't know." Her tone was serenely unconcerned.
+
+"That trail we've followed together for the last week wasn't so bad, was
+it?" he asked. "You were happy in spite of the hardships?"
+
+"It was wonderful!" She drew a deep breath. "I--I wish we could start
+again, Jim, and do it all over again, every step of the way!"
+
+"If you feel like that, dear, perhaps some day when you have finished
+your studies we will start again on a longer trail." He took one of the
+little toil-worn hands in his. "The long, long trail, Lou, only we will
+be together! When that day comes, will you take the new road with me?"
+
+She bowed her head, and somehow he found it nestling in the hollow of
+his shoulder, and his arms were about her. After a long minute, she
+stirred and smiled.
+
+"Well--" she hesitated. "You knew from the very beginning, Jim, that I'd
+do anything once!"
+
+                                THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Anything Once, by Douglas Grant
+
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