1 files changed, 6135 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/6909-0.txt b/6909-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0022013
--- /dev/null
+++ b/6909-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,6135 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Old Caravan Days, by Mary Hartwell Catherwood
+
+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: Old Caravan Days
+
+Author: Mary Hartwell Catherwood
+
+
+Release Date: November, 2004 [EBook #6909]
+This file was first posted on February 10, 2003
+Last Updated: March 8, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OLD CARAVAN DAYS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Avinash Kothare, Tom Allen, Juliet Sutherland,
+Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading
+Team. This file was produced from images generously made
+available by the Canadian Institute for Historical
+Microreproductions.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+OLD CARAVAN DAYS
+
+
+By Mary Hartwell Catherwood
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+    I. THE START
+
+   II. THE LITTLE OLD MAN WITH A BAG ON HIS BACK
+
+  III. THE TAVERN
+
+   IV. THE SUSAN HOUSE
+
+    V. THE SUSAN HOUSE CELLAR
+
+   VI. MR. MATTHEWS
+
+  VII. ZENE'S MAN AND WOMAN
+
+ VIII. LITTLE ANT RED AND BIG ANT BLACK
+
+   IX. THE GREAT CAMP MEETING
+
+    X. THE CRY OF A CHILD IN THE NIGHT
+
+   XI. THE DARKENED WAGON
+
+  XII. JONATHAN AND THRUSTY ELLEN
+
+ XIII. FAIRY CARRIE AND THE PIG-HEADED MAN
+
+  XIV. SEARCHING
+
+   XV. THE SPROUTING
+
+  XVI. THE MINSTREL
+
+ XVII. THE HOUSE WITH LOG STEPS
+
+XVIII. “COME TO MAMMA!”
+
+  XIX. FAIRY CARRIE DEPARTS
+
+   XX. SUNDAY ON THE ROAD
+
+  XXI. HER MOTHER ARRIVES
+
+ XXII. A COUNTRY SUNDAY-SCHOOL
+
+XXIII. FORWARD
+
+ XXIV. THE TOLL-WOMAN
+
+  XXV. THE ROBBERS
+
+ XXVI. THE FAIR AND THE FIERCE BANDIT
+
+XXVII. A NIGHT PICTURE OF HOME
+
+
+
+
+OLD CARAVAN DAYS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I. THE START.
+
+
+In the year eighteen hundred and fifty-seven, on the fifth day of
+June, the Padgett carriage-horses faced the west, and their mistress
+gathered the lines into her mitted hands.
+
+The moving-wagon was ready in front of the carriage. It was to be
+driven by Zene, the lame hired man. Zene was taking a last drink from
+that well at the edge of the garden, which lay so deep that your face
+looked like a star in it. Robert Day Padgett, Mrs. Padgett's
+grandson, who sat on the back seat of the carriage, decided that he
+must have one more drink, and his aunt Corinne who sat beside him,
+was made thirsty by his decision. So the two children let down the
+carriage steps and ran to the well.
+
+It was like Sunday all over the farm, only the cattle were not
+straying over the fields. The house was shut up, its new inhabitants
+not having arrived. Some neighbor women had come to bid the family
+good-bye again, though it was so early that the garden lay in heavy
+dew. These good friends stood around the carriage; one of them held
+the front-door key in trust for the new purchaser. They all called
+the straight old lady who held the lines grandma Padgett. She was
+grandma Padgett to the entire neighborhood, and they shook their
+heads sorrowfully in remembering that her blue spectacles, her
+ancient Leghorn bonnet, her Quaker shoulder cape and decided face
+might be vanishing from them forever.
+
+“You'll come back to Ohio,” said one neighbor. “The wild Western
+prairie country won't suit you at all.”
+
+“I'm not denying,” returned grandma Padgett, “that I could end my
+days in peace on the farm here; but son Tip can do very little here,
+and he can do well out there. I've lost my entire family except son
+Tip and the baby of all, you know. And it's not my wish to be
+separated from son Tip in my declining years.”
+
+The neighbors murmured that they knew, and one of them inquired as
+she had often inquired before, at what precise point grandma
+Padgett's son was to meet the party; and she replied as if giving new
+information, that it was at the Illinois State line.
+
+“You'll have pretty weather,” said another woman, squinting-in the
+early sun.
+
+“Grandma Padgett won't care for weather,” observed the neighbor with
+the key. “She moved out from Virginia in the dead o' winter.”
+
+“Yes; I was but a child,” said grandma Padgett, “and this country
+one unbroken wilderness. We came down the Ohio River by flatboat, and
+moved into this section when the snow was so deep you could ride
+across stake-and-rider fences on the drifts.”
+
+“Folks can get around easier now, though,” said the squinting
+neighbor, “since they got to going on these railroads.”
+
+“I shipped part of my goods on the railroad,” remarked grandma
+Padgett with--a laugh. “But I don't know; I ain't used to the things,
+and I don't know whether I'd resk my bones for a long distance or
+not. Son Tip went out on the cars.”
+
+“The railroads charge so high,” murmured a woman near the back
+wheels. “But they do say you can ride as far West as you're a goin'
+on the cars.”
+
+“How long will you be gettin' through?” inquired another.
+
+“Not more than two or three weeks,” replied grandma Padgett
+resolutely. “It's a little better than three hundred and fifty miles,
+I believe.”
+
+“That's a long distance,” sighed the neighbor at the wheels.
+
+But aunt Corinne and her nephew, untroubled by the length of
+pilgrimage before them, ran from the well into the garden.
+
+“I wish the kerns were ripe,” said aunt Corinne. “Look out, Bobaday!
+You're drabblin' the bottoms of your good pants.”
+
+“'Twouldn't do any good if the kerns were ripe,” said Bobaday,
+turning his pepper-and-salt trousers up until the linings showed.
+“This farm ain't ours now, and we couldn't pull them.”
+
+Aunt Corinne paused at the fennel bed: then she impulsively
+stretched forth her hand and gathered it full.
+
+“I set out these things,” said aunt Corinne, “and I ain't countin'
+them sold till the wagon starts.” So she gathered sweetbrier, and a
+leaf of sage and two or three pinks.
+
+“O Bobaday,” said aunt Corinne--this name being a childish
+corruption of Robert Day: for aunt Corinne two years younger than her
+nephew, and had talked baby talk when he prided himself on distinct
+English--“you s'pose brother Tip's got a garden like this at the new
+place? Oh, the pretty little primroses! Who'll watch them pop open
+to-night? How you and me have sat on the primrose bed and watched the
+t-e-e-nty buds swell and swell till finally--pop! they smack their lips
+and burst wide open!”
+
+“We'll have a primrose bed out West,” said Bobaday. “We'll plant
+sweet anise too, and have caraway seeds to put in the cakes. Aunt
+Krin, did you know grandma's goin' to have green kern pie when we
+stop for dinner to-day?”
+
+“I knew there was kern pie made,” said aunt Krin. “I guess we better
+get into the carriage.”
+
+She held her short dress away from the bushes, and scampered with
+Bobaday into the yard. Here they could not help stopping on the
+warped floor of the porch to look into the empty house. It looked
+lonesome already. A mouse had ventured out of the closet by the tall
+sitting-room mantel; and a faint outline of the clock's shape
+remained on the wall.
+
+The house with its trees was soon fading into the past. The
+neighbors were going home by the road or across fields. Zene's wagon,
+drawn by the old white and gray, moved ahead at a good pace. It was
+covered with white canvas drawn tight over hoops which were held by
+iron clamps to the wagon-sides. At the front opening sat Zene,
+resting his feet on the tongue. The rear opening was puckered to a
+round O by a drawing string. Swinging to and fro from the hind axle,
+hung the tar-bucket. A feed box was fitted across the hind end of the
+wagon. Such stores as might be piled to the very canvas roof, were
+concealed from sight by a black oilcloth apron hanging behind Zene.
+This sheet of oilcloth was designed for an additional roof to keep
+the goods dry when it rained.
+
+Under the wagon, keeping well away from the tar-bucket, trotted
+Boswell and Johnson. Bobaday named them; he had read something of
+English literature in his grandfather's old books. Johnson was a fat
+black and white dog, who was obliged to keep his tongue out of his
+mouth to pant during the greater part of his days. He had fits of
+meditation, when Boswell galloped all over him without provoking a
+snap. Johnson was, indeed, a most amiable fellow, and had gained a
+reputation as a good watch dog, because on light nights he barked the
+shining hours away.
+
+Boswell was a little short-legged dog, built like a clumsy weasel;
+for his body was so long it seemed to plead for six legs instead of
+four, to support it, and no one could blame his back for swaying a
+little in the middle. Boswell was a brindled dog. He had yellow spots
+like pumpkin seeds over his eyes. His affection for Johnson was
+extreme. He looked up to Johnson. If he startled a bird at the
+roadside, or scratched at the roots of a tree after his imagination,
+he came back to Johnson for approval, wagging his tail until it made
+his whole body undulate. Johnson sometimes condescended to rub a nose
+against his silly head, and this threw him into such fire of delight
+that he was obliged to get out of the wagon-track, and bark around
+himself in a circle until the carriage left him behind. Then he came
+up to Johnson again, and panted along beside him, with a smile as
+open and constant as sunshine.
+
+No such caravan as the Padgett family has been seen moving West
+since those days when all the States were in a ferment: when New York
+and the New England States poured into Ohio, and Pennsylvania and
+Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee into Indiana, Illinois, and even--as a
+desperate venture, Missouri. The Old National Turnpike was then a
+lively thoroughfare. Sometimes a dozen white-covered wagons stretched
+along in company. All classes of society were represented among the
+movers. There were squalid lots to--be avoided as thieves: and there
+were carriages full of families who would raise Senators, Presidents,
+and large financiers in their new home. The forefathers of many a man
+and woman, now abroad studying older civilization in Europe, came
+West as movers by the wagon route.
+
+Aunt Corinne and her nephew were glad when Zene drove upon the
+'pike, and the carriage followed. The 'pike had a solid rumbling base
+to offer wheels. You were comparatively in town while driving there,
+for every little while you met somebody, and that body always
+appeared to feel more important for driving on the 'pike. It was a
+glittering white highway the ruts worn by wheels were literally worn
+in stone. Yet never were roadsides as green as the sloping 'pike
+sides. No trees encroached very close upon it, and it stretched in
+endless glare. But how smoothly you bowled along! People living aside
+in fields, could hear your progress; the bass roar of the 'pike was
+as distinct, though of course not as loud, as the rumble of a train.
+
+Going through Reynoldsburg however, was the great triumphal act of
+leave-taking. The Padgetts went to church in Reynoldsburg. To-day it
+is a decayed village, with many of its houses leaning wearily to one
+side, or forward as if sinking to a nap. But then it was a lively
+coach town, the first station out from the capital of the State.
+
+[Illustration: THE STAGE SWEPT BY LIKE A FLASH.]
+
+The Reynoldsburgers looked forth indifferently. They saw movers
+every hour of the day. But with recognition growing in their faces,
+many of them hastened to this particular carriage for parting words
+with grandma Padgett and the children. Robert Day set up against the
+high back, accepting his tribute of envious glances from the boys he
+knew. He was going off to meet adventures. They--had to stay at home
+and saw wood, and some of them would even be obliged to split it when
+they had a tin box full of bait and their fish-poles all ready for
+the afternoon's useful employment. There had been a time when Robert
+thought he would not like to be called “movers.” Some movers fell
+entirely below his ideas. But now he saw how much finer it was to be
+travelling in a carriage than on the swift-shooting cars. He felt
+sorry for the Reynoldsburg boys. One of them hinted that he might be
+expected out West himself some day, and told Robert to watch down the
+road for him. He appeared to think the West was a large prairie full
+of benches, where folks sat down and told their adventures in coming.
+
+Bobaday considered his position in the carriage the only drawback to
+the Reynoldsburg parade. He ought to be driving. In the course of the
+journey he hoped grandma Padgett would give up the lines--which she
+had never yet done.
+
+They drove out of Reynoldsburg. The tin-covered steeple on the
+church dazzled their eyes for perhaps the last time.
+
+Then coming around a curve in the 'pike appeared that soul-stirring
+sight, the morning stage from Columbus. Zene and grandma Padgett drew
+off to the side of the road and gave it a wide passage, for the stage
+had the same right of way that any regular train now has on its own
+track. It was drawn by six of the proudest horses in the world, and
+the grand-looking driver who guided them, gripped the complication of
+lines in his left hand while he held a horn to his mouth with the
+right, and through this he blew a mellow peal to let the
+Reynoldsburgers know the stage was coming. The stage, billowing on
+springs, was paneled with glittering pictures, gilded on every part,
+and evidently lined with velvet. Travellers inside looked through the
+open windows with what aunt Corinne considered an air of opulent
+pride. She had always longed to explore the interior of a stage, and
+envied any child who had been shut in by the mysterious click and
+turn of the door-handle. The top was crowded with gentlemen looking
+only less important than the luxurious passengers inside: and behind
+on a vast rack was such a mountain of-baggage swaying with the stage,
+but corded firmly to place, and topped with bandboxes, that aunt
+Corinne believed their moving wagon would not have contained it all.
+Yet the stage swept past like a flash. All its details had to be
+gathered by a quick eye. The leaders flew over the smooth
+thoroughfare, holding up their heads like horse princes; and Bobaday
+knew what a bustle Reynoldsburg would be in during the few minutes
+that the stage halted.
+
+After viewing this sumptuous pageant the little caravan moved
+briskly on toward Columbus. Zene kept some distance ahead, yet always
+in sight. And in due time the city began to grow around them. The
+'pike never lost its individuality among the streets of the capital.
+They saw the great penitentiary surrounded by stone walls as thick as
+the length of a short boy. They saw trains of cars trailing in and
+out; manufactories, and vistas of fine streets full of stores. They
+even saw the capitol building standing high up on its shaded grounds,
+many steps and massive pillars giving entrance to the structure which
+grandma Padgett said was one of the finest in the United States. It
+was not very long before they reached the western side of the city
+and were crossing the Scioto River in a long bridge and entering what
+was then a shabby suburb called Frankfort. At this point aunt Corinne
+and her nephew entered unbroken ground.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II. THE LITTLE-OLD MAN WITH A BAG ON HIS BACK.
+
+
+Grandma Padgett had prepared the noon lunch that very day, but
+scarcely expected to make use of it. On the western borders of
+Columbus lived a cousin Padgett in such a country place as had long
+been the talk of the entire family connection. Cousin Padgett was a
+mighty man in the city, and his wife and daughters had unheard-of
+advantages. He had kept up a formal but very pleasant intercourse
+with grandma's branch; and when he learned at the State Fair, the
+year previous, her son Tip's design to cast their future lots in the
+West, he said he should take it very ill if they did not spend the
+first night of their journey with him. Grandma Padgett decided that
+relationship must claim her for at least one meal.
+
+Bobaday and Corinne saw Zene pause at the arched gates of this
+modern castle, according to his morning's instructions. Corinne's.
+heart thumped apprehensively. It was a formidable thing to be going
+to cousin Padgett's. He lived in such overwhelming grandeur. She
+knew, although she had never seen his grounds, that he kept two
+gardeners on purpose to take care of them. His parlors were covered
+with carpets in which immense bouquets of flowers were wrought, and
+he had furniture not only of horsehair, but of flowered red velvet
+also. I suppose in these days cousin Padgett's house would be
+considered the extreme of expensive ugliness, and a violation of all
+laws of beauty. But it was the best money could buy then, and that
+was considered enough. Robert was not affected by the fluttering care
+of his young aunt. He wanted to see this seat of grandeur. And when
+Zene walked back down the avenue from making inquiries, and announced
+that the entire family were away from home, Bobaday felt a shock of
+disappointment.
+
+Cousin Padgett did not know the exact date of the removal, and
+people wrote few letters in those days. So he could not be blamed for
+his absence when they came by. Zene limped up to his seat in front of
+the wagon, and they moved forward along the 'pike.
+
+“Good!” breathed aunt Corinne, settling back.
+
+“'Tisn't good a bit!” said Bobaday.
+
+And whom should they meet in a few miles but cousin Padgett himself,
+riding horseback and leading a cream-colored horse which he had been
+into the country to purchase. This was almost as trying as taking
+dinner at his house. He insisted that the party should turn back. His
+wife and daughters had only driven into the city that morning. Cousin
+Padgett was a charming, hearty man, with a ring of black whiskers
+extending under his face from ear to ear, and the more he talked the
+less Corinne feared him. When he found that his kinspeople could not
+be prevailed upon to return with him, he tied up his horses to the
+wagon in the wood-shed where Zene unhitched, and took dinner with
+grandma Padgett.
+
+Aunt Corinne sat on a log beside him and ate currant pie. He went
+himself to the nearest house and brought water. And when a start was
+made, he told the children he still expected a visit from them, and
+put as a parting gift a gold dollar as delicate as an old three-cent
+piece, into the hand of each.
+
+Bobaday felt his loss when the cream-colored horse could no longer
+be discerned in the growing distance. Grandma Padgett smiled
+pleasantly ahead through her blue glasses: she had received the
+parting good wishes of a kinsman; family ties had very strong
+significance when this country was newer. Aunt Corinne gazed on the
+warm gold dollar in her palm, and wagged her head affectionately over
+it for cousin Padgett's sake.
+
+The afternoon sun sagged so low it stared into grandma's blue.
+spectacles and made even Corinne shelter her eyes. Zene drove far
+ahead with his load to secure lodgings for the night. Having left
+behind the last acquaintance and entered upon the realities of the
+journey, grandma considered it time to take off her Leghorn bonnet
+and replace it with the brown barege one drawn over wire. So Bobaday
+drew out a bandbox from under the back seat and helped grandma make
+the change. The seat-curtain dropped over the Leghorn in its bandbox;
+and this reminded him that there were other things beside millinery
+stowed away in the carriage. Playthings could be felt by an
+appreciative hand thrust under the seat; and a pocket in the side
+curtain was also stuffed.
+
+“I think I'll put my gold money in the bottom of that pocket,” said
+aunt Corinne, “just where I can find it easy every day.”
+
+She drew out all the package and dropped it in, and, having stuffed
+the pocket again, at once emptied it to see that her piece had not
+slipped through some ambushed hole. Aunt Corinne was considered a
+flighty damsel by all her immediate relatives and acquaintances. She
+had a piquant little face containing investigating hazel eyes. Her
+brown hair was cut square off and held back from her brow by a round
+comb. Her skin was of the most delicate pink color, flushing to rosy
+bloom in her cheeks. She was a long, rather than a tall girl, with
+slim fingers and slim feet, and any excitement tingled over her
+visibly, so that aunt Corinne was frequently all of a quiver about
+the most trivial circumstances. She had a deep dimple in her chin and
+another at the right side of her mouth, and her nose tipped just
+enough to give all the lines of her face a laughing look.
+
+But this laughing look ran ludicrously into consternation when,
+twisting away from the prospect ahead, she happened to look suddenly
+backward under the looped-up curtain, and saw a head dodging down.
+Somebody was hanging to the rear of the carriage.
+
+Aunt Corinne kneeled on the cushion and stretched her neck and eyes
+out over a queer little old man, who seemed to carry a bunch of some
+kind on his back. He had been running noiselessly behind the
+carriage, occasionally hanging by his arms, and he was taking one of
+these swings when his dodging eyes met hers, and he let go, rolling
+in the 'pike dust.
+
+“You _better_ let go!” scolded aunt Corinne. “Bob'day, there's
+a beggar been hangin' on! Ma Padgett, a little old man with a bag on
+his back was goin' to climb into this carriage!”
+
+[Illustration: A QUEER LITTLE OLD MAN.]
+
+“Tisn't a bag,” said Bobaday laughing, for the little old man looked
+funny brushing the dust off his ragged knees.
+
+“_'Tis_ a bag,” said aunt Corinne, “and he ought to hurt himself
+for scarin' us.”
+
+“There's no danger of his doing us harm,” said grandma Padgett
+mildly, after she had leaned out at the side and brought her blue
+glasses to bear upon the lessening figure of the little old man.
+
+Yet Corinne watched him when he sat down on a bank to rest; she
+watched him grow a mere bunch and battered hat, and then fade to a
+speck.
+
+The 'pike was the home of such creatures as he appeared to be. The
+advance guard of what afterwards became an army of tramps, was then
+just beginning to move. But they were few, and, whether they asked
+help or not, were always known by the disreputable name of “beggars.”
+ A beggar-man or beggar-woman represented to the minds of aunt Corinne
+and her nephew such possible enemies as chained lions or tigers. If
+an “old beggar” got a chance at you there was no telling in what part
+of the world he would make merchandise of you! They always suspected
+the beggar boys and girls were kidnapped children. While it was
+desirable to avoid these people, it was even more desirable that a
+little girl should not offend them.
+
+Aunt Corinne revolved in her mind the remark she had made to the
+little old man with a bag on his back. She could take no more
+pleasure in the views along the 'pike; for she almost expected to see
+him start out of a culvert to give her cold shivers with his
+revengeful grimaces. The culverts were solid arches of masonry which
+carried the 'pike unbroken in even a line across the many runs and
+brooks. The tunnel of the culvert was regarded by most children as
+the befitting lair of beggars, who perhaps would not object to
+standing knee-deep in water with their heads against a slimy arch.
+
+“This is the very last culvert,” sighed Corinne, relieved, as they
+rumbled across one and entered the village where they were to stop
+over night.
+
+It was already dusk. The town dogs were beginning to bark, and the
+candles to twinkle. Zene's wagon was unhitched in front of the
+tavern, and this signified that the carriage-load might confidently
+expect entertainment. The tavern was a sprawled-out house, with an
+arch of glass panes over the entrance door. A fat post stood in front
+of it, upholding a swinging sign.
+
+The tavern-keeper came out of the door to meet them when they
+stopped, and helped his guests alight, while a hostler stood ready to
+lead the horses away.
+
+Aunt Corinne sprung down the steps, glad of the change after the
+day's ride, until, glancing down the 'pike over their late route, she
+saw tramping toward the tavern that little old man with a bag on his
+back.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III. THE TAVERN.
+
+
+But the little old man with a bag on his back was left out in the
+dusk, and aunt Corinne and her party went into the tavern parlor. The
+landlady brought a pair of candles in brass candlesticks, setting one
+on each end of the mantel. Between them were snuffers on a snuffer-tray,
+and a tall mass of paper roses under a glass case. The fireplace
+was covered by a fireboard on which was pasted wallpaper like that
+adorning the room. Grandma Padgett sat down in a rocking settee, and
+Corinne and Bobaday on two of the chairs ranged in solemn rows along
+the wall. They felt it would be presumption to pull those chairs an
+inch out of line.
+
+It was a very depressing room. Two funeral urns hung side by side,
+done in India ink, and framed in chipped-off mahogany. Weeping
+willows hung over the urns, and a weeping woman leaned on each. There
+was also a picture of Napoleon in scarlet standing on the green rock
+of St. Helena, holding a yellow three-cornered hat under his elbow.
+The house had a fried-potato odor, to which aunt Corinne did not
+object. She was hungry. But, besides this, the parlor enclosed a
+dozen other scents; as if the essences of all the dinners served in
+the house were sitting around invisible on the chairs. There was not
+lacking even that stale cupboard smell which is the spirit of hunger
+itself.
+
+The landlady was very fat and red and also melancholy. She began
+talking at once to Grandma Padgett about the loss of her children
+whom the funeral urns commemorated, and Grandma Padgett sympathized
+with her and tried to outdo her in sorrowful experiences. But this
+was impossible; for the landlady had-lived through more ordeals than
+anybody else in town, and her manner said plainly, that no passing
+stranger should carry off her championship.
+
+So she made the dismal room so doleful with her talk that aunt
+Corinne began to feel terribly about life, and Robert Day wished he
+had gone to the barn with Zene.
+
+Then the supper-bell rung, and the landlady showed them into the big
+bare dining-room where she forgot all her troubles in the clatter of
+plates and cups. A company of men rushed from what was called the bar-room,
+though its shelves and counter were empty of decanters and glasses.
+They had the greater part of a long table to themselves, and Zene sat
+among them. These men the landlady called the boarders: she placed
+Grandma Padgett's family at the other end of the table; it seemed the
+decorous thing to her that a strip of empty table should separate the
+boarders and women-folks.
+
+There were stacks of eatables, including mango stuffed with cabbage
+and eggs pickled red in beet vinegar. All sorts of fruit butters and
+preserves stood about in glass and earthen dishes. One end of the
+table was an exact counterpart of the other, even to the stacks of
+mighty bread-slices. Boiled cabbage and onions and thick corn-pone
+with fried ham were there to afford a strong support through the
+night's fast. Nothing was served in order: you helped yourself from
+the dishes or let them alone at your pleasure. The landlord appeared
+just as jolly as his wife was dismal. He sat at the other end of the
+table and urged everybody with jokes to eat heartily; yet all this
+profusion was not half so appetizing as some of Grandma Padgett's
+fried chicken and toast would have been.
+
+After supper Bobaday went out to the barn and saw a whole street of
+horse-stalls, the farthest horse switching his tail in dim distance;
+and such a mow of hay as impressed him with the advantages of travel.
+A hostler was forking down hay for the evening's feeding, and Robert
+climbed to his side, upon which the hostler good-naturedly took him
+by the shoulders and let him slide down and alight upon the spongy
+pile below. This would have been a delightful sensation had Bobaday
+not bitten his tongue in the descent. But he liked it better than the
+house where his aunt Corinne wandered uneasily up stairs which were
+hollowed in the middle of each step, and along narrow passages where
+bits of plaster had fallen off.
+
+There was a dulcimer in the room aunt Corinne occupied with her
+mother. She took the hammer and beat on its rusty wires some time
+before going to bed. It tinkled a plea to her to let it alone, but
+what little girl could look at the queer instrument and keep her
+hands off it? The landlady said it was left there by a travelling
+showman who could not pay his board. He hired the bar-room to give a
+concert in, and pasted up written advertisements of his performance
+in various parts of the town. He sent free tickets to the preacher
+and schoolmaster, and the landlord's family went in for nothing.
+Nobody else came, though he played on the flute and harmonium,
+besides the dulcimer, and sang _Lilly Dale_, and _Roll on,
+Silver Moon_, so touchingly that the landlady wiped her eyes at
+their mere memory. As he had no money to pay stage-fare further, and
+the flute and harmonium--a small bellows organ without legs--were
+easier to carry than the dulcimer, he left it and trudged eastward.
+And no one at that tavern could tell whether he and his instruments
+had perished piecemeal along the way, or whether he had found crowded
+houses and forgotten the old dulcimer in the tide of prosperity.
+
+Grandma Padgett's party ate breakfast before day, by the light of a
+candle covering its candlestick with a tallow glacier. It made only a
+hole of shine in the general duskiness of the big dining-room. The
+landlady bade them a pathetic good-by. She was sure there were
+dangers ahead of them. The night stage had got in three hours late,
+owing to a breakdown, and one calamity she said, is only the
+forerunner of another.
+
+Zene had driven ahead with the load. It was a foggy morning, and
+drops of moisture hung to the carriage curtains. There was the
+morning star yet trembling over the town. Aunt Corinne hugged her
+wrap, and Bobaday stuck his hands deep in his pockets. But Grandma
+sat erect and drove away undaunted and undamped. She merely searched
+the inside of the carriage with her glasses, inquiring as a last
+precaution:
+
+“Have we left anything behind?”
+
+“I got all my things,” said Robert. “And my gold dollar's in my
+pocket.”
+
+At this aunt Corinne arose and plunged into the carriage pocket on
+her side.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV. THE SUSAN HOUSE.
+
+
+The contents of that pocket she piled upon her seat; she raked the
+interior with her nails, then she looked at Robert Day with dilating
+eyes.
+
+“_My_ gold dollar's gone!” said aunt Corinne. “That little old
+man with a bag on his back--I just know he got into the barn and took
+it last night.”
+
+“You put it in and took it out so many times yesterday,” said
+Bobaday, “maybe it fell on the carriage floor.” So they unavailingly
+searched the carriage floor.
+
+The little old man with a bag on his back was now fixed in Corinne's
+imagination as the evil genius of the journey. If he spirited out her
+gold dollar, what harm could he not do them! He might throw stones at
+them from sheltered places, and even shoot them with guns. He could
+jump out of any culvert and scare them almost to death! This
+destroyed half her pleasure as the day advanced, in watching boys
+fish with horse-hair snares in the runs which trickled under
+culverts. But Robert felt so much interest in the process that he was
+glad to have the noon halt made near such a small fishing-place. He
+took his lunch and sat on the bank with the boys. They were very
+dirty, and one of them had his shirtsleeve split to the shoulder,
+revealing a sun-blistered elbow joint that still worked with a right
+good will at snaring. But no boys were ever fuller of out-door
+wisdom. They had been swimming, and knew the best diving-hole in the
+world, only a couple of miles away. They had dined on berries, and
+expected to catch it when they got home, but meant to attend a show
+in one of their barns that afternoon, the admission price being ten
+pins. Bobaday learned how to make a slip-knot with the horse-hair and
+hold it in silent suspense just where the minnows moved: the moment a
+fish glided into the open snare a dexterous jerk whipped him out of
+the water, held firmly about the middle by the hair noose. It
+required skill and nice handling, and the split-sleeved boy was the
+most accomplished snarer of all.
+
+[Illustration: BOBADAY LUNCHES WITH STRANGE BOYS.]
+
+Robert shared his lunch with these youths, and parted from them
+reluctantly when the horses were put in. But aunt Corinne who stood
+by in a critical attitude, said she couldn't see any use in catching
+such little fish. You never fried minnies. You used 'em for bait in
+deep water, though, the split-sleeved boy condescended to inform her,
+and you _could_ put 'em into a glass jar, and they'd grow like
+everything. Aunt Corinne was just becoming fired with anxiety to own
+such a jarful herself, when the carriage turned toward the road and
+her mother obliged her to climb in.
+
+About the middle of the afternoon Zene halted and waited for the
+carriage to come up. He left his seat and came to the rear of Old
+Hickory, the off carriage horse, slapping a fly flat on Old Hickory's
+flank as he paused.
+
+“What's the matter, Zene?” inquired Grandma Padgett. “Has anything
+happened?”
+
+“No, marm,” replied Zene. He was a quiet, singular fellow, halting
+in his walk on account of the unevenness of his legs; but faithful to
+the family as either Boswell or Johnson. Grandma Padgett having
+brought him up from a lone and forsaken child, relied upon all the
+good qualities she discovered from time to time, and she saw nothing
+ludicrous in Zene. But aunt Corinne and Bobaday never ceased to
+titter at Zene's “marm.”
+
+“I've been inquirin' along, and we can turn off of the 'pike up here
+at the first by-road, and then take the first cross-road west, and
+save thirty mile o' toll gates. The road goes the same direction.
+It's a good dirt road.”
+
+Grandma Padgett puckered the brows above her glasses. She did not
+want to pay unnecessary bounty to the toll-gate keepers.
+
+“Well, that's a good plan, Zene, if you're sure we won't lose the
+way, or fall into any dif-fick-ulty.”
+
+“I've asked nigh a dozen men, and they all tell the same tale,” said
+Zene.
+
+“People ought to know the lay of the land in their own neighborhood,”
+ admitted Grandma Padgett. “Well, we'll try what virtue there is in the
+dirt road.”
+
+So she clucked to the carriage horses and Zene went back to his
+charge.
+
+The last toll-gate they would see for thirty miles drew its pole
+down before them. Zene paid according to the usual arrangement, and
+the toll-man only stood in the door to see the carriage pass.
+
+“I wouldn't like to live in a little bit of a house sticking out on
+the 'pike like that,” said aunt Corinne to her nephew. “Folks could
+run against it on dark nights. Does he stay there by himself? And if
+robbers or old beggars came by they could nab him the minute he
+opened his door.”
+
+“But if he has any boys,” suggested Robert looking back, “they can
+see everybody pass, and it'd be just as good as going some place all
+the time. And who's afraid of robbers!”
+
+Zene beckoned to the carriage as he turned off the 'pike. For a
+distance the wagon moved ahead of them, between tall stake fences
+which were overrun with vines or had their corners crowded with bushes.
+Wheat and cornfields and sweet-smelling buckwheat spread out on each
+side until the woods met them, and not a bit of the afternoon heat
+touched the carriage after that. Aunt Corinne clasped a leather-covered
+upright which hurt her hand before, and leaned toward the trees on
+her side. Every new piece of woodland is an unexplored country containing
+moss-lined stumps, dimples of hollows full of mint, queer-shaped trees,
+and hickory saplings just the right saddle-curve for bending down as
+“teeters,” such as are never reproduced in any other piece of woodland.
+Nature does not make two trees alike, and her cool breathing-halls under
+the woods' canopies are as diverse as the faces of children wandering
+there. Moss or lichens grow thicker in one spot; another particular
+enclosure you call the lily or the bloodroot woods, and yet another
+the wild-grape woods. This is distinguished for blackberries away up
+in the clearings, and that is a fishing woods, where the limbs stretch
+down to clear holes, and you sit in a root seat and hear springs
+trickling down the banks while you fish. Though Corinne could possess
+these reaches of trees only with a brief survey, she enjoyed them as a
+novelty.
+
+“I would like to get lost in the woods,” she observed, “and have
+everybody out hunting me while I had to eat berries and roots. I
+don't believe I'd like roots, though: they look so big and tough. And
+I wouldn't touch a persimmon! Nor Injun turnip. You's a bad boy that
+time you give me Injun turnip to eat, Bobaday Padgett!”
+
+She turned upon her nephew, fierce with the recollection, and he
+laughed, saying he wished he'd some to fool somebody with now.
+
+“It bit my mouth so a whole crock of milk wouldn't help it, and if
+brother Tip'd been home, Ma Padgett wouldn't let you off so easy.”
+
+“You wanted to taste it,” said Robert. “And you'd eat the green
+persimmons if they'd puckered your mouth clear shut.”
+
+“I wanted to see what the things that the little pig that lived in
+the stone house filled his churn with, tasted like,” admitted aunt
+Corinne lucidly; so she subsided.
+
+“Do you see the wagon, children?” inquired Grandma Padgett, who felt
+the necessity of following Zene's lead closely. She stopped Old
+Hickory and Old Henry at cross-roads.
+
+“No; but he said turn west on the first road we came to,” counseled
+Bobaday.
+
+“And this is the first, I counted,” said aunt Corinne.
+
+“I wish we could see the cover ahead of us. We don't want to resk
+gettin' separated,” said Grandma Padgett.
+
+Yet she turned the horses westward with a degree of confidence, and
+drove up into a hilly country which soon hid the sun. The long shades
+crept past and behind them. There was a country church, with a
+graveyard full of white stones nearly smothered in grass and briers.
+And there was a school-house in an open space, with a playground
+beaten bare and white in the midst of a yellow mustard jungle. They
+saw some loiterers creeping home, carrying dinner-pail and basket,
+and taking a languid last tag of each other. The little girls looked
+up at the passing carriage from their sunbonnet depths, but the boys
+had taken off their hats to slap each other with: they looked at the
+strangers, round-eyed and ready to smile, and Robert and Corinne
+nodded. Grandma Padgett bethought herself to ask if any of them had
+seen a moving wagon pass that way. The girls stared bashfully at each
+other and said “No, ma'am,” but the boys affirmed strongly that they
+had seen two moving wagons go by, one just as school was out, and the
+boldest boy of all made an effort to remember the white and gray
+horses.
+
+The top of a hill soon stood between these children, and the
+travellers, but in all the vista beyond there was no glimpse of Zene.
+
+Grandma Padgett felt anxious, and her anxiety increased as the dusk
+thickened.
+
+“There don't seem to be any taverns along this road,” she said; “and
+I hate to ask at any farmer's for accommodations over night. We don't
+know the neighborhood, and a body hates to be a bother.”
+
+“Let's camp out,” volunteered Bobaday.
+
+“We'd need the cover off of the wagon to do that, and kittles,” said
+Grandma Padgett, “and dried meat and butter and cake and things
+_out_ of the wagon.”
+
+“Maybe Zene's back in the woods campin' somewhere,” exclaimed aunt
+Corinne. “And he has his gun, and can shoot birds too.”
+
+“No, he's goin' along the right road and expectin' us to follow. And
+as like as not has found a place to put up,--while we're off on the
+wrong road.”
+
+“How'll we ever get to brother Tip's, then?” propounded aunt
+Corinne. “Maybe we're in Missouri, or Iowa, and won't never get to
+the Illinois line!”
+
+“Humph!” remarked Robert her nephew; “do you s'pose folks could go
+to Iowa or Missouri as quick as this! Cars'd have to put on steam to
+do it.”
+
+“And I forgot about the State lines,” murmured his aunt. “The'
+hasn't been any ropes stretched along't _I_ saw.”
+
+“They don't bound States with ropes,” said Robert Day.
+
+“Well, it's lines,” insisted aunt Corinne.
+
+“Do you make out a house off there?” questioned Grandma Padgett,
+shortening the discussion.
+
+“Yes, ma'am, and it's a tavern,” assured her grandson, kneeling upon
+the cushion beside her to stretch his neck forward.
+
+It was a tavern in a sandy valley. It was lighting a cautious candle
+or two as they approached. A farmer was watering his team at the
+trough under the pump spout. All the premises had a look of Holland,
+which Grandma Padgett did not recognize: she only thought them very
+clean. There was a side door cut across the centre like the doors of
+mills, so that the upper part swung open while the lower part
+remained shut. A fat white woman leaned her elbows upon this,
+scarcely observing the travellers.
+
+Grandma Padgett paused at the front of the house and waited for
+somebody to come out. The last primrose color died slowly out of the
+sky. If the tavern had any proprietor, he combined farming with
+tavern keeping. His hay and wheat fields came close to the garden,
+and his corn stood rank on rank up the hills.
+
+“They must be all asleep in there,” fretted Grandma Padgett. The
+woman with her arms over the half door had not stirred.
+
+“Shall I run in?” said Bobaday.
+
+“Yes, and ask if Zene stopped here. I don't see a sign of the wagon.”
+
+Her grandson opened the carriage door and ran down the steps. The
+white-scrubbed hall detained him several minutes before he returned
+with a large man who smoked a crooked-stemmed pipe during the
+conference. The man held the bowl of the pipe in his hand which was
+fat and red. So was his face. He had a mighty tuft of hair on his
+upper lip. His shirt sleeves shone like new snow through the dark.
+
+“Goot efenins,” he said very kindly.
+
+“I want to stop here over night,” said Grandma Padgett. “We're
+moving, and our wagon is somewhere on this road. Have you seen
+anything of a wagon--and a white and a gray horse?”
+
+“Oh, yes,” said the tavern keeper, nodding his head. “Dere is lots
+of wakkons on de road aheadt.”
+
+“Well, we can't go further ourselves. Can you take the lines?”
+
+“Oh, nein,” said the tavern-keeper mildly. “I don't keep moofers mit
+my house. Dey goes a little furter.”
+
+“You don't keep movers!” said Grandma Padgett indignantly. “What's
+your tavern for?”
+
+“Oh, yah,” replied the host with undisturbed benevolence. “Dey goes
+a little furter.”
+
+“Why have you put out a sign to mislead folks?”
+
+The tavern keeper took the pipe out of his mouth to look up at his
+sign. It swayed back and forth in the valley breeze, as if itself
+expostulating with him.
+
+“Dot's a goot sign,” he pronounced. “Auf you go up te hill, tere ist
+te house I put up mit te moofers. First house. All convenient. You
+sthay tere. I coom along in te mornin'. Tere ist more as feefty
+famblies sthop mit tat house. Oh, nien, I don't keep moofers mit te
+tafern.”
+
+“This is a queer way to do,” said Grandma Padgett, fixing the full
+severity of her glasses on him. “Turn a woman and two children away
+to harbor as well as they can in some old barn! I'll not stop in your
+house on the hill. Who'd 'tend to the horses?”
+
+“Tare ist grass and water,” said the landlord as she turned from his
+door. “And more as feefty famblies hast put up tere. I don't keep
+moofers mit te tafern.”
+
+Robert and Corinne felt very homeless as she drove at a rattling
+pace down the valley. They were hungry, and upon an unknown road; and
+that inhospitable tavern had turned them away like vagrants.
+
+“We'll drive all night before we'll stop in his movers' pen,” said
+Grandma Padgett with her well-known decision. “I suppose he calls
+every vagabond that comes along a mover, and his own house is too
+clean for such gentry. I've heard about the Swopes and the Dutch
+being stupid, but a body has to travel before they know.”
+
+But well did the Dutch landlord know the persuasion of his house on
+the hill after luckless travellers had passed through a stream which
+drained the valley. This was narrow enough, but the very banks had a
+caving, treacherous look. Grandma Padgett drove in, and the carriage
+came down with a plunge on the flanks of Old Hickory and Old Henry,
+and they disappeared to their nostrils and the harness strips along
+the centre of their backs.
+
+[Illustration: “HASN'T THE CREEK ANY BOTTOM?” CRIED GRANDMA PADGETT.]
+
+“Hasn't the creek any bottom?” cried Grandma Padgett, while Corinne
+and Robert clung to the settling carriage. The water poured across
+their feet and rose up to their knees. Hickory and Henry were urged
+with whip and cry.
+
+“Hold fast, children! Don't get swept out!” Grandma Padgett
+exhorted. “There's no danger if the horses can climb the bank.”
+
+They were turned out of their course by the current, and Hickory and
+Henry got their fore feet out, crumbling a steep place. Below the
+bank grew steeper. If they did not get out here, all must go whirling
+and sinking down stream. The landing was made, both horses leaping up
+as if from an abyss. The carriage cracked, and when its wheels once
+more ground the dry sand, Grandma Padgett trembled awhile, and moved
+her lips before replying to the children's exclamations.
+
+“We've been delivered from a great danger,” she said. “And that
+miserable man let us drive into it without warning!”
+
+“If I's big enough,” said Robert Day, “I'd go back and thrash him.”
+
+“It ill becomes us,” rebuked Grandma Padgett, “to give place to
+wrath after escaping from peril. But if this is the trap he sets for
+his house on the hill, I hope he has been caught in it himself
+sometime!”
+
+“Where'll we go now?” Corinne wailed, having considered it was time
+to begin crying. “I'm drownded, and my teeth knock together, I'm
+gettin' so cold!”
+
+They paused at the top of the hill, Corinne still lamenting.
+
+“I don't want to stop here,” said Grandma Padgett, adding, “but I
+suppose we must.”
+
+The house was large and weather-beaten; its gable-end turned toward
+the road. The “feefty famblies” had left no trace of domestic life.
+Grass and weeds grew to the lower windows. The entrance was at one
+side through a sea of rank growths.
+
+“It looks like they's ghosts lived here,” pronounced Robert dismally.
+
+“Don't let me hear such idle speeches!” said Grandma Padgett,
+shaking her head. “Spooks and ghosts only live in people's
+imaginations.”
+
+“If they got tired of that,” said Robert, “they'd come to live here.”
+
+“The old house looks like its name was Susan,” wept Corinne. “Are we
+goin' to stay all night in this Susan house, ma?”
+
+Her parent stepped resolutely from the carriage, and Bobaday
+hastened to let down some bars. He helped his grandmother lead the
+horses into a weedy enclosure, and there unhitch them from the
+carriage. There was a shed covered with straw which served for a
+stable. The horses were watered--Robert wading to his neck among
+cherry sprouts to a curb well, and unhooking the heavy bucket from
+its chain, after a search for something else available. Then leaving
+the poor creatures to browse as best they could, the party prepared
+to move upon the house. Aunt Corinne came out of the wet carriage.
+
+Grandma Padgett picked up some sticks and chips. They attempted to
+unlock the door; but the lock was broken. “Anybody can go in!”
+ remarked the head of the party. “But I don't know that we can even
+build a fire, and as to provisions, I s'pose we'll have to starve
+this night.”
+
+But stumbling into a dark front room, and feeling hopelessly along
+the mantel, they actually found matches. The tenth one struck flame.
+
+There were ashes and black brands in the fireplace, left there possibly,
+by the landlord's last moofer. Grandma Padgett built a fire to which the
+children huddled, casting fearful glances up the damp-stained walls.
+The flame was something like a welcome.
+
+“Perhaps,” said Grandma with energy, “there are even provisions in
+the house. I wouldn't grudge payin' that man a good price and cookin'
+them myself, if I could give you something to eat.”
+
+“We can look,” suggested Bobaday. “They'd be in the cellar, wouldn't
+they?”
+
+“It's lots lonesomer than our house was the morning we came away,”
+ chattered aunt Corinne, warming her long hands at the blaze.
+
+And now beneath the floor began a noise which made even Grandma
+Padgett stand erect, glaring through her glasses.
+
+“_Something's_ in the cellar!” whispered Bobaday.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V. THE SUSAN HOUSE CELLAR.
+
+
+It was not pleasant to stand in a strange house in an unknown
+neighborhood, drenched, hungry and unprotected, hearing fearful
+sounds like danger threatening under foot.
+
+Corinne felt a speechless desire to be back in the creek again and
+on the point of drowning; that would soon be over. But who could tell
+what might occur after this groaning in the cellar?
+
+“I heard a noise,” said Grandma Padgett, to bespeak their attention,
+as if they could remember ever hearing anything else.
+
+“It's cats, I think,” said Robert Day, husky with courage.
+
+Cats could not groan in such short and painful catches. Conjectures
+of many colors appeared and disappeared like flashes in Bobaday's
+mind. The groaner was somebody that bad Dutch landlord had half
+murdered and put in the cellar. Maybe the floor was built to give way
+and let every traveller fall into a pit! Or it might be some boy or
+girl left behind by wicked movers to starve. Or a beggarman, wanting
+the house to himself, could be making that noise to frighten them
+away.
+
+The sharp groans were regularly uttered. Corinne buried her head in
+her mother's skirts and waited to be taken or left, as the Booggar
+pleased.
+
+“Well,” said Grandma Padgett, “I suppose we'll have to go and see
+what ails that Thing down there. It may be a human bein' in distress.”
+
+Robert feared it was something else, but he would not have mentioned
+it to his grandmother.
+
+“What'll we carry to see with?” he eagerly inquired. It was easy to
+be eager, because they had no lights except the brands in the
+fireplace.
+
+Grandma Padgett, who in her early days had carried live coals from
+neighbors' houses miles away, saw how to dispense with lamp or
+candle. She took a shovel full of embers--and placed a burning chip
+on top. The chip would have gone out by itself, but was kept blazing
+by the coals underneath.
+
+“Shall I go ahead?” inquired Robert.
+
+“No, you walk behind. And you might carry a piece of stick,” replied
+his grandmother, conveying a hint which made his shoulder blades feel
+chilly.
+
+They moved toward the cellar entrance in a slow procession, to keep
+the chip from flaring out.
+
+“Don't hang to me so!” Grandma Padgett remonstrated with her
+daughter. “I sh'll step on you, and down we'll all go and set the
+house afire.”
+
+Garrets are cheerful, cobwebby places, always full of slits where
+long, smoky sun-rays can poke in. An amber warmth cheers the darkness
+of garrets; you feel certain there is nothing ugly hiding behind the
+remotest and dustiest box. If rats or mice inhabit it, they are
+jovial fellows. But how different is a cellar, and especially a
+cellar neglected. You plunge down rough steps into a cavern. A mouldy
+air from dried-up and forgotten vegetables meets you. The earth may
+not be moist underfoot, but it has not the kind feeling of sun-warmed
+earth. And if big rats hide there, how bold and hideous they are!
+There are cool farmhouse cellars floored with cement and shelved with
+sweet-smelling pine, where apple-bins make incense, and swinging-shelves
+of butter, tables of milk crocks, lines of fruit cans and home-made
+catsup bottles, jars of pickles and chowder, and white covered pastry
+and cake, promise abundant hospitality. But these are inverted garrets,
+rather than cellars. They are refrigerators for pure air; and they keep
+a mellow light of their own. When you go into one of them it seems as
+if the house were standing on its head to express its joy and comfort.
+
+But the Susan House cellar was one of dread, aside from the noise
+proceeding out of it. Bobaday knew this before they opened a door
+upon a narrow-throated descent.
+
+One of Zene's stories became vivid. It was a story of a house where
+nobody could stay, though the landlord offered it rent-free. But
+along came two good youths without any money, and for board and
+lodging, they undertook to break the spell by sleeping there three
+nights. The first two nights they were not disturbed, and sat with
+their candle, reading good books until after midnight. But the third,
+just on the stroke of twelve, a noise began in the cellar! So they
+took their candle, and, armed with nothing except good books, went
+below, and in the furthest corner they saw a little old man with a
+red nightcap on his head, sitting astride of a barrel! In Zene's
+story the little old man only had it on his mind to tell these good
+youths where to dig for his money; and when they had secured the
+money, he amiably disappeared, and the house was pleasant to live in
+ever afterward.
+
+This tale, heard in the barn while Zene was greasing harnesses, and
+heard without Grandma Padgett's sanction, now made her grandson
+shiver with dread as his feet went down into the Susan House dungeon.
+It was trying enough to be exploring a strange cellar full of groans,
+without straining your eyes in expectation of seeing a little old man
+in a red nightcap, sitting astride of a barrel!
+
+“Who's there?” said Grandma Padgett with stern emphasis, as she held
+her beacon stretched out into the cellar.
+
+The groaning ceased for an awful space of time. Aunt Corinne was
+behind her nephew, and she squatted on the step to peer with
+distended eyes, lest some hand should reach up and grab her by the
+foot.
+
+It was a small square cellar, having earthen sides, but piles of
+pine boxes made ambushes everywhere.
+
+“Come out!” Grandma Padgett spoke again. “We won't have any tricks
+played. But if you're hurt, we can help you.”
+
+It was like addressing solid darkness, for the chip was languishing
+upon its coals, and cast but a dim red glare around the shovel.
+
+Still some being crept toward them from the darkness, uttering a
+prolonged and hearty groan, as if to explode at once the
+accumulations of silence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI. MR. MATTHEWS.
+
+
+Aunt Corinne realizing it was a man, rushed to the top of the steps
+and hid her eyes behind the door. She knew her mother could deal with
+him, and, if he offered any harm, pour coals of fire upon his head in
+a literal sense. But she did not feel able to stand by. Robert, on
+the other hand, seeing no red nightcap on the head thrust up toward
+them, supported his grandmother strongly, and even helped to pull the
+man up-stairs.
+
+One touch of his soft, foolish body was enough to convince any one
+that he was a harmless creature. His foot was sprained.
+
+Robert carried a backless chair and set it before the fire, and on
+this the limping man was placed. Grandma Padgett emptied her coals on
+the hearth and surveyed him. He had a red face and bashful eyes, and
+while the top of his head was quite bald, he had a half-circle of
+fuzz extending around his face from ear to ear. He wore a roundabout
+and trousers, and shoes with copper toes. His hands were fat and
+dimpled as well as freckled. Altogether, he had the appearance of a
+hugely overgrown boy, ducking his head shyly while Grandma Padgett
+looked at him.
+
+“For pity sake!” said Grandma Padgett. “What ails the creature?
+What's your name, and who are you?”
+
+At that the man chanted off in a nasal sing-song, as if he were
+accustomed to repeating his rhyme:
+
+  J. D. Matthews is my name,
+    Ohio-r is my nation,
+  Mud Creek is my dwellin' place,
+    And glory is my expectation.
+
+“Yes,” said Grandma Padgett, removing her glasses, as she did when
+very much puzzled.
+
+Corinne, in a distant corner of the lighted room, began to laugh
+aloud, and after looking towards her, the man laughed also, as if
+they two were enjoying a joke upon the mother.
+
+“Well, it may be funny, but you gave us enough of a scare with your
+gruntin' and your groanin',” said Grandma Padgett severely.
+
+J. D. Matthews reminded of his recent tribulations, took up one of
+his feet and began to groan over it again. He was as shapeless and
+clumsy as a bear, and this motion seemed not unlike the tiltings of a
+bear forced to dance.
+
+“There you go,” said Grandma Padgett. “Can't you tell how you came
+in the cellar, and what hurt you?”
+
+Mr. Matthews piped out readily, as if he had packed the stanza into
+shape between the groans of his underground sojourn:
+
+  To the cellar for fuel I did go,
+  And there I met my overthrow;
+  I lost my footing and my candle,
+  And grazed my shin and sprained my ankle.
+
+“The man must be a poet,” pronounced Grandma Padgett with contempt.
+“He has to say everything in rhyme.”
+
+Chanted Mr. Matthews:
+
+  I was not born in a good time,
+  I cannot speak except in rhyme.
+
+“Ain't he funny?” said Bobaday, rubbing his own knees with enjoyment.
+
+“He's very daft,” said the grandmother. “And what to do for him I
+don't know. We've nothing to eat ourselves. I might wet his foot and
+tie it up.”
+
+Mr. Matthews looked at her smilingly while he recited:
+
+  I have a cart that does contain
+  A pana_seer_ for ev'_ry_ pain.
+  There's coffee, also there is _chee_,
+  Sugar and cakes, bread and hone-ee.
+  I have parch corn and liniment,
+  Which causes me to feel content.
+  There is some half a dozen kittles
+  To serve me when I cook my vittles.
+  Butter and eggs I do deal in;
+  To go without would be a sin.
+  When I sit down to cook my meals,
+  I know how good a king feels.
+
+“Well, if you had your cart handy it would be worth while,” said
+Grandma Padgett indulgently. “But talkin' of such things when the
+children are hungry only aggravates a body more.”
+
+Producing a key from his roundabout pocket, Mr. Matthews lifted his
+voice and actually sung:
+
+  J. D. Matthews' cart stands at your door.
+  Lady, will you step out and see my store?
+  I've cally-co and Irish table linen,
+  Domestic gingham and the best o' flannen.
+    I take eggs and butter for these treasures,
+    I never cheat, but give good measures.
+
+“Let me see if there is a cart,” begged Bobaday, reaching for the
+key which his grandmother reluctantly received.
+
+He then went to the front door and groped in the weeds. The hand-cart
+was there, and all of Mr. Matthews' statements were found to be
+true. He had plenty of provisions, as well as a small stock of dry
+goods and patent medicines, snugly packed in the vehicle which he was
+in the habit of pushing before him. There were even candles. Grandma
+Padgett lighted one, and stuck it in an empty liniment bottle. Then
+she dressed the silly pedler's ankle, and put an abundant supper on
+the fire to cook in his various kettles; the pedler smiling with pure
+joy all the time to find himself the centre of such a family party.
+
+Bobaday and Corinne came up, and stood leaning against the ends of
+the mantel. No poached eggs and toast ever looked so nice; no honey
+ever had such melting yellow comb; no tea smelled so delicious; no
+ginger cakes had such a rich moistness. They sat on the carriage
+cushions and ate their supper with Grandma Padgett. It was placed on
+the side of an empty box, between them and the pedlerman. He divided
+his attention betwixt eating and chanting rhymes, interspersing both
+with furtive laughs, into which he tried to draw the children.
+Grandma Padgett overawed him; but he evidently felt on a level with
+aunt Corinne and her nephew. In his foolish red face there struggled
+a recollection of having gone fishing, or played marbles, or hunted
+wild flowers with these children or children like them. He nodded and
+twinkled his eyes at them, and they laughed at whatever he did. His
+ankle was so relieved by a magic liniment, that he felt able to
+hobble around the house when Grandma Padgett explored it, repeating
+under his breath the burst he indulged in when she arrayed the supper
+on the box:
+
+  O, I went to a friend's house,
+    The friend says, 'Come in,
+  Have a hot cup of coffee;
+    And how have you been?'
+
+Grandma Padgett said she could not sleep until she knew what other
+creatures were hidden in the house.
+
+They all ascended the enclosed staircase, and searched echoing dusty
+rooms where rats or mice whisked out of sight at their approach.
+
+“This is a funny kind of an addition to a tavern,” remarked the head
+of the party. “No beds: no anything. We'll build a fire in this upper
+fireplace, and bring the cushions and shawls up, and see if we can
+get a wink of sleep. It ain't a cold night, and we're dry now. You
+can sleep by the fireplace down-stairs,” she said to the pedler, “and
+I'll settle with you for our breakfast and supper before we leave in
+the morning. It's been a providence that you were in the house.”
+
+Mr. Matthews smiled deferentially, and appeared to be pondering a
+new rhyme about Grandma Padgett. But the subject was so weighty it
+kept him shaking his head.
+
+They came down-stairs for fuel and coals, and she requested the
+pedler to take possession of the lower room and make himself
+comfortable, but not to set the house on fire.
+
+“What shall we give him to sleep on?” pondered the grandmother. “I
+can't spare things from the children; it won't do to let him sleep on
+the floor.”
+
+    “I have a cart, it has been said,
+  Which serves me both for cupboard and bed,”
+
+chanted Mr. Matthews.
+
+“Well, that's a good thing,” said Grandma Padgett. “If you could
+pull a whole furnished house out of that cart 'twouldn't surprise me.”
+
+The pedler opened the door and dragged his cart in over the low
+sill. They then bolted the door with such rusty fastenings as
+remained to it.
+
+As soon as he felt the familiar handle on his palms, J. D. Matthews
+forgot that his ankle had been twisted. He was again upon the road,
+as free as the small wild creatures that whisked along the fence.
+Grandma Padgett's grown-up strength of mind failed to restrain him
+from acting the horse. He neighed, and rattled the cart wildly over
+the empty room. Now he ran away and pretended to kick everything to
+pieces; and now he put himself up at a manger, and ground his feed.
+He broke out of his stable and careened wildly around a pasture,
+refusing to be hitched, and expressing his contempt for the cart by
+kicking up at it.
+
+“I guess your sprain wasn't as bad as you let on,” observed Grandma
+Padgett.
+
+The observation, or a twinge, reminded Mr. Matthews to double
+himself down and groan again.
+
+With painful limps, and Robert Day's assistance, he got the cart
+before the fireplace. It looked like a narrow, high green box on
+wheels. The pedler blocked the wheels behind, and propped the handle
+level. Then he crept with great contentment to the top, and stretched
+himself to sleep.
+
+“He's a kind of a fowl of the air,” said Grandma Padgett.
+
+“Oh, but I hope he's going our road!” said Bobaday, as they re-ascended
+the stairs. “He's more fun than a drove of turkeys!”
+
+“And I'm not a bit afraid of him,” said aunt Corinne. “He ain't like
+the old man with a bag on his back.”
+
+But J. D. Matthews was going in the opposite direction.
+
+Before Grandma Padgett had completed her brief toilet next morning,
+and while the daylight was yet uncertain, the Dutch landlord knocked
+at the outer door for his fee. He seemed not at all surprised at
+finding the pedler lodging there, but told him to stop at the tavern
+and trade with the vrow.
+
+“And a safe time the poor simple soul will have,” said Grandma
+Padgett, making her spectacles glitter at the landlord, “gettin'
+through the creek that nigh drowned us. I suppose, _you_ have a
+ford that you don't keep for movers.”
+
+“Oh, yah!” said the landlord. “Te fort ist goot.”
+
+“How dared you send a woman and two children to such an empty,
+miserable shell as this?”
+
+[Illustration: J. D. MATTHEWS RUNS AWAY.]
+
+“I don't keep moofers to mine tafern,” said the landlord, putting
+his abundant charge into his pocket. “Chay-Te, he always stops here.
+He coes all ofer te countries, Chay-Te toes. His headt ist pat.”
+
+“But his heart is good,” said the grandmother. “And that will count
+up more to his credit than if he was an extortioner, and ill-treated
+the stranger within his gate.”
+
+“Oh, Chay-Te ist a goot feller!” said the Dutch landlord
+comfortably, untouched by any reflections on his own conduct.
+
+Grandma Padgett could not feel placid in her mind until the weeds
+and hill hid him from sight.
+
+Mr. Matthews arose so sound from his night's slumber, that he was
+able after pumping a prodigious lot of water over himself, and
+blowing with enjoyment, to help her get the breakfast, and put the
+kettles in travelling order afterwards. He had a great many
+housewifely ways, and his tidiness was a satisfaction to Grandma
+Padgett. The breakfast was excellent, but Corinne and Bobaday on one
+side of the box, and J. D. Matthews on the other, exchanged glances
+of regret at parting. He helped Robert put the horses to the
+carriage, making blunders at every stage of the hitching up.
+
+They all came out of the Susan House, and he pushed his cart into
+the road.
+
+“I almost hate to leave it,” said aunt Corinne, “because we did have
+a good time after we were scared so bad.”
+
+“Seems as if a body always hates to leave a place,” remarked
+Bobaday. “The next people that come along will never know we lived
+here one night. But _we'll_ always remember it.”
+
+Grandma Padgett before entering the carriage, was trying to make the
+pedler take pay for the food her family ate. He smiled at her
+deferentially, but backed away with his cart.
+
+“What a man this is!” she exclaimed impatiently. “We owe you for two
+meals' vittles.”
+
+“I have some half a dozen kittles,” murmured Mr. Matthews.
+
+“But won't you take the money? The landlord was keen enough for his.”
+
+The pedler had got his rhyme about Grandma Padgett completed. He
+left her, still stretching her hand out, and rattled his cart up to
+the children who were leaning from the carriage towards him.
+
+“She is a lady of renown,” chanted J. D. Matthews, indicating their
+grandmother.
+
+  She makes good butter by the pound,
+  Her hand is kind, so is her tongue;
+  But when she comes I want to run!
+
+He accordingly ran, rattling the cart like a hailstorm before him,
+downhill; and out of their sight.
+
+“Ah, there he goes!” sighed aunt Corinne, “and he hardly limps a
+bit. I hope we'll see him again some time.”
+
+“I might 'a forced the money into his pocket,” reflected Grandma
+Padgett, as she took up the lines. “But I'd rather feel in debt to
+that kind, simple soul than to many another. Why didn't we ask him if
+he saw Zene's wagon up the road? These poor horses want oats. They'll
+be glad to sight the white cover once more.”
+
+“I would almost rather have him come along,” decided Robert Day,
+“than to find the wagon. For he could make a camp anywhere, and speak
+his poetry all the time. What fun he must have if he wants to stay in
+the woods all night. I expect if he wanted to hide he could creep
+into that cart and stretch out, with his face where he could smell
+the honey and ginger cakes. I'd like to have a cart and travel like
+that. Are we going on to the 'pike again, Grandma?”
+
+“Not till we find Zene,” she replied, driving resolutely forward on
+the strange road.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII. ZENE'S MAN AND WOMAN.
+
+
+A covered wagon appeared on the first crossroad, moving steadily
+between rows of elder bushes. The carriage waited its approach. A
+figure like Zene's sat resting his feet on the tongue behind the old
+gray and the old white.
+
+“It's our wagon,” said Robert Day. Presently Zene's countenance, and
+even the cast in his eyes, became a certainty instead of a wavering
+indistinctness, and he smiled with satisfaction while halting his
+vehicle at right angles with the carriage.
+
+“Where have you been?” inquired Grandma Padgett.
+
+“Over on t'other road,” replied Zene, indicating the direction with
+his whip, “huntin' you folks. I knowed you hadn't made the right turn
+somehow.”
+
+Grandma Padgett mentioned her experience with the Dutch landlord and
+the ford, both of which Zene had avoided by taking another cross-road
+that he had neglected to indicate to them. He said he thought they
+would see the wagon-track and foller, not bein' fur behind. When he
+discovered they were not in his train, he was in a narrow road and
+could not turn; so he tied the horses and walked back a piece. He got
+on a corn-field fence and shouted to them; but by that time there was
+no carriage anywhere in the landscape.
+
+“Such things won't do,” said Grandma Padgett with some severity.
+
+“No, marm,” responded Zene humbly.
+
+“We must keep together,” said the head of the caravan.
+
+“Yes, marm,” responded Zene earnestly.
+
+“Well, now, you may drive ahead and keep the carriage in sight till
+it's dinner-time and we come to a good place to halt.”
+
+Bobaday said he believed he would get in with Zene and try the wagon
+awhile. Springs and cushions had become tiresome. He half-stood on
+the tongue, to bring his legs down on a level with Zene's, and
+enjoyed the jolting in every piece of his backbone. He had had a
+surfeit of woman-society. Even the horsey smell of Zene's clothes was
+found agreeable. And above all, he wanted to talk about J. D.
+Matthews, and tell the terrors of a bottomless ford and a house with
+a strange-sounding cellar.
+
+“But the man was the funniest thing,” said Bobaday. “He just talked
+poetry all the time, and Grandma said he was daft. I'd like to talk
+that way myself, but I can't make it jee.”
+
+Zene observed mysteriously, that there were some queer folks in this
+section.
+
+Yes, Bobaday admitted; the landlord was as Dutch as sour-krout.
+
+Zene observed that all the queer folks wasn't Dutch. He shook his
+head and looked so steadily at a black stump that Robert knew his
+eyes were fixedly cast on the horizon. The boy speculated on the
+possibility of people with crooked eyes seeing anything clearly. But
+Zene's hints were a stimulant to curiosity.
+
+“Where did _you_ stay last night?” inquired Robert, bracing
+himself for pleasant revelations.
+
+“Oh, I thought at first I'd put up in the wagon.” replied Zene.
+
+“But you didn't?”
+
+“No: not _intirely_.”
+
+“What _did_ you do?” pressed Robert Day.
+
+“Well, I thought I'd better git nigh some house, on account of
+givin' me a chance to see if you folks come by. I thought you'd
+inquire at all the houses.”
+
+“Did you stop at one?”
+
+[Illustration: ZENE EXCITES BOBADAY'S CURIOSITY.]
+
+“I took the team out _by_ a house. It was plum dark then.”
+
+“I'd gone in to see what kind of folks they were first,” remarked
+Bobaday.
+
+“Yes, sir; that's what I'd orto done. But I leads them round to
+their feed-box after I watered 'em to a spring o' runnin' water. Then
+I doesn't know but the woman o' the house will give me a supper if I
+pays for it. So I slips to the side door and knocks. And a man opens
+the door.”
+
+Robert Day drew in his breath quickly.
+
+“How did the man look?” he inquired.
+
+“I can't tell you that,” replied Zene, “bekaze I was so struck with
+the looks of the woman that I looked right past him.”
+
+Robert considered the cast in Zene's eyes, and felt in doubt whether
+he looked at the man and saw the woman, or looked at the woman and
+saw the man.
+
+“Was she pretty?”
+
+“Pretty!” replied Zene. “Is that flea-bit-gray, grazin' in the
+medder there, pretty?”
+
+“Well,” replied Bobaday, shifting his feet, “that's about as good-looking
+as one of our old grays.”
+
+“You don't know a horse,” said Zene indulgently. “Ourn's an iron
+gray. There's a sight of difference in grays.”
+
+“Was the woman ugly?”
+
+“Is a spotted snake ugly?”
+
+“Yes,” replied Robert decidedly; “or it 'pears so to me.”
+
+“That's how the woman 'peared to me. She was tousled, and looked
+wild out of her eyes. The man says, says he, 'What do you want?' I
+s'ze, 'Can I git a bite here?'”
+
+Robert had frequently explained to Zene the utter nonsense of this
+abbreviation, “I s'ze,” but Zene invariably returned to it, perhaps
+dimly reasoning that he had a right to the dignity of third person
+when repeating what he had said. If he said of another man, “says
+he,” why could he not remark of himself, “I says he?” He considered
+it not only correct, but ornamental.
+
+“The man says, says he, 'We don't keep foot-pads.' And I s'ze--for I
+was mad--'I ain't no more a foot-pad than you are,' I s'ze. 'I've got
+a team and a wagon out here,' I s'ze, 'and pervisions too, but I've
+got the means to pay for a warm bite,' I s'ze, 'and if you can't
+accommodate me, I s'pose there's other neighbors that can.'”
+
+“You shouldn't told him you had money and things!” exclaimed Robert,
+bulging his eyes.
+
+“I see that, soon's I done it,” returned Zene, shaking a line over
+the near horse. “The woman spoke up, and she says, says she, 'There
+ain't any neighbor nigher than five miles.' Thinks I, this settlement
+looked thicker than that. But I doesn't say yea or no to it. And they
+had me come in and eat. I paid twenty-five cents for such a meal as
+your gran'marm wouldn't have set down on her table.”
+
+“What did they have?”
+
+“Don't ask me,” urged Zene; “I'd like to forget it. There was
+vittles, but they tasted so funny. And they kept inquirin' where I's
+goin' and who was with me. They was the uneasiest people you ever
+see. And nothing would do but I must sleep in the house. There was
+two rooms. I didn't see till I was in bed, that the only door I could
+get out of let into the room where the man and woman stayed.”
+
+Robert Day began to consider the part of Ohio through which his
+caravan was passing, a weird and unwholesome region, full of
+shivering delights. While the landscape lay warm, glowing and natural
+around him, it was luxury to turn cold at Zene's night-peril.
+
+“I couldn't go to sleep,” continued Zene, “and I kind of kept my eye
+on the only window there was.”
+
+Robert drew a sigh of relief as he reflected that an enemy watching
+at the window would be sure Zene was looking just in the opposite
+direction.
+
+“And the man and woman they whispered.”
+
+“What did they whisper about?”
+
+“How do I know?” said Zene mysteriously. “Whisper--whisper--whisper--z-z!
+That's the way they kept on. Sometimes I thought he's threatenin' her,
+and sometimes I thought she's threatenin' him. But along in the middle
+of the night they hushed up whisperin'. And then I heard somebody open
+the outside door and go out. I s'ze to myself, 'Nows the time to be up
+and ready.' So I was puttin' on the clothes I'd took off, and right
+there on the bed, like it had been there all the time, was two great
+big eyes turnin' from green to red, and flame comin' out of them like
+it does out of coals when the wind blows.”
+
+“Was it a cat?” whispered Robert Day, hoping since Zene was safe,
+that it was not.
+
+Zene passed the insinuation with a derisive puff. He would not stoop
+to parley about cats in a peril so extreme.
+
+“'How do _I_ know what it was?” he replied. “I left one of my
+socks and took the boot in my hand. It was all the gun or anything o'
+that kind I had. I left my neckhan'ketcher, too.”
+
+“But you didn't get out of the window,” objected Bobaday eagerly.
+“They always have a hole dug, you know, right under the window, to
+catch folks in.”
+
+“Yes, I did,” responded Zene, leaping a possible hole in his
+account. “I guess I cleared forty rod, and I come down on all-fours
+behind a straw-pile right in the stable-lot.”
+
+“Did the thing follow you?”
+
+“Before I could turn around and look, I see that man and that woman
+leadin' our horses away from the grove where I'd tied 'em to the
+feed-box.”
+
+“What for?” inquired Robert Day.
+
+Zene cast a compassionate glance at his small companion.
+
+“What do folks ever lead critters away in the night for?” he hinted.
+
+“Sometimes to water and feed them.”
+
+“I s'ze to myself,” continued Zene, ignoring this absurd
+supposition, “'now, if they puts the horses in their stable, they
+means to keep the wagon too, and make way with me so no one will ever
+know it. But,' I s'ze, 'if they tries to lead the horses off
+somewhere for to hide 'em, then _that's_ all they want, and
+they'll pretend in the morning to have lost stock themselves.'”
+
+“And which did they do?” urged Robert after a thrilling pause.
+
+“They marched straight for their stable.”
+
+The encounter was now to take place. Robert Day braced himself by
+means of the wagon-tongue.
+
+“Then what did _you_ do?”
+
+“I rises up,” Zene recounted in a cautious whisper, “draws back the
+boot, and throws with all my might.”
+
+“Not at the woman?” urged Bobaday.
+
+“I wanted to break her first,” apologized Zene. “She was worse than
+the man. But I missed her and hit him.”
+
+Robert was glad Zene aimed as he did.
+
+“Then the man jumps and yells, and the woman jumps and yells, and
+the old gray he rears up and breaks loose. He run right past the
+straw pile, and before you could say Jack Robinson, I had him by the
+hitch-strap--it was draggin'--and hoppin' against the straw, I jumped
+on him.”
+
+“Jack Robinson,” Zene's hearer tried half-audibly. “Then what? Did
+the man and woman run?”
+
+“I makes old Gray jump the straw pile, and I comes at them just like
+I rose out of the ground! Yes,” acknowledged Zene forbearingly, “they
+run. Maybe they run toward the house, and maybe they run the other
+way. I got a-holt of old White's hitch-strap and my boot; then I
+cantered out and hitched up, and went along the road real lively. It
+wasn't till towards mornin' that I turned off into the woods and tied
+up for a nap. Yes, I slept _part_ of the night in the wagon.”
+
+Robert sifted all these harrowing circumstances.
+
+“_Maybe_ they weren't stealing the horses,” he hazarded. “Don't
+folks ever unhitch other folks' horses to put 'em in their stable?”
+
+Zene drew down the corners of his mouth to express impatience.
+
+“But I'd hated to been there,” Robert hastened to add.
+
+“I guess you would,” Zene observed in a lofty, but mollified way,
+“if you'd seen the pile of bones I passed down the road a piece from
+that house.”
+
+“Bones?”
+
+“Piled all in a heap at the edge of the woods.”
+
+“What kind of bones, Zene?”
+
+“Well, I didn't get out to handle 'em. But I see one skull about the
+size of yours, with a cap on about the size of yours.”
+
+This was all that any boy could ask. Robert uttered a derisive “Ho!”
+ but he sat and meditated with pleasure on the pile of bones. It cast
+a lime-white glitter on the man and woman who but for that might have
+been harmless.
+
+“I didn't git much rest,” concluded Zene. “I could drop off sound
+now if I'd let myself.”
+
+“I'll drive,” proposed Bobaday.
+
+Zene reluctantly considered this offer. The road ahead looked smooth
+enough. “I guess there's no danger unless you run into a fence
+corner,” he remarked.
+
+“I can drive as well as Grandma Padgett can,” said Robert indignantly.
+
+Zene wagged his head as if unconvinced. He never intended to let
+Robert Day be a big boy while he stayed with the family.
+
+“Your gran'marm knows how to handle a horse. Now if I's to crawl
+back and take a nap, and you's to run the team into any accident, I'd
+have to bear all the blame.”
+
+Robert protested: and when Zene had shifted his responsibility to
+his satisfaction, he crept back and leaned against the goods, falling
+into a sound sleep.
+
+The boy drove slowly forward. It seemed that old gray and old white
+also felt last night's vigils. They drowsed along with their heads
+down through a landscape that shimmered sleepily.
+
+Robert thought of gathering apples in the home orchard: of the big
+red ones that used to fall and split asunder with their own weight,
+waking him sometimes from a dream, with their thump against the sod.
+What boy hereafter would gather the sheep-noses, and watch the early
+June's every day until their green turned suddenly into gold, and one
+bite was enough to make you sit down under the tree and ask for
+nothing better in life! He used to keep the chest in his room floored
+with apples. They lay under his best clothes and perfumed them. His
+nose knew the breath of a russet, and in a dark cellar he could smell
+out the bell-flower bin. The real poor people of the earth must be
+those who had no orchards; who could not clap a particular comrade of
+a tree on the bark and look up to see it smiling back red and yellow
+smiles; who could not walk down the slope and see apples lying in
+ridges, or pairs, or dotting the grass everywhere. Robert was half-asleep,
+dreaming of apples. He felt thirsty, and heard a humming like the
+buzz of bees around the cider-press. He and aunt Corinne used to sit
+down by the first tub of sweet cider, each with two straws apiece,
+and watch their faces in the rosy juice while they drank Cider from
+the barrels when snow was on the ground, poured out of a pitcher into
+a glass, had not the ecstatic tang of cider through a straw. The Bees
+came to the very edge of the tub, as if to dispute such hiving of
+diluted honey; and more of them came, from hanging with bent bodies,
+around the dripping press.
+
+Their buzz increased to a roar. Robert Day woke keenly up to find
+the old white and the old gray just creeping across a railroad track,
+and a locomotive with its train whizzing at full speed towards them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII. LITTLE ANT RED AND BIG ANT BLACK.
+
+
+A breath's delay must have been fatal. Robert had no whip, but
+doubling the lines and shouting at the top of his voice, he braced
+himself and lashed the gray. The respectable beast leaped with
+astonishment, dragging its fellow along. The fore wheels cleared the
+track, and Bobaday's head was filled with the prolonged cry of the
+locomotive. Zene sprang up, and the hind part of the wagon received a
+crash which threw the boy out at the side, and Zene quite across the
+gray's back.
+
+The train came to a stop after running a few yards further. But
+finding that no lives were lost, it put on steam and disappeared on
+its course, and Zene and his trembling assistant were trying to prop
+up one corner of the wagon when Grandma Padgett brought her
+spectacles to bear upon the scene.
+
+One hind wheel had been splintered by the train, the leap of the
+gray turning the wagon from the road. Grandma Padgett preserved her
+composure and asked few questions. Her lips moved at frequent
+intervals for a long time after this accident. But aunt Corinne flew
+out of the carriage, and felt her nephew's arms and wailed over the
+bump his cheek received, and was sure his legs were broken, and that
+Zene limped more than ever, and that the train had run straight
+across their prostrate forms.
+
+Zene busied himself with shamefaced eagerness in getting the wagon
+off the road and preparing to hunt a shop. He made piteous grimaces
+over every strap he unfastened.
+
+“We cannot leave the goods standing here in the wagon with nobody to
+watch 'em,” said the head of the caravan. “It's nigh dinner-time, and
+we'll camp in sight, and wait till we can all go on together. A
+merciful Providence has brought us along safe so far. We mustn't git
+separated and run ourselves into any more dangers than we can help.”
+
+Zene lingered only to pitch the camp and find water at a spring
+running down into a small creek. Then he bestrode one of the wagon
+horses, and, carrying the broken wheel-hubs, trotted away.
+
+Grandma Padgett tucked up her dress, took provisions from the wagon,
+and got dinner. Aunt Corinne and her nephew made use of this occasion
+to lay in a supply of nuts for winter. The nuts were old ones, lying
+under last autumn's leaves, and before a large heap had been
+gathered, aunt Corinne bethought her to examine if they were fit to
+eat. They were not; for besides an ancient flavor, the first kernel
+betrayed the fact that these were pig-nuts instead of hickory.
+
+[Illustration: BOBADAY'S NARROW ESCAPE.]
+
+“You would have 'em,” said Bobaday, kicking the pile. “I didn't
+think they's good, anyhow.”
+
+“They looked just like our little hickories,” said aunt Corinne,
+twisting her mouth at the acrid kernel, “that used to lay under that
+tree in the pasture. And their shells are as sound.”
+
+But there was compensation in two saplings which submitted to be
+rode as teeters part of the idle afternoon.
+
+Grandma Padgett had put away the tea things before Zene returned. He
+brought with him a wagon-maker from one of the villages on the 'pike.
+The wagon-maker, after examining the disabled vehicle, and getting
+the dimensions of the other hind wheel which Zene had forgotten to
+take to him, assured the party he would set them up all right in a
+day or two.
+
+Grandma Padgett was sitting on a log knitting.
+
+“We'd better have kept to the 'pike,” she remarked.
+
+“Yes, marm,” responded Zene.
+
+“The toll-gates would be a small expense compared to this.”
+
+“Yes, indeed, marm,” responded Zene, grimacing piteously.
+
+“Still,” said Grandma Padgett, “we have much to be thankful for, in
+that our lives and health have been spared.”
+
+“Oh, yes, marm! yes, marm!” responded Zene.
+
+The wagon-maker hung by one careless leg to his horse before
+cantering off, and inquired with neighborly interest:
+
+“How far West you folks goin'?”
+
+“We're goin' to Illinois,” replied Grandma Padgett.
+
+“Oh, pshaw, now!” said the wagon-maker. “Goin' to the Eeleenoy!
+that's a good ways. Ain't you 'fraid you'll never git back?”
+
+“We ain't expectin' to come back,” said Grandma Padgett. “My son's
+settled there.”
+
+“He has!” said the wagon-maker with an accent of surprise. “Well,
+well! they say that's an awful country.”
+
+“My son writes back it's as fine land as he ever saw,” said Grandma
+Padgett with dignity and proper local pride.
+
+“But the chills is so bad,” urged the wagon-maker, who looked as if
+he had experienced them at their worst. “And the milk-sick, they say
+the milk-sick is all over the Eeleenoy.”
+
+“We're not borrowing any trouble about such things,” said Grandma
+Padgett.
+
+“Some of our townsfolks went out there,” continued the wagon-maker,
+“but what was left of 'em come back. They had to buy their drinkin'
+water, and the winters on them perrares froze the children in their
+beds! Oh, I wouldn't go to the Eeleenoy,” said the wagon-maker
+coaxingly. “You're better off here, if you only knew it.”
+
+As Grandma Padgett heard this remonstrance with silent dignity, the
+wagon-maker took himself off with a few additional remarks.
+
+Then they began to make themselves snug for the night. The wagon-cover
+was taken off and made into a tent for Grandma Padgett and aunt Corinne.
+Robert Day was to sleep in the carriage, and Zene insisted on sleeping
+with blankets on the wagon where he could watch the goods. He would be
+within calling distance of the camp.
+
+“We're full as comfortable as we were last night, anyhow,” observed
+the head of the caravan.
+
+Zene said it made no difference about his supper. He took thankfully
+what was kept for him, and Robert Day felt certain Zene was trying to
+bestow on him some conscience-stricken glances.
+
+It was an occasion on which Zene could be made to tell a story. He
+was not lavish with such curious ones as he knew. Robert sometimes
+suspected him to be a mine of richness, but it took such hard mining
+to get a nugget out that the results hardly compensated for the
+effort.
+
+But when the boy climbed upon the wagon in starlight, and made a few
+leading remarks, Zene really plunged into a story. He thereby
+relieved his own feelings and turned the talk from late occurrences.
+
+“I told you about Little Ant Red and Big Ant Black?”
+
+“No, you never!” exclaimed Bobaday.
+
+“Well, once there was Little Ant Red and Big Ant Black lived
+neighbors.”
+
+“Whose aunts were they--each other's?” inquired the boy.
+
+“They wasn't your father's or mother's sisters; they was
+_antymires_,” explained Zene.
+
+“Oh,” said Robert Day.
+
+“Ant Red, she was a little bit of a thing; you could just see her.
+But Ant Black, she was a great big critter that went like a train of
+cars when she was a mind to.”
+
+“I don't like either kind,” said Robert. “The little ones got into
+our sugar once, and Grandma had to fight 'em out with camphor, and a
+big black got into my mouth and I bit him in two. He pinched my
+tongue awful, and he tasted sour.”
+
+“Big Ant Black,” continued Zene, “she lived in a hill by a stump,
+but Little Ant Red she lived on a leaf up a tree.”
+
+“I thought they always crept into houses,” urged Bobaday.
+
+“This one didn't. She lived on a leaf up a tree. And these two ants
+run against each other in everything. When they met in the grass
+they'd stand up on their hind feet and shake hands as friendly as you
+please, but as soon as their backs was turned they'd talk! Big Ant
+Black said Little Ant Red was always a meddling, and everybody knowed
+her son was drowned in under the orchard cider-press where his mother
+sent him to snuff round. And Little Ant Red she used to tell how Ant
+Black was so graspin' she tried to carry that cider-press off and
+hide it in her hole.
+
+“They had all the neighbors takin' sides. There was a yellow-back
+spider. He took up for Ant Red; he hoped to get a taste of her, and
+Ant Black he knowed was big enough to bite him unless he was mighty
+soople in wrappin' the web around her. Every mornin' when the dew
+stood in beads on his net he told Ant Red they was tears he shed
+about her troubles, and she run up and down and all around, talkin'
+like a sawmill, but keepin' just off the web. And there was Old
+Grasshopper, he sided with Ant Red, and so did Miss Green Katydid.
+But all the beetles, and them bugs that lived under the bark of the
+old stump, they took up for Ant Black, 'cause she was handy. And the
+snake-feeder was on her side.
+
+“Well, it run along, feelin's gittin' harder and harder, till Ant
+Black she jumped up and kitched Ant Red fussin' round her cow pasture
+one night, and then the cows began to give bloody milk, and then Ant
+Black she give out that Ant Red was a witch.
+
+“Now, these kind of critters, they're as smart as human bein's if
+you only knowed it. And that was enough. The katydid, she said she
+felt pins and needles in her back whenever Ant Red looked at her; and
+the snake-feeders said she shot arries at 'em when they was flyin'
+over a craw-fish hole. All the beetles and wood-bugs complained of
+bein' hit with witch-bells, and the more Ant Red acted careful the
+more they had ag'in her.
+
+“Well, the spider he told her to come into his den and live, and
+she'd be safe from hangin', but she wasn't sure in her mind about
+that. Even the grasshopper jumped out of her way, and bunged his eyes
+out at her; as if she could harm such a great big gray lubber as him!
+She was gittin' pretty lonesome when she concluded to try a projic.”
+
+“What's a projic?” inquired Robert Day.
+
+“Why, it's a--p'epperation, or--a plan of some kind,” explained Zene.
+
+“So she invites Big Ant Black and all her family, and the spider and
+all his family, and the beetles and bugs and all their families, and
+the snake-feeders and Miss Katydid for young folks, and don't leave
+out a neighbor, to an apple-bee right inside the orchard fence.
+
+“So it was pleasant weather, and they all come and brung the babies,
+the old grasshopper skippin' along as nimble and steppin' on the
+shawl that was wrapped round his young one. And the snake-feeders
+they helped Miss Katydid over the lowest fence-rail, and here come
+Big Ant Black with such a string behind her it looked like a funeral
+instead of a family percession and she twisted her neck from side to
+side as soon as she see the great big apple, kind of wonderin' if
+they couldn't carry it off.
+
+“Little Ant Red had all her children's heads combed and the best
+cheers set out, and she had on her good dress and white apron, and
+she says right and left, 'Hoddy-do, sir? hoddy-do, marm? Come right
+in and take cheers. And they all shook hands with her as if they'd
+never dreamt of callin' her a witch, and fell right on to the apple
+and begun to eat. And they all e't and e't, till they'd made holes in
+the rind and hollered it out. And Big Ant Black she gits her family
+started, and they carries off chunk after chunk of that apple till
+the road was black and white speckled between her house and the
+apple-tree.
+
+“Little Ant Red she walks around urgin' them all to help
+theirselves, and that made them all feel pleasant to her. But Big Ant
+Black she got so graspin' and eager, that what does she do but try to
+help her young ones carry off the whole apple-shell. It did look
+jub'ous to see such a big thing movin' off with such little critters
+tuggin' it. And then Ant Red got on to a clover-head and showed the
+rest of the company what Ant Black was a-doin'. Says Ant Red: 'You
+ain't e't more'n a mouthful, Mr. Grasshopper.'
+
+“'No, marm,' says he.
+
+“'I s'ze to myself,' says Ant Red, 'here is this polite company, and
+the snake-feeders don't touch nothin,' and everybedy knows Miss
+Katydid lives on nothin' but rose-leaf butter, and the bugs and
+beetles will hardly take enough, to keep 'em alive.' 'And I s'ze to
+myself,' says Ant Red, 'here's this big apple walkin' off with nobody
+but Ant Black to move it. This great big sound apple. And it looks to
+me like witchcraft. That's what it looks like,' says Ant Red.
+
+“They all declared it looked just like witchcraft. Ant Black tried
+to show them how holler the apple was, and they declared if she'd
+hollered it that way so quick, it was witchcraft certain.
+
+“So what does they do but pen her and her young ones in the apple-shell
+and stop it up with mud. Even the mud-wasps and tumble-bugs that hadn't
+been bid come and took part when they see the dirt a-flyin'. Ant Red
+set on the clover-head and teetered.
+
+“Now, down to this present minute,” concluded Zene, “you never pick
+up an apple and find a red ant walkin' out of it. If ants is there,
+it's one of them poor black fellers that was shut up at the apple-bee,
+and they walk out brisk; as if they's glad to find daylight once more.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX. THE GREAT CAMP MEETING.
+
+
+Towards evening of the next day the broken wagon wheel was replaced.
+By that time the children were not more anxious to move forward than
+was Grandma Padgett. So just before sunset they broke up camp and
+moved along the country road until the constellations were swinging
+overhead. Zene took the first good crossway that led to the 'pike,
+and after waiting to be sure that the noses of Old Hickory and Old
+Henry were following, he jogged between dewy fence rows, and they
+came to the broad white ribbon of high road, and in time to the
+village of Somerford, having progressed only ten miles that day.
+
+Bobaday and Corinne were so sleepy, and their departure from
+Somerford next morning was taken at such an early hour, that they
+remembered it only as a smell of tallow candles in the night,
+accompanied by a landlady's head in a ruffled nightcap.
+
+Very different was Springfield, the county seat of Clark County.
+That was a town with people moving briskly about it, and long streets
+could be seen, where pleasant houses were shaded with trees.
+
+Zene inquired the names of all small places as soon as they entered
+the main street, and then, obligingly halting the wagon at one side,
+he waited until Grandma Padgett came up, and told her. He learned and
+announced the cities long before any of them came into view. It was a
+pleasure to Bobaday and aunt Corinne to ride into a town repeating
+its name to themselves and trying to fasten its identity on their
+minds. First they would pass a gang of laborers working on the road,
+or perhaps a man walking up and down telegraph poles with sharp-shod
+heels; then appeared humble houses with children playing thickly
+around them. Finer buildings crowded on the sight, and where the
+signs of business flaunted, were women and little children in pretty
+clothes, always going somewhere to buy something nice. Once they met
+a long procession of carriages, and in the first carriage aunt
+Corinne beheld and showed to her nephew a child's coffin made of
+metal. It glittered in the sun. Grandma Padgett said it was zinc. But
+aunt Corinne secretly suspected it was made of gold, to enclose some
+dear little baby whose mother would not put it into anything else.
+
+At New Carlisle, a sleepy little village where the dogfennel was
+wonderfully advanced for June, Zene took the gray from the wagon and
+hitched him to the carriage, substituting Old Hickory. The gray's
+shoulder was rubbed by his collar, and Zene reasoned that the lighter
+weight of the carriage would give him a better chance of healing his
+bruise. Thus paired the horses looked comical. Hickory and Henry
+evidently considered the change a disgrace to them. But they made the
+best of it and uttered no protest, except keeping as wide a space as
+possible between themselves and their new mates. But the gray and
+white, old yoke fellows at the plough, who knew nothing of the
+dignity of carriage drawing, and cared less, who had rubbed noses and
+shared feed-boxes ever since they were colts, both lifted up their
+voices in mournful whinneys and refused comfort and correction. The
+white turned his head back over his shoulder and would have halted
+anywhere until his mate came up; while the gray strained forward,
+shaking his head, and neighing as if his throat were full of tears
+every time a tree or a turn in the road hid the wagon.
+
+The caravan moving to this irregular and doleful music, passed
+through another little town which Zene said was named Boston, late on
+a rainy afternoon. Here they crossed the Miami River in a bridge
+through the cracks of which Robert Day and Corinne looked at the full
+but not very wide stream. It flowed beneath them in comparative
+silence. The rain pricked the water's surface into innumerable
+puckers.
+
+“Little boys dancing up,” said aunt Corinne, in time-honored phrase.
+
+“No; it's bees stingin' the water,” said her nephew, “with long
+stingers that reach clear out of the clouds.”
+
+These sky-bees stung the dusty road until it lay first in dark
+dimples and last in swollen mud rows and shallow pools. The 'pike
+kept its dignity under the heaviest rains. Its very mud was light and
+plaster-like, scarcely clinging to the wheels or soiling the horses'
+legs. Its flint ribs rung more sharply under the horses' shoes.
+Through the damp dusk aunt Corinne took pleasure in watching the fire
+struck by old Henry and the gray, against the trickling stones. They
+pulled the carriage curtains down, and Grandma Padgett had the
+oilcloth apron drawn up to her chin, while she continued to drive the
+horses through a slit. The rear of the wagon made a blur ahead of
+them. Now the 'pike sides faded from fresh green to a general
+dulness, and trees whispering to the rain lost their vistas and
+indentations of shade, and became a solid wall down which a steady
+pour hissed with settled monotony. Boswell and Johnson no longer
+foraged at the 'pike sides, or lagged behind or scampered ahead. They
+knew it was a rainy October night without lightning and thunder,
+slipped by mistake into the packet of June weather; and they trotted
+invisibly under the carriage, carrying their tails down, and their
+lolling tongues close to the puddles they were obliged to scamper
+through or skip. Boswell and Johnson remembered their experiences at
+the lonesome Susan house, where they lay in the deep weeds and were
+forgotten until morning by the harassed family; and they rolled their
+eyes occasionally, with apprehension lest the grinding of the wheels
+should cease, and some ghostly wall loom up at one side of their way,
+unlighted by a single glimmer and unperfumed by any whiff of supper.
+It was a fine thing to be movers' dogs when the movers went into camp
+or put up in state at a tavern. Around a camp were all sorts of
+woodsy creatures to be scratched out of holes or chased up trees, or
+to be nosed and chewed at. There were stray and half-wild pigs that
+had tails to be bitten, and what could be more exhilarating than
+making a drove of grunting pigs canter like a hailstorm away into
+deep woods! And in the towns and villages all resident dogs came to
+call on Boswell and Johnson. At every tavern Boswell picked a fight
+and Johnson fought it out; sometimes retiring with his tail to the
+earth and a sad expression of being outnumbered, but oftener a victor
+to have his wounds dressed and bandaged by Boswell's tongue. There
+was plenty to eat at taverns and camps, and good hunting in the
+woods; but who could tell what hungry milestone might stand at the
+end of this day's journey?
+
+Grandma Padgett herself was beginning to feel anxious on this
+subject. She drove faster in order to overtake Zene and consult with
+him, but before his attention could be attracted, both carriage and
+wagon reached a broad belt of shine stretching across the 'pike, and
+making trees in the meadow opposite stand out as distinct individuals.
+
+This illumination came from many camp-fires extending so far into
+the woods that the last one showed like a spark. A great collection
+of moving wagons were ranged in line along the extent of these fires,
+and tents pitched under the dripping foliage revealed children
+playing within their snug cover, or women spreading the evening meal.
+Kettles were hung above the fires, and skillets hissed on the coals.
+The horses, tied to their feed-boxes, were stamping and grinding
+their feed in content, and the gray lifted up his voice to neigh at
+the whole collection as Grandma Padgett stopped just behind Zene. All
+the camp dogs leaped up the 'pike together, and Boswell and Johnson
+met them in a neutral way while showing the teeth of defence. To Boswell
+and Johnson as well as to their betters, this big and well-protected
+encampment had an inviting look, provided the campers were not to be
+shunned.
+
+A man came up the 'pike side through the rain and kicked some of the
+dogs aside.
+
+“Hullo,” said he most cheerfully. “Want to put up?”
+
+“What is it?” inquired Zene cautiously. He then craned his neck
+around to look at Grandma Padgett, whose spectacles glared seriously
+at the man.
+
+This hospitable traveller wore a red shirt and a slouched hat, and
+had his trousers tucked in his boots. He pulled off his hat to shake
+the rain away, and showed bushy hair and a smiling bearded face. No
+weather could hurt him. He was ready for anything.
+
+“Light down,” he exclaimed. “Plenty of room over there if you want
+it.”
+
+“Who's over there?” inquired Zene.
+
+“Oh, it's a big camp-meeting,” replied the man. “There's twenty or
+thirty families, and lots of fun.”
+
+“Do you mean,” inquired Grandma Padgett, “a camp-meeting for
+religious purposes?”
+
+“You can have that if you want it,” responded the man, “and have
+your exhorters along. It's a family camp. Most of us going out to
+Californy. Goin' to cross the plains. Some up in the woods there
+goin' to Missoury. Don't care where they're goin' if they want to
+stop and camp with us. _We're_ from the Pan Handle of Virginia.
+There's a dozen families or more of us goin' out to Californy
+together. The rest just happened along.”
+
+“I'm a Virginian myself,” said Grandma Padgett, warming, “though
+Ohio's been my State for many years.”
+
+“Well, now,” exclaimed the mover, “if you want to light right down,
+we'll be all the gladder for that. I saw you stoppin' here uncertain;
+and there's the ford over Little Miami ahead of you. I thought you'd
+not like to try it in the dark.”
+
+“You're not like a landlord back on the road that let us risk our
+necks!” said Grandma Padgett with appreciation. “But if you take
+everybody into camp ain't you afraid of getting the wrong sort?”
+
+“Oh, no,” replied the Virginian. “There's enough of _us_ to
+overpower _them_.”
+
+“Well, Zene,” said Grandma Padgett, “I guess we'd better stop here.
+We've provisions in our wagon.”
+
+“How far you goin'?” inquired the hospitable mover.
+
+“Into Illinois,” replied the head of the small caravan.
+
+“Your trip'll soon be done, then. Come on, now, and go to Californy,
+why don't you! _That's_ the country to get rich in! You'll see
+sights the other side of the Mississippi!”
+
+“I'm too old for such undertakings,” said Grandma Padgett, passing
+over the mover's exuberance with a smile.
+
+“Why, we have a granny over ninety with us!” he declared. “Now's the
+time to start if you want to see the great western country.”
+
+Zene drove off the 'pike on the temporary track made by so many
+vehicles, and Grandma Padgett followed, the Virginian showing them a
+good spot near the liveliest part of the camp, upon which they might
+pitch.
+
+The family sat in the-carriage while Zene took out the horses,
+sheltered the wagon under thick foliage where rain scarcely
+penetrated, and stretched the canvas for a tent. Then Grandma Padgett
+put on her rubber overshoes, pinned a shawl about her and descended;
+and their fire was soon burning, their kettle was soon boiling, in
+defiance of water streams which frequently trickled from the leaves
+and fell on the coals with a hiss. The firelight shone through slices
+of clear pink ham put down to broil. Aunt Corinne laid the cloth on a
+box which Zene took out of the wagon for her, and set the cups and
+saucers, the sugar and preserves, and little seed cakes which grew
+tenderer the longer you kept them, all in tempting order. They had
+baker's bread and gingercakes in the carriage. Since her adventure at
+the Susan house, Grandma Padgett had taken care to put provisions in
+the carriage pockets. Then aunt Corinne, assisted by her nephew, got
+potatoes from the sack, wrapped them in wet wads of paper, and
+roasted them in the ashes. A potato so roasted may be served up with
+a scorched and hardened shell, but its heart is perfumed by all the
+odors of the woods. It tastes better than any other potato, and while
+the butter melts through it you wonder that people do not fire whole
+fields and bake the crop in hot earth before digging it, to store for
+winter.
+
+[Illustration: BOBADAY'S CANOPIED THRONE.]
+
+Zene had frequently assured Robert Day that an egg served this way
+was better still. He said he used to roast eggs in the ashes when
+burning stumps, and you only needed a little salt with them, to make
+them fit for a king. But Robert Day scorned the egg and remained true
+to the potato.
+
+While they were at supper the Virginian's wife came to see them,
+carrying in her hand an offering of bird-pie. Grandma Padgett
+responded with a dish of preserves. And they then talked about the
+old State, trying to discover mutual interests there.
+
+The Virginian's wife was a strong, handsome, cordial woman. Her
+family came from the Pan Handle, but from the neighborhood of
+Wheeling, They were not mountaineers. She had six children. They were
+going to California because her husband had the mining fever. He
+wanted to go years before, but she held out against it until she saw
+he would do no good unless he went. So they sold their land, and
+started with a colony of neighbors.
+
+The names of all her relatives were sifted, and Grandma Padgett made
+a like search among her own kindred, and they discovered that an
+uncle of one, and a grandfather of the other, had been acquainted,
+and served together in the War of '12. This established a bond.
+Grandma Padgett was gently excited, and told Bobaday and Corinne
+after the Virginia woman's departure to her own wagons, that she
+should feel safe on account of being an old neighbor in the camp.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X. THE CRY OF A CHILD IN THE NIGHT.
+
+
+But the camp was too exciting to let the children fall asleep early.
+Fires were kept briskly burning, and some of the wagoners feeling in
+a musical humor, shouted songs or hummed melancholy tunes which
+sounded like a droning accompaniment to the rain. The rain fell with
+a continuous murmur, and evidently in slender threads, for it
+scarcely pattered on the tent. It was no beating, boisterous,
+drenching tempest, but a lullaby rain, bringing out the smell of
+barks, of pennyroyal and May-apple and wild sweet-williams from the
+deep woods.
+
+Robert Day crept out of the carriage, having with him the oil-cloth
+apron and a plan. Four long sticks were not hard to find, or to
+sharpen with his pocket knife, and a few knocks drove them into the
+soft earth, two on each side of a log near the fire. He then
+stretched the oil-cloth over the sticks, tying the corners, and had a
+canopied throne in the midst of this lively camp. A chunk served for
+a footstool. Bobaday sat upon his log, hearing the rain slide down,
+and feeling exceedingly snug. His delight came from that wild
+instinct with which we all turn to arbors and caves, and to
+unexpected grapevine bowers deep in the woods; the instinct which
+makes us love to stand upright inside of hollow sycamore-trees, and
+pretend that a green tunnel among the hazel or elderberry bushes is
+the entrance hall of a noble castle.
+
+Bobaday was very still, lest his grandmother in the tent, or Zene in
+the remoter wagon, should insist on his retiring to his uneasy bed
+again. He got enough of the carriage in daytime, having counted all
+its buttons up and down and crosswise. The smell of the leather and
+lining cloth was mixed with every odor of the journey. One can have
+too much of a very easy, well-made carriage.
+
+The firelight revealed him in his thoughtful mood: a very white boy
+with glistening hair and expanding large eyes of a gray and velvet
+texture. Some light eyes have a thin and sleepy surface like inferior
+qualities of lining silk; and you cannot tell whether the expression
+or the humors of the eye are at fault. But Nature, or his own
+meditations on what he read and saw in this delicious world, had
+given to Bobaday's irises a softness like the pile of gray velvet,
+varied sometimes by cinnamon-colored shades.
+
+His eyes reflected the branches, the other campfires, and many
+wagons. It gave him the sensation of again reading for the first time
+one of grandfather's Peter Parley books about the Indians, or Mr.
+Irving's story of Dolph Heyleger, where Dolph approaches Antony
+Vander Heyden's camp. He saw the side of one wagon-cover dragged at
+and a little night-capped head stuck out.
+
+“Bobaday!” whispered aunt Corinne, creeping on tiptoe toward him,
+and anxious to keep him from exclaiming when he saw her.
+
+“What did you get up for?” he whispered back.
+
+“What did _you_ get up for?” retaliated aunt Corinne.
+
+Robert Day made room for her on the log under the canopy, and she
+leaned down and laced her shoes after being seated. “Ma Padgett's
+just as tight asleep! What'd she say if she knew we wasn't in bed!”
+
+It was so exciting and so nearly wicked to be out of bed and
+prowling when their elders were asleep, they could not possibly enjoy
+the sin in silence.
+
+“Ain't it nice?” whispered aunt Corinne. “I saw you fixin' this
+little tent, and then I sl-ip-ped up and hooked some of my clothes
+on, and didn't dast to breathe 'fear Ma Padgett'd hear me. There must
+be lots of children in the camp.”
+
+“Yes; I've heard the babies cryin'.”
+
+“Do you s'pose there's any gipsy folks along?”
+
+“Do 'now,” whispered Bobaday, his tone inclining to an admission
+that gipsy folks might be along.
+
+“The kind that would steal us,” explained aunt Corinne.
+
+This mere suggestion was an added pleasure; it made them shiver and
+look back in the bushes.
+
+“There might be--away back yonder,” whispered Robert Day, emboldened
+by remembering that his capable grandmother was just within the tent,
+and Zene at easy waking distance.
+
+“But all the people will hitch up and drive away in the morning,” he
+added, “and we won't know anything about 'em.”
+
+To aunt Corinne this seemed a great pity. “I'd like to see how
+everybody looks,” she meditated.
+
+“So'd I,” whispered her nephew.
+
+“It's hardly rainin' a drizzle now,” whispered aunt Corinne.
+
+“I get so tired ridin' all day long,” whispered Robert, “that I wish
+I was a scout or something, like that old Indian that was named
+Trackless in the book--that went through the woods and through the
+woods, and didn't leave any mark and never seemed to wear out. You
+remember I read you a piece of it?”
+
+Aunt Corinne fidgeted on the log.
+
+“Wouldn't you like,” suggested her nephew, whose fancy the nighttime
+stimulated, “to get on a flying carpet and fly from one place to
+another?”
+
+Aunt Corinne cast a glance back over her shoulder.
+
+“We could go a little piece from our camp-fire and not get lost,”
+ she suggested.
+
+“Well,” whispered Robert boldly, “le's do it. Le's take a walk. It
+won't do any harm. 'Tisn't late.”
+
+“The's chickens crowin' away over there.”
+
+“Chickens crow all times of the night. Don't you remember how our
+old roosters used to act on Christmas night? I got out of bed four
+times once, because I thought it was daylight, they would crow so!”
+
+“Which way'll we take?” whispered aunt Corinne.
+
+Robert slid cautiously from the log and mapped out the expedition.
+
+“Off behind the wagon so's Zene won't see us. And then we'll slip
+along towards that furthest fire. We can see the others as we go by.
+Follow me.”
+
+It was easy to slip behind the wagon and lose themselves in the
+brush. But there they stumbled on unseen snags and were caught or
+scratched by twigs, and descended suddenly to a pig-wallow or other
+ugly spot, where Corinne fell down. Bobaday then thought it expedient
+for his aunt to take hold of his jacket behind and walk in his
+tracks, according to their life-long custom when going down cellar
+for apples after dark. Grandma Padgett was not a woman to pamper the
+fear of darkness in her family. She had been known to take a child
+who recoiled from shapeless visions, and lead him into the unlighted
+room where he fancied he saw them.
+
+So after proceeding out of sight of their own wagon, aunt Corinne
+and her nephew, toughened by this training, would not have owned to
+each other a wish to go back and sit in safety and peace of nerve
+again upon the log. Robert plodded carefully ahead, parting the
+bushes, and she passed through the gaps with his own figure,
+clinching his jacket with fingers that tightened or relaxed with her
+tremors.
+
+They had not counted on being smelled out by dogs at the various
+watch-fires. One lolling yellow beast sprang up and chased them. Aunt
+Corinne would have flown with screams, but her nephew hushed her up
+and put her valiantly on a very high stump behind himself. The dog
+took no trouble to trace them. He was too comfortable before the
+brands, too mud-splashed and stiff from a long day's journey, to care
+about chasing any mystery of the wood to its hole. But this warned
+them not to venture too near other fires where other possible dogs
+lay sentry.
+
+“Why didn't we fetch old Johnson?” whispered aunt Corinne, after
+they slid down the tree stump.
+
+“'Cause Boswell'd been at his heels, and the whole camp'd been in a
+fight,” replied Bobaday. “Old Johnson was under our wagon; I don't
+know where Bos was. I was careful not to wake him.”
+
+Through gaps in foliage and undergrowth they saw many an individual
+part of the general camp; the wagon-cover in some cases being as dun
+as the hide of an elephant. When a curtain was dropped over the front
+opening of the wagon, Bobaday and Corinne knew that women and
+children were sleeping within on their chattels. Here a tent was made
+of sheets and stretched down with the branch of an overhanging tree
+for a ridge-pole; and there horse-blankets were made into a canopy
+and supported by upright poles. Within such covers men were asleep,
+having sacks or comforters for bedding.
+
+On a few wagon tongues, or stretched easily before fires, men
+lingered, talking in steady, monotonous voices as if telling stories,
+or in indifferent tones as if tempting each other to trades.
+
+The rain had entirely ceased, though the spongy wet wood sod was not
+pleasant to walk upon. “I guess,” said-aunt Corinne, “we'd better go
+back.”
+
+“Well, we've seen consider'ble,” assented her nephew. “I guess we'd
+better.”
+
+So he faced about. But quite near them arose the piercing scream of
+a child in mortal fear.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI. THE DARKENED WAGON.
+
+
+Aunt Corinne and her nephew felt pierced by the cry. Her hands
+gripped his jacket with a shock. Robert Day turning took hold of his
+aunt's wrist to pinch her silent, but his efforts were too zealous
+and turned her fright to indignation.
+
+“I don't want my hand pinched off, Bobaday Padgett!” whispered aunt
+Corinne, jerking away and thus breaking the circuit of comfort and
+protection which was supposed to flow from his jacket.
+
+“But listen,” hissed Robert.
+
+“I don't want to listen,” whispered aunt Corinne; “I want to go back
+to our camp-fire.”
+
+“Nobody can hurt us,” whispered her nephew, gathering boldness. “You
+stay here and let me creep through the bushes to that wagon. I want
+to see what it was.”
+
+“If you stay a minute I'll go and leave you,” remonstrated aunt
+Corinne. “Ma Padgett don't want us off here by ourselves.”
+
+But Robert's hearing was concentrated upon the object toward which
+he moved. He used Indian-like caution. The balls of his large eyes
+became so prominent that they shone with some of the lustre of a
+cat's in the dark.
+
+Corinne took hold of the bushes in his absence.
+
+The wind was breathing sadly through the trees far off. What if some
+poor little child, lost in the woods, should come patting to her,
+with all the wildness of its experience hanging around it? Oh, the
+woods was a good play-house, on sunshiny days, but not the best of
+homes, after all. That must be why people built houses. When the snow
+lay in a deep cake, showing only the two thumb-like marks at long
+intervals made by the rabbit in its leaping flight, and when the air
+was so tense and cold you could hear the bark of a dog far off,
+Bobaday used to say he would love to live in the woods all the time.
+He would chop to keep himself warm. He loved to drag the air into his
+lungs when it seemed frozen to a solid. Corinne remembered how his
+cheeks burned and his eyes glittered during any winter exertion. And
+what could be prettier, he said, than the woods after it sleeted all
+night, and hoar frost finished the job! Every tree would stand
+glittering in white powder, as if dressed for the grandest occasion,
+the twigs tipped with lace-work, and the limbs done in tracery and
+all sorts of beautiful designs. Still this white dress was deadly
+cold to handle. Aunt Corinne had often pressed her fingers into the
+velvet crust upon the trunks. She did not like the winter woods, and
+hardly more did she like this rain-soaked place, and these broad,
+treacherous leaves that poured water down her neck in the humid dark.
+
+Bobaday pounced upon her with such force when he appeared once more,
+that she was startled into trying to climb a bush no higher than
+herself.
+
+He had not a word to say, but hitched his aunt to his jacket and
+drew her away with considerable haste. They floundered over logs and
+ran against stumps. Their own smouldering fire, and wagon with the
+hoops standing up like huge uncovered ribs, and the tents wherein
+their guardian slept after the fatigue of the day, all appeared
+wonderfully soon, considering the time it had taken them to reach
+their exploring limit.
+
+Aunt Corinne huddled by the coals, and Bobaday sat down on the foot-chunk
+he had placed for his awning throne.
+
+“You better go to bed quick as ever you can,” he said.
+
+“I guess I ain't goin',” said aunt Corinne with indignant surprise,
+“till you tell me somethin' about what was up in the bushes. I stayed
+still and let you look, and now you won't tell me!”
+
+“You heard the sound,” remonstrated Robert.
+
+“But I didn't see anything,” argued aunt Corinne.
+
+“You wouldn't want to,” said Bobaday.
+
+They were talking in cautious tones, but no longer whispering. It
+had become too tiresome. Aunt Corinne would now have burst out with
+an exclamation, but checked herself and tilted her nose, talking to
+the coals which twinkled back to her between her slim fingers.
+
+“Boys think they are so smart! They want to have all the good times
+and see all the great shows, and go slidin' in winter time, when
+girls have to stay in the house and knit, and then talk like they's
+grown up, and we's little babies!”
+
+Robert Day fixed his eyes on his aunt with superior compassion.
+
+“Grandma Padgett wouldn't want me to scare you,” he observed.
+
+Corinne edged several inches closer to him. She felt that she must
+know what her nephew had seen if she had to thread all the dark mazes
+again and look at it by herself.
+
+“Ma Padgett never 'lows me to act scared,” she reminded him. “I
+always have to go up to what I'm 'fraid of.”
+
+“You won't go up to this.”
+
+“Maybe I will. Tisn't so far back to that wagon.”
+
+“I wouldn't stir it up for considerable,” said Robert.
+
+“Was it a lion or a bear? Was it goin' to eat anything? Is that what
+made the little child cry?”
+
+“The little child hollered 'cause 'twas afraid of it. I was glad you
+didn't look in at the end of the wagon with me.”
+
+Aunt Corinne edged some inches nearer her protector.
+
+“How could you see what was in a dark wagon?”
+
+“There was a candle lighted inside. Aunt Krin, there was a little
+pretty girl in that wagon that I do believe the folks stole!”
+
+This was like a story. The luxury of a real stolen child had never
+before come in aunt Corinne's way.
+
+“Why, Bobaday?” she inquired affectionately.
+
+“Because the little girl seemed like she was dead till all at once
+she opened her eyes, and then her mouth as if she was going to scream
+again, and they stopped her mouth up, and covered her in clothes.”
+
+“What did the wagon look like?”
+
+“Like a little room. And they slept on the floor. They had tin
+things hangin' around the sides, and a stove in one corner with the
+pipe stickin' up through the cover. And the cover was so thick you
+couldn't see a light through it. You could only see through the
+pucker-hole where it comes together over the feed-box.”
+
+“And how many folks were there?”
+
+“I don't know. I saw them fussing with the little girl, and I saw
+it, and then I didn't stay any longer.”
+
+“What was it, Bobaday?”
+
+“I don't know,” he solemnly replied.
+
+“Yes, but what did it look like?”
+
+Her nephew stared doubtingly upon her.
+
+“Will you holler if I tell you?”
+
+Aunt Corinne went through an impressive pantomime of deeding and
+double-deeding herself not to holler.
+
+“Will you be afraid all the rest of the night?”
+
+No; aunt Corinne intimated that her courage would be revived and
+strengthened by knowing the worst about that wagon.
+
+He pierced her with his dilating eyes, and beckoned her to put up
+her ear for the information.
+
+“You ain't goin' to play any trick,” remonstrated his relative, “like
+you did when you got me to say grandmother, grandmother,
+thith--thith--thith, and then hit my chin and made me bite my tongue?”
+
+Robert was forced to chuckle at the recollection, but he assured
+aunt Corinne that grandmother, grandmother, thith--thith--thith was
+far from his thoughts. He hesitated, with aunt Corinne's ear jogging
+against his chin. Then in a loud whisper he communicated:
+
+“_It_ was a man with a pig's _head on_ him!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII. JONATHAN AND THRUSTY ELLEN.
+
+
+Aunt Corinne drew back into a rigid attitude. “I don't believe it!”
+ she said.
+
+Robert Day passed over her incredulity with a flickering smile.
+
+“People don't have pigs' heads on them!” argued aunt Corinne. “Did
+he grunt?”
+
+“And he had a tush stickin' out from his lower jaw,” added Robert.
+
+They gazed at each other in silent horror. While this awful
+pantomime was going on, the flap of Grandma Padgett's tent was
+lifted, and a voice of command, expressing besides astonishment and
+alarm, startled their ears with--
+
+“Children!”
+
+Aunt Corinne leaped up and turned at bay, half-expecting to find the
+man with the pig's head gnashing at her ear. But what she saw in the
+sinking light was a fine old head in a night-cap, staring at them
+from the tent. Bobaday and his aunt were so rapid in retiring that
+their guardian was unable to make them explain their conduct as fully
+as she desired. They slept so long in the morning that the camp was
+broken up when Grandma Padgett called them out to breakfast.
+
+[Illustration: THE VIRGINIAN AND HIS CHILDREN.]
+
+Zene wanted the tent of aunt Corinne to stretch over the wagon-hoops.
+He had already hitched the horses, restoring the gray and the white to
+their former condition of yoke-fellows, and these two rubbed noses
+affectionately and had almost as much to whisper to each other as had
+Robert and Corinne over their breakfast.
+
+The darkened wagon was nowhere to be seen. Corinne climbed a tall
+stump as an observatory, and Bobaday went a piece into the bushes,
+only to find that all that end of the camp was gone. The colony of
+Virginians was also partly under way.
+
+Aunt Corinne felt a certain sadness steal over her. She had brought
+herself to admit the pig-headed man, with limitations. He might have
+a pig's head on him, but it wasn't fast. He did it to frighten
+children. She had fully intended to see him and be frightened by him
+at any cost. Now he was gone like a bad dream in the night. And she
+should not know if the little girl was stolen. She could only revenge
+herself on Robert Day for having seen into that darkened wagon, with
+the stove-pipe sticking out when she had not, by sniffing doubtfully
+at every mysterious allusion to it. They did not mention the
+pigheaded man to Grandma Padgett, though both longed to know if such
+a specimen of natural history had ever come under her eyes. She would
+have questioned then about the walk that led to this discovery. Her
+prejudices against children's prowling away from their elders after
+dark were very strong.
+
+Aunt Corinne thought the pig-headed man might have come to their
+carriage when they were ready to start, instead of the Virginian.
+
+“Right along the pike?” he inquired cheerfully.
+
+“I believe so,” said Grandma Padgett.
+
+“You'll be in our company then as far as you go. It'll be better for
+you to keep in a big company.”
+
+“It will indeed,” said Grandma Padgett sincerely.
+
+“Oh, you'll keep along to Californy,” said the Virginian.
+
+“To the Illinois line,” amended Grandma Padgett, at which he
+laughed, adding:
+
+“Well, we'll neighbor for a while, anyhow.”
+
+“Let your little boy and girl ride in our carriage,” begged Robert
+Day, seizing on this relief from monotony.
+
+“Yes do,” said his grandmother, turning her glasses upon the little
+boy and girl. Aunt Corinne had been inspecting them as they stood at
+their father's heels, and bestowing experimental smiles on them. The
+boy was a clear brown-eyed fellow with butternut trousers up to his
+arm-pits, and a wool hat all out of shape. The little girl looked
+red-faced and precise, the color from her lips having evidently become
+diluted through her skin. Over a linsey petticoat she wore a calico
+belted apron. The belt was as broad as the length of aunt Corinne's
+hand, for in the course of the morning aunt Corinne furtively
+measured it. Although it was June weather, this little girl also wore
+stout shoes and yarn stockings.
+
+“Well, they might get in if they won't crowd you,” assented their
+father. “You're all to take dinner with us, my wife says.”
+
+The children were hoisted up the steps, which they climbed with
+agile feet, as if accustomed to scaling high cart wheels. Bobaday sat
+by his grandmother, and the back seat received this addition to the
+party without at all crowding aunt Corinne. She looked the boy and
+girl over with great satisfaction. They were near her own age.
+
+“Do you play teeter in the woods?” she inquired with a fidget, by
+way of opening the conversation.
+
+The boy rolled his eyes towards her and replied in a slow drawl,
+sometimes they did.
+
+Robert Day then put it to him whether he liked moving.
+
+“I like to ride the leaders for fawther,” replied the boy.
+
+“What's your name?” inquired aunt Corinne, directing her inquiry to
+both.
+
+The little girl turned redder, answering in a broad drawl like her
+brother, “His name's Jonathan and mine's Clar'sy Ellen.”
+
+Aunt Corinne looked down at the hind wheel revolving at her side of
+the carriage, and her lips unconsciously moved in meditation.
+
+“Thrusty Ellen!” she repeated aloud.
+
+“Clar'sy Ellen,” corrected the little girl, her broad drawl still
+confusing the sound.
+
+Aunt Corinne's lips continued to move. She whispered to the hind
+wheel, “Mercy! If I was named Jonathan and Thrusty Ellen, I'd wish my
+folks'd forgot to name me at all!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII. FAIRY CARRIE AND THE PIG-HEADED MAN.
+
+
+Little Miami river was crossed without mishap, and the Padgetts and
+Breakaways took dinner together.
+
+Robert Day could not help noticing the difference between his
+grandmother's wagon and the wagons of the Virginians. Their wagon-beds
+were built almost in the shape of the crescent moon, bending down
+in the centre and standing high at the ends, and they appeared half
+as long again as the Ohio vehicle. The covers were full of innumerable
+ribs, and the puckered end was drawn into innumerable puckers.
+
+The children took their dinners to the yellow top of a brand-new
+stump which, looked as if somebody had smoothed every sweet-smelling
+ring clean on purpose for a picnic table. Some branches of the felled
+tree were near enough to make teeter seats for Corinne and Thrusty
+Ellen. Jonathan and Robert stood up or kneeled against the arching
+roots. Dinner taken from the top of a stump has the sap of out-door
+enjoyment in it; and if you have to scare away an ant, or a pop-eyed
+grasshopper thuds into the middle of a plate, you still feel kindly
+towards these wild things for dropping in so sociably.
+
+Jonathan and Thrusty Ellen were rather silent, but such remarks as
+they made were solid information.
+
+“You don't know wher' my fawther's got his money,” said Jonathan.
+
+This was stated so much like a dare that Robert yearned to retort
+that he did know, too. As he did not know, the next best thing was to
+pretend it was no consequence anyhow, and find out as quickly as
+possible; therefore Robert Day said:
+
+“Ho! Maybe he hasn't any.”
+
+“He has more gold pieces 'n ever you seen,” proceeded Jonathan
+weightily.
+
+“Then why don't he give you some?” exclaimed aunt Corinne with a
+wriggle. “I had a gold dollar, but I b'lieve that little old man with
+a bag on his back stole it.”
+
+Jonathan and Thrusty Ellen made round eyes at a young damsel who had
+been trusted with gold.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+“My fawther calls 'em yeller boys,” said Jonathan. “He carries 'em
+and his paper money in a belt fastened round his waist under all his
+clothes.”
+
+“You don't ought to tell,” said Thrusty Ellen. “Father said we
+shouldn't talk about it.”
+
+“_He_ won't steal it,” said Jonathan, indicating Robert with
+his thumb. “_She_ won't neither,” indicating aunt Corinne.
+
+Aunt Corinne with some sharpness assured the Virginia children that
+her nephew and herself were indeed above such suspicion; that Ma
+Padgett and brother Tip had the most money, and even Zene was well
+provided with dollars; while they had silver spoons among their goods
+that Ma-Padgett said had been in the family more than fifty years!
+
+Jonathan and Thrusty Ellen accepted this information with much
+stolidity. The grandeur of having old silver made no impression on
+them. They saw that Grandma Padgett had one pair of horses hitched to
+her moving-wagon instead of three pairs, and they secretly rated her
+resources by this fact.
+
+It was very cheerful moving in this long caravan. When there was a
+bend in the 'pike, and the line of vehicles curved around it, the
+sight was exhilarating.
+
+Some of the Virginians sat on their horses to drive. There was singing,
+and calling back and forth. And when they passed a toll-gate, all the
+tollkeeper's family and neighbors came out to see the array. Jonathan
+and Robert rode in his father's easiest wagon, while Thrusty Ellen, and
+her mother enjoyed Grandma Padgett's company in the carriage. As they
+neared Richmond, which lay just within the Indiana line, men went ahead
+like scouts to secure accommodations for the caravan. At Louisburg,
+the last of the Ohio villages, aunt Corinne was watching for the boundary
+of the State. She fancied it stretched like a telegraph wire from pole
+to pole, only near the ground, so the cattle of one State could not stray
+into the other, and so little children could have it to talk across,
+resting their chins on the cord. But when they came to the line and
+crossed it there was not even a mark on the ground; not so much as a
+furrow such as Zene made planting corn. And at first Indiana looked
+just like Ohio. Later, however, aunt Corinne felt a difference in the
+States. Ohio had many ups and downs; many hillsides full of grain basking
+in the sun. The woods of Indiana ran to moss, and sometimes descended to
+bogginess, and broad-leaved paw-paw bushes crowded the shade; mighty
+sycamores blotched with white, leaned over the streams: there was a
+dreamy influence in the June air, and pale blue curtains of mist hung
+over distances.
+
+But at Richmond aunt Corinne and her nephew, both felt particularly
+wide awake. They considered it the finest place they had seen since
+the capital of Ohio. The people wore quaint, but handsome clothes.
+They saw Quaker bonnets and broad-brimmed hats. Richmond is yet
+called the Quaker city of Indiana. But what Robert Day and Corinne
+noticed particularly was the array of wagons moved from street to
+street, was an open square such as most Western towns had at that
+date for farmers to unhitch their teams in, and in that open square a
+closely covered wagon connected with a tent. It was nearly dark. But
+at the tent entrance a tin torch stuck in the ground showed letters
+and pictures on the tent, proclaiming that the only pig-headed man in
+America was therein exhibiting himself and his accomplishments,
+attended by Fairy Carrie, the wonderful child vocalist.
+
+Before Bobaday had made out half the words, he telegraphed a message
+to aunt Corinne, by leaning far out of the Brockaway wagon and
+lifting his finger. Aunt Corinne was leaning out of the carriage, and
+saw him, and she not only lifted her finger, but violently wagged her
+head.
+
+The caravan scouts had not been able to find lodging for all the
+troops, and there was a great deal of dissatisfaction about the rates
+asked by the taverns. So many of the wagons wound on to camp at the
+other side of the town, the Brockaways among them. But the neighborly
+Virginian, in exchanging Robert for his wife and daughter at the
+carriage door, assured Grandma Padgett he would ride back to her
+lodging-place next morning and pilot her into the party again.
+
+“I thank you kindly,” said Grandma Padgett in old-fashioned phrase.
+“It's growing risky for me to sleep too much in the open night air.
+At my age folks must favor themselves, and I'd like a bed to-night,
+if it is a tavern bed, and a set, table, if the vittles are tavern
+vittles. And we can stir out early.”
+
+So Thrusty Ellen and Jonathan rode away with their father,
+unconscious of Robert and Corinne's superior feeling in stopping at a
+tavern.
+
+In the tavern parlor were a lot of sumptuous paper flowers under a
+glass case. There were a great many stairs to climb, and a gong was
+sounded for supper.
+
+After supper Grandma Padgett made Zene take her into the stable-yard,
+that she might carry from the wagon some valuables which thieves in
+a town would be tempted to steal.
+
+It was about this time that Corinne and Robert Day strayed down the
+front steps, consulted together and ventured down the street, came
+back, and ventured again to the next corner.
+
+“He gave us the slip before,” said Robert, “but I'd like to get a
+good look at him for once.”
+
+“Would you da'st to spend your gold dollar, though,” said aunt
+Corinne.
+
+“Well, that's better than losin' it,” he responded.
+
+It seemed very much better in aunt Corinne's eyes.
+
+“We can just run down there, and run right back after we go in,
+while Ma Padgett is busy.”
+
+“Then we'll have to be spry,” said Robert Day.
+
+Having passed the first corner they were spry, springing along the
+streets with their hands locked. It was not hard to find one's way
+about in Richmond then, and the tavern was not far from the open
+square. They came upon the tent, the smoky tin torch, the crowd of
+idlers, and a loud-voiced youth who now stood at the entrance
+shouting the attractions within.
+
+Robert dragged his aunt impetuously to the tent door and offered his
+gold dollar to the shouter.
+
+“Pass right in, gentlemen and ladies,” said the ill-looking youth in
+his monotonous yell, bustling as if he had a rush of business, “and
+make room for the crowd, all anxious to see the only pig-headed man
+in America, and to hear the wonderful warblings of Fairy Carrie, the
+child vocalist. Admission fixed at the low figure of fifteen cents
+per head,” said the ill-looking youth, dropping change into Robert's
+hand and hustling him upon the heels of Corinne who craned her neck
+toward the inner canvas. “Only fifteen cents, gentlemen, and the last
+opportunity to see the pig-headed man who alone is worth the price of
+admission, and has been exhibited to all the crowned heads of Europe.
+Fifteen cents. Five three cent pieces only. Fairy Carrie, the
+wonderful child vocalist, and the only living pig-headed man standing
+between the heavens and earth to-day.”
+
+But when aunt Corinne had reached the interior of the tent, she
+turned like a flash, clutched Robert Day, and hid her eyes against
+him. A number of people standing, or seated on benches, were watching
+the performances on a platform at one end of the tent.
+
+“He won't hurt you,” whispered Robert.
+
+“Go 'way!” whispered aunt Corinne, trembling as if she would drive
+the mere image from her thoughts.
+
+“It's the very thing I saw at the camp,” whispered Robert.
+
+“Le's go out again.”
+
+“I want my money's worth,” remonstrated Robert in an injured tone.
+“And now he's pickin' up his things and going behind a curtain. Ain't
+he ugly! I wonder how it feels to look that way? Why don't you stand
+up straight and act right! Folks'll notice you. I thought you wanted
+to see him so bad!”
+
+“I got enough,” responded aunt Corinne. “But there comes the little
+girl. And it's the little girl I saw in the wagon. Ain't she pretty!”
+
+[Illustration]
+
+“She ain't got a pig's head, has she?” demanded aunt Corinne.
+
+“She's the prettiest little girl I ever saw,” responded Robert
+impatiently. “I guess if she sees you she'll think, you're sheep-headed.
+You catch me spendin' gold dollars to take you to shows any more!”
+
+The shrill treble of a little child began a ballad at that time very
+popular, and called “Lilly Dale.” Aunt Corinne faced about and saw a
+tiny creature, waxen-faced and with small white hands, and feet in
+bits of slippers, standing in a dirty spangled dress which was made
+to fluff out from her and give her an airy look. Her long brown curls
+hung about her shoulders. But her black eyes were surrounded with
+brownish rings which gave her a look of singing in her sleep, or in a
+half-conscious state. She was a delicate little being, and as she
+sung before the staring people, her chin creased and the corners of
+her mouth quivered as if she would break into sobs if she only dared.
+Her song was accompanied by a hand-organ ground behind the scenes;
+and when she had finished and run behind the curtain, she was pushed
+out again in response to the hand-clapping.
+
+Robert Day hung entranced on this performance. But when Fairy Carrie
+had sung her second song and disappeared, he took hold of his aunt's
+ear and whispered cautiously therein:
+
+“I know the pig-headed man stole that little girl.”
+
+Aunt Corinne looked at him with solemn assent. Then there were signs
+of the pig-headed man's returning to the gaze of the public. Aunt
+Corinne at once grasped her nephew's elbow and pushed him from the
+sight. They went outside where the ill-looking youth was still
+shouting, and were crowded back against the wagon by a group now
+beginning to struggle in.
+
+Robert proposed that they walk all around the outside, and try to
+catch another glimpse of Fairy Carrie.
+
+They walked behind the wagon. A surly dog chained under it snapped
+out at them. Aunt Corinne said she should like to see Fairy Carrie
+again, but Ma Padgett would be looking for them.
+
+At this instant the little creature appeared back of the tent.
+Whether she had crept under the canvas or knew some outlet to the
+air, she stood there fanning herself with her hands, and looking up
+and about with an expression which was sad through all the dusk.
+
+Corinne and Robert Day approached on tiptoe. Fairy Carrie continued
+to fan herself with her fingers, and looked at them with a dull gaze.
+
+“Say!” whispered aunt Corinne, indicating the interior of the tent,
+“is he your pa?”
+
+Fairy Carrie shook her head.
+
+“Is your ma in there?”
+
+Fairy Carrie again shook her head, and her face creased as if she
+were now determined in this open air and childish company to cry and
+be relieved.
+
+“Can't you talk?” whispered aunt Corinne.
+
+“No,” said the child.
+
+“Yes, you can, too! Did the show folks steal you?”
+
+Fairy Carrie's eyes widened. Tears gathered and dropped slowly down
+her cheeks.
+
+Aunt Corinne seized her hand. “Why, Bobaday, Padgett! You just feel
+how cold her fingers are!”
+
+Robert did so, and shook his head to indicate that he found even her
+fingers in a pitiable condition.
+
+“You come with us to Ma Padgett,” exhorted aunt Corinne in an
+excited whisper. “I wouldn't stay where that pig-man is for the world.”
+
+The dog under the wagon was growling.
+
+“If the pig-man stole you, Ma Padgett will have him put in jail.”
+
+“Le's go back this way, so they won't catch her,” cautioned Bobaday.
+
+The dog began to bark.
+
+Robert and Corinne moved away with the docile little child between
+them. At the barking of the dog one or two other figures appeared
+behind the tent. Fairy Carrie in her spangled dress was running
+between Robert and Corinne into the dark.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV. SEARCHING.
+
+
+But Grandma Padgett did not enjoy the tavern bed or the tavern
+breakfast. She passed the evening until midnight searching the
+streets of Richmond, accompanied by Zene and his limp. Some of the
+tavern people had seen her children in front of the house, but the
+longest search failed to bring to light any trace of them in or about
+that building. The tavern-keeper interested himself; the chamber
+maids were sympathetic. Two hostlers and a bartender went different
+ways through the town making inquiries. The landlady thought the
+children might have wandered off to the movers' encampment, where
+there were other children to play with. Grandma Padgett bade Zene put
+himself on one of the carriage horses and post to camp. When he came
+back he reported that Thrusty Ellen and Jonathan were asleep in the
+tents, and nobody had seen Robert and Corinne.
+
+While searching the streets earlier in the evening, Grandma Padgett
+observed the pig-headed man's pavilion, and this she also explored
+with Zene. A crowd was making the canvas stifling, and the pig-headed
+man's performances were being varied by an untidy woman who screamed
+and played on a portable bellows which had ivory keys, after
+explaining that Fairy Carrie, the Wonderful Musical Child, had been
+taken suddenly ill and could appear no more that night.
+
+Grandma Padgett remained only long enough to scan twice over every
+face in the tent. She went out, telling Zene she was at her wits' end.
+
+“Oh, they ain't gone far, marm,” reassured Zene. “You'll find out
+they'll come back to the tavern all right; mebby before we get there.”
+
+But every such hopeful return to base disheartened the searchers
+more. At last the grandmother was obliged to lie down.
+
+Early in the morning the Virginian came, full of concern. His party
+was breaking camp, but he would stay behind and help search for the
+children.
+
+“That I won't allow,” said Grandma Padgett. “You're on a long road,
+and you don't want to risk separating from the colony. Besides no one
+can do more than we can--unless it was Son Tip. As I laid awake, I
+wished in my heart Son Tip was here.”
+
+“Can't you send him a lightnin' message?” said the Virginian. “By
+the telegraphic wire,” he explained, quoting a line of a popular song.
+
+“I wish I could,” said Grandma Padgett, “but there's no telegraph
+office in miles of where he's located. I thought of it last night.
+There's no way to reach him that I can see, but by letter, and
+sometimes _they_ lay over on the road. And I don't allow to stop
+at this place. I'm goin' to set out and hunt in all directions till I
+find the children.”
+
+The Virginian agreed that her plan was best. He also made
+arrangements to ride back and tell her if the caravan overtook them
+on the 'pike during that day's journey. Then he and Grandma Padgett
+shook hands with each other and reluctantly separated.
+
+She made inquiries about all the other roads leading out of
+Richmond. Zene drove the carriage out of the barnyard, and Grandma
+Padgett, having closed her account with the tavern, took the lines,
+an object of interest and solicitude to all who saw her depart, and
+turned Old Hickory and Old Henry on a southward track. Zene followed
+with the wagon; he was on no account to loiter out of speaking
+distance. The usual order of the march being thus reversed, both
+vehicles moved along lonesomely. Even Boswell and Johnson scented
+misfortune in the air. Johnson ran in an undeviating line under the
+carriage, as if he wished his mistress to know he was right there
+where she could depend on him. His countenance expressed not only
+gravity, but real concern. Boswell, on the other hand, was in a state
+of nerves. If he saw a bank at the roadside he ran ahead and mounted
+it, looking back into the carriage, demanding to know, with a yelping
+howl, where Bobaday and Corinne were. When his feelings became too
+strong for him he jumped at the step, and Grandma Padgett shook her
+head at him.
+
+“Use your nose, you silly little fice, and track them, why don't you?”
+
+As soon as Boswell understood this reproach he jumped a fence and
+smelt every stump or tuft of grass, every bush and hummock, until the
+carriage dwindled in the distance. Then he made the dust smoke under
+his feet as a sudden June shower will do for a few seconds, and
+usually overtook the carriage with all of his tongue unfurled and his
+lungs working like a furnace. Johnson reproved him with a glance, and
+he at once dropped his tail and trotted beside Johnson, as if
+throwing himself on that superior dog for support in the hour of
+affliction.
+
+At noon no trace of Robert and Corinne had been seen. Grandma
+Padgett halted, and when Zene came up she said:
+
+“We'll eat a cold bite right here by the road, and then go on until
+sunset. If we don't find them, we'll turn back to town and take
+another direction.”
+
+They ate a cold bite, brought ready packed from the Richmond tavern.
+The horses were given scant time for feeding, and drank wherever they
+could find water along the road.
+
+Cloudless as the day was, Grandma Padgett's spectacles had never
+made any landscape look as blue as this one which she followed until
+sunset. Sometimes it was blurred by a mist, but she wiped it off the
+glasses.
+
+At sunset they had not seen a track which might be taken for Robert
+or Corinne's. The grasshoppers were lonesome. There was a great void
+in the air, and the most tuneful birds complained from the fence-rails.
+Grandma Padgett constantly polished her glasses on the backward road.
+
+Nothing was said about making a halt for supper or any kind of cold
+bite. The carriage was silently turned as one half the sun stood
+above the tree-tops, I and it passed the wagon without other sign.
+The wagon turned as silently. The shrill meadow insects became more
+and more audible. Some young calves in a field, remembering that it
+was milking time, began to call their mothers, and to remonstrate at
+the bars in voices full of sad cadences. The very farmhouse dogs,
+full-fed, and almost too lazy to come out of the gates to interview
+Boswell and Johnson, barked as if there was sickness in their
+respective families and it was all they could do to keep up their
+spirits and refrain from howling.
+
+The carriage and wagon jogged along until the horizon rim was all of
+that indescribable tint that evening mixes with saffron, purple and
+pink. Grandma Padgett became anxious to reach Richmond again. The
+Virginian might have returned over the road with news of her
+children. Or the children themselves might be at the tavern waiting
+for her. Zene drove close behind her, and when they were about to
+recross a shallow creek, scooped between two easy swells and floating
+a good deal of wild grapevine and darkly reflecting many sycamores,
+he came forward and loosened the check-reins of Hickory and Henry to
+let them drink. Grandma Padgett felt impatient at any delay.
+
+“I don't think they want water, Zene,” said she.
+
+“They'd better cool their mouths, marm.” he said. But still he
+fingered the check reins, uncertain how to state what had sent him
+forward.
+
+“Seems like I heard somebody laugh, marm,” said Zene.
+
+“Well, suppose you did,” said Grandma Padgett. “The whole world
+won't mourn just because we're in trouble.”
+
+“But it sounded like Corinne,” said Zene uncertainly.
+
+Grandma Padgett's glasses glared upon him.
+
+“You'd' be more apt to hear her crying,” she exclaimed. “When did
+you hear it?”
+
+“Just now. I jumped right off the load.”
+
+Hickory and Henry, anxious to taste the creek, would have moved
+forward, but were checked by both pairs of hands.
+
+“What direction?”
+
+“I don't feel certain, marm,” said Zene, “but it come like it was
+from that way through the woods.”
+
+Grandma Padgett stretched her neck out of the carriage toward the
+right.
+
+“Is that a sled track?” she inquired. “It's gittin' so dim I can't
+see.”.
+
+Zene said there was a sled track, pointing out what looked like a
+double footpath with a growth of grass and shrubs along the centre.
+
+“We'll drive in that way,” she at once decided, “and if we get
+wedged among the trees, we'll have to get out the best way we can.”
+
+Zene turned the gray and white, and led on this new march. Hickory
+and Henry, backed from the creek without being allowed to dip their
+mouths, reluctantly thumped the sled track with their shoes, and
+pretended to distrust every tall stump and every glaring sycamore
+limb which rose before their sight. Scrubby bushes scraped the bottom
+of the carriage bed. Now one front wheel rose high over a chunk, and
+the vehicle rolled and creaked. Zene's wagon cover, like a big white
+blur, moved steadily in front, and presently Hickory and Henry ran
+their noses against it, and seemed to relish the knock which the
+carriage-pole gave the feed-box. Zene had halted to listen.
+
+It was dark in the woods. A rustle could be heard now and then as of
+some tiny four-footed creature moving the stiff grass; or a twig cracked.
+The frogs in the creek were tuning their bass-viols. A tree-toad rattled
+on some unseen trunk, and the whole woods heaved its great lungs in the
+steady breathing which it never leaves off, but which becomes a roar
+and a wheeze in stormy or winter weather.
+
+“There isn't anything”--began Grandma Padgett, but between thing and
+“here” came the distinct laugh of a child.
+
+[Illustration: “WHERE'S BOBADAY?”]
+
+Zene cracked his whip over the gray and the white, and the wagon
+rumbled ahead rapidly, jarring against roots, and ends of decayed
+logs, turning short in one direction, and dipping through a long
+sheltered mud-hole to the very wheel-hubs, brushing against trees and
+under low branches until guttural remonstrances were scraped out of
+the cover, and finally descending into an abrupt hollow, with the
+carriage rattling at its hind wheels.
+
+Grandma Padgett had been through many experiences, but she felt she
+could truly say to her descendants that she never gave up so entirely
+for pure joy in her life as when she saw Robert and Corinne sitting
+in front of a fire built against a great stump, and talking with a
+fat, silly-looking man who leaned against a cart-wheel.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV. THE SPROUTING.
+
+
+“Why, Bobaday Padgett,” exclaimed aunt Corinne, “if there isn't our
+wagon--and Ma Padgett.”
+
+Both children came running to the carriage steps, and their guardian
+got down, trembling. She put her arms around them, and after a silent
+hug, shook one in each hand.
+
+The fire illuminated wagon and carriage, J. D. Matthew's cart, and
+the logs and bushes surrounding them. It flickered on the blue
+spectacles and gave Grandma Padgett a piercing expression while she
+examined her culprits.
+
+“Where have you been, while Zene and I hunted up and down in such
+distress?”
+
+“We's going right back to the tavern soon's he could get us there,”
+ Robert hastened to explain. “It's that funny fellow, J. D., Grandma.
+But he thought we better go roundabout, so they wouldn't catch us.”
+
+Zene, limping down from his wagon, listened to this lucid statement.
+
+“O Zene,” exclaimed aunt Corinne, “I'm so glad you and Ma Padgett
+have come! But we knew you wouldn't go on to Brother Tip's without
+us. Bobaday said you'd wait till we got back, and we ran right
+straight out of town.”
+
+“You ought to be well sprouted, both of you,” said Grandma Padgett,
+still trembling as she advanced toward the fire. “Robert Day, break
+me a switch; break me a good one, and peel the leaves off. So you
+came across this man again, and he persuaded you to run away with
+him, did he?”
+
+J. D. Matthews, who had stood up smiling his widest, now moved
+around to the other side of his cart and crouched in alarm.
+
+Grandma Padgett now saw that the cart was standing level and open,
+and within it there appeared a nest of brown curls and one slim,
+babyish hand.
+
+“What's that?” she inquired.
+
+“Why, don't you see, Grandma?” exclaimed Robert, “that's Fairy
+Carrie that we ran away with. They made her sing at the show. We just
+went in a minute to see the pig-headed man. I had my gold dollar. And
+she felt so awful. And we saw her behind the tent.”
+
+“She cried, Ma Padgett,” burst in aunt Corinne, “like her heart was
+broke, and she couldn't talk at all. Then they were coming out to
+make her go in again, and we said didn't she want to go to you? You
+wouldn't let her live with a pig-headed man and have to sing. And she
+wanted to go, so they came out. And we took hold of her hands and
+ran. And they chased us. And we couldn't go to the tavern 'cause they
+chased us the other way: it got dark, and when Bobaday hid us under a
+house, they chased past us, and we waited, oh! the longest time.”
+
+“And then,” continued Robert, “when we came out, we didn't know
+which way to go to the tavern, but started roundabout, through fields
+and over fences, and all, so the show people wouldn't see us. Aunt
+Corinne was scared. And we stumbled over cows, and dogs barked at us.
+But we went on till after 'while just as we's slippin' up a back
+street we met J. D. and the cart, and he was so good! He put the poor
+little girl in the cart and pushed her. She was so weak she fell down
+every little bit when we's runnin'. Aunt Corinne and me had to nearly
+carry her.”
+
+“Well, why didn't he bring you back to the tavern?”
+
+“Grandma, if he had, the show people would been sure to get her! We
+thought they'd travel on this morning. And we were so tired! He took
+us to a cabin house, and the woman was real good. The man was real
+good, too. They had lots of dogs. We got our breakfast and stayed all
+night. They knew we'd strayed off, but they said J. D. would get us
+back safe. I gave them the rest of my dollar. Then this morning we
+all started to town, but J. D. had to go away down the road first,
+for some eggs and things. And it took us so long we only got this far
+when it came dusk.”
+
+“J. D. took good care of us,” said aunt Corinne. “Everybody knows
+him, and he is so funny. The folks say he travels along the pike all
+through Indiana and Ohio.”
+
+“Well, I'm obliged to him,” said Grandma Padgett, still severely;
+“we owe him, too, for a good supper and breakfast he gave us the
+other time we saw him. But I can't make out how he can foot it faster
+than we can ride, and so git into this State ahead of us.”
+
+Mr. Matthews now came forward, and straightening his bear-like
+figure, proceeded to smile without apprehension. He cleared his voice
+and chanted:
+
+  Sometimes I take the wings of steam,
+  And on the cars my cart I wheel.
+  And so I came to Richmond town
+  Two days ago in fair renown.
+
+“Oh,” said Grandma Padgett.
+
+“What's that he's givin' out, marm?” inquired Zene.
+
+“It's a way he has,” she explained. “He talks in verses. This is the
+pedler that stayed over in that old house with us, near by the Dutch
+landlord and the deep creek. Were you going to camp here all night?”
+ she inquired of J. D.
+
+“We wanted him to,” coaxed aunt Corinne, “my feet ached so bad. Then
+we could walk right into town in the morning, and he'd hide Fairy
+Carrie in his cart till we got to the tavern.”
+
+“Zene,” said Grandma Padgett, “you might as well take out the horses
+and feed them. They haven't had much chance to-day.”
+
+“Will we stay here, marm?”
+
+“I'll see,” said Grandma Padgett. “Anyhow, I can't stand it in the
+carriage again right away.”
+
+“Let's camp here,” urged Robert. “J. D.'s got chicken all dressed to
+broil on the coals, and lots of good things to eat.”
+
+“He wouldn't have any money the last time, and I can't have such
+doings again. I'm hungry, for I haven't enjoyed a meal since
+yesterday. Mister, see here,” said Grandma Padgett, approaching the
+cart.
+
+J. D. moved backwards as she came as if pushed by an invisible pole
+carried in the brisk grandmother's hands.
+
+“Stand still, do,” she urged, laying a bank bill on his cart. She,
+snapped her steel purse shut again, put it in her dress pocket, and
+indicated the bill with one finger. “I don't lay this here for your
+kindness to the children, you understand. You've got feelings, and
+know I'm more than obliged. But here are a lot of us, and you buy
+your provisions, so if you'll let us pay you for some, we'll eat and
+be thankful. Take the money and put it away.”
+
+Thus commanded, J. D. returned cautiously to the other side of the
+cart, took the money and thrust it into his vest pocket without
+looking at it. He then smiled again at Grandma Padgett, as if the
+thought of propitiating her was uppermost in his mind.
+
+“Now go on with your chicken-broiling,” she concluded, and he went
+on with it, keeping at a distance from her while she stood by the
+cart or when she sat down on a log by the fire.
+
+“Here's your stick, Grandma,” said Robert Day, offering her a limb
+of paw paw, stripped of all its leaves.
+
+Grandma Padgett took it in her hands, reduced its length and tried
+its limberness.
+
+“If I had given my family such trouble when I's your age,” she said
+to Corinne and Robert, “I should have been sprouted as I deserved.”
+
+They listened respectfully.
+
+“Folks didn't allow their children to run wild then. They whipped
+them and kept them in bounds. I remember once father whipped brother
+Thomas for telling a falsehood, and made welts on his body.”
+
+Corinne and Robert had heard this tale before, but their
+countenances, put on a piteous expression.
+
+“You ought to have a sprouting,” concluded their guardian as if she
+did not know how to compromise with her conscience, “but since you
+meant to do a good turn instead of a bad one”--
+
+“Oh, we never intended to run away, Grandma, and worry you so,”
+ insisted Robert.
+
+“We's just sorry for the little girl,” murmured aunt Corinne.--“Why,
+I'll let it pass this time. Only never let me know you to do such a
+thing again.” The paw paw sprout fell to the ground, unwarped by use.
+Corinne and Robert were hearty in promising never to run away with
+Fairy Carrie or any other party again.
+
+This serious business completed, the grandmother turned her
+attention to the child in the cart.
+
+“How sound asleep the little thing is,” she observed, smoothing
+Fairy Carrie's cheek from dark eye-circle to chin, “and her flesh so
+cold!”
+
+“She's just slept that way ever since J. D. put her in his cart!”
+ exclaimed aunt Corinne. “We made her open her eyes and take some
+breakfast in her mouth, but she went to sleep again while she's
+eatin'.”
+
+“And we let her sleep ever since,” added Bobaday. “It didn't make a
+bit of difference whether the cart went jolt-erty-jolt over stones or
+run smooth in the dust. And we shaded her face with bushes.”
+
+“She's not well,” said their experienced elder. “The poor little
+thing may have some catching disease! It's a pretty face. I wonder
+whose child she is? You oughtn't to set up your judgment and carry a
+little child off with you from her friends. I hardly know what we'll
+do about it.”
+
+“Oh, but they wern't her friends, Ma Padgett,” asserted aunt Corinne
+solemnly. “She isn't the pig-headed man's little girl. Nor any of
+them ain't her folks. Bobaday thinks they stole her away.”
+
+“If she'd only wake up and talk,” said Robert, “maybe she could tell
+us where she lives. But she was afraid of the show people.”
+
+“I should think that was likely,” said Grandma Padgett.
+
+In the heat of his sympathy, he confided to his grandmother what he
+had seen of the darkened wagon the night they met the Virginians at
+the large camp.
+
+The paw paw stick had been laid upon the fire. It blackened
+frowningly. But Robert and Corinne had known many an apple sprout to
+preach them such a discourse as it had done, without enforcing the
+subject matter more heavily.
+
+Grandma Padgett reported that she had searched for her missing
+family in the show tent, though she could not see why any sensible
+boy or girl would want to enter such a place. And it was clear to her
+the child might be afraid of such creatures, and very probable that
+she did not belong to them by ties of blood. But they might prove her
+lawful guardians and cause a small moving party a great deal of
+trouble. “But we won't let them find her again,” said aunt Corinne.
+“Ma, mayn't I keep her for my little sister?--and Bobaday would like
+to have another aunt.”
+
+“Then we'd be stealing her,” said Grandma Padgett. “If she's a lost
+child she ought to be restored to her people, and travelling along
+the 'pike we can't keep the showmen from finding her.”
+
+Bobaday and Corinne gazed pensively at the stump fire, wondering how
+grown folks always saw the difficulties in doing what you want to do.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI. THE MINSTREL.
+
+
+J. D. Matthews spread his supper upon a log. He had delicacies which
+created a very cheerful feeling in the party, such as always rises
+around the thanksgiving board.
+
+Zene sat at one side of the log by J. D. Matthews. Opposite them the
+grandmother and her children, camped on chunks covered with shawls
+and horse-blankets Seeing what an accomplished cook this singular
+pedler was, how much at home he appeared in the woods, and what a
+museum he could make of his cart, Zene respectfully kept from
+laughing at him, except in an indulgent way as the children did.
+
+“I guess we'll stay just where we are until morning,” said Grandma
+Padgett. “The night's pleasant and warm, and there are just as few
+mosquitoes here as in the tavern. I didn't sleep last night.” She
+felt stimulated by the tea, and sufficiently recovered from the
+languor which follows extreme anxiety, to linger up watching the
+fire, allowing the children to linger also, while J. D. Matthews put
+his cupboard to rights after supper.
+
+It was funny to see his fat hands dabbling in dishwater; he laughed
+as much about--it as aunt Corinne did.
+
+Grandma Padgett removed the sleeping child from his cart, and after
+trying vainly to make her eat or arouse herself, put her in the bed
+in the tent, attired in one of aunt Corinne's gowns.
+
+“She was just as helpless as a young baby,” said Grandma Padgett,
+sitting down again by the fire. “I'll have a doctor look at that
+child when we go through Richmond. She acts like she'd been drugged.”
+
+J. D. Matthews having finished--his dishwashing, sat down in the
+shadow some distance from the outspoken woman in spectacles, and her
+family.
+
+“Now come up here,” urged aunt Corinne, “and sing it all over--what
+you was singing before Ma Padgett came.”
+
+J. D. ducked his head and chuckled, but remained in his shadow.
+
+“Awh-come on,” urged Robert Day “Zene'll sing 'Barb'ry Allen' if
+you'll sing your song again.”
+
+Zene glanced uneasily at Grandma Padgett, and said he must look at
+the horses. “Barb'ry Allen” was a ballad he had indulged the children
+with when at a distance from her ears.
+
+But the tea and the hour, and her Virginia memories through which
+that old sing-song ran like the murmur of bees, made Grandma Padgett
+propitious, and she laid her gracious commands on Zene first, and J.
+D. Matthews afterwards. So that not only “Barb'ry Allen” was sung,
+but J. D.'s ditty, into which he plunged with nasal twanging and much
+personal enjoyment.
+
+“It's why he didn't ever get married,” explained aunt Corinne,
+constituting herself prologue.
+
+“I should think he needn't make any excuses for that,” remarked
+Grandma Padgett, smiling.
+
+J. D. sawed back and forth on a log, his silly face rosy with
+pleasure over the tale of his own woes:
+
+  O, I went to a friend's house,
+  The friend says “Come in.
+  Take a hot cup of coffee,
+  O where have you been?”
+
+  It's down to the Squi-er's
+  With a license I went,
+  And my good Sunday clothes on,
+  To marry intent.
+
+  “O where is the lady?”
+   The good Squi-er, says he.
+  “O she's gone with a wed'wer
+  That is not poor J. D.”
+
+  “It's now you surprise me,”
+   The friend says a-sigh'n,
+  “J. D. Matthews not married,
+  The sun will not shine!”
+
+“Well, I think she was simple!” exclaimed aunt Corinne in epilogue,
+“when she might have had a man that washed the dishes and talked
+poetry all the time.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII. THE HOUSE WITH LOG STEPS.
+
+
+Richmond must soon have seemed far behind Grandma Padgett's little
+caravan, had not Fairy Carrie still drowsed in the carriage, keeping
+the Richmond adventures always present.
+
+They had parted from J. D. Matthews and the Virginian and his troop.
+Jonathan and Thrusty Ellen were somewhere on the road ahead, but at a
+point unknown to Robert and Corinne. They might turn off towards the
+southwest if all the emigrants agreed to forsake the St. Louis route.
+No one could tell where J. D. might be rattling his cart.
+
+The afternoon which finally placed Richmond in diminishing
+perspective, Robert rode with Zene and lived his campaign over again.
+This was partly necessary because little Carrie lay on the back
+carriage-seat. But it was entirely agreeable, for Zene wanted to know
+all the particulars, and showed a flattering, not to say a
+stimulating anxiety to get a good straight look at Bobaday's prowess
+in rescuing the distressed. Said Zene:
+
+“But what if her folks never turn up?”
+
+“Then my pa will take her to live with us,” said Robert Day, “and
+Grandma Padgett will do by her just as she does by aunt Krin and me.
+She isn't a very lively little girl. I'd hate to play Blind Man with
+her to be blinded; for seems as if she'd just stand against the wall
+and go to sleep. But it'll be a good thing to have one still child
+about the house: aunt Corinne fidgets so. I believe, though, her
+folks are hunting her. Look what a fuss there was about us I When
+people's children get lost or stolen, they hunt and hunt, and don't
+give it up.”
+
+In the carriage, aunt Corinne sitting by her mother, turned her head
+at every fifth revolution of the wheels, to see how the strange
+little girl fared.
+
+“Do you s'pose she will ever be clear awake, Ma Padgett?” inquired,
+aunt Corinne.
+
+“She'll drowse it off by and by,” replied Ma Padgett. “The rubbing I
+give her this morning, and the stuff the Richmond doctor made her
+swallow, will bring her out right.”
+
+“She's so pretty,” mused aunt Corinne. “I'd like to have her hair if
+she never wanted it any more.”
+
+“That's a covetous spirit. But it puts me in mind,” said Grandma
+Padgett, smiling, “of my sister Adeline and the way she took to get
+doll's hair.”
+
+Aunt Corinne had often heard of sister Adeline and the doll's hair,
+but she was glad to hear the brief tale told again in the pleasant
+drowsing afternoon.
+
+The Indiana landscape was beautiful in tones of green and stretches
+of foliage. Whoever calls it monotonous has never watched its varying
+complexions or the visible breath of Indian summer which never
+departs from it at any season.
+
+“Mother came in from meeting one day,” said Grandma Padgett, “and
+went into her bedroom and threw her shawl on the bed. She had company
+to dinner and was in a hurry. It was a fine silk shawl with fringe
+longer than my hand. Uncle Henry brought it over the mountains as a
+present. But Adeline come in and saw the fringe and thought what nice
+doll hair it would make. So by and by mother has an errand in the
+bedroom, and she sees her shawl travelling down behind the bed, and
+doesn't know what to think. Then she hears something snip, snip, and
+lifts up the valance and looks under the bed, and there sets Adeline
+cutting the fringe off her shawl! She had it half cut off.”
+
+“And what did Grandma do then?” aunt Corinne omitted not to ask.
+
+“Oh, she punished Adeline. But that never had any effect on her.
+Adeline was a funny child,” said Grandma Padgett, retrospective
+tenderness showing through her blue glasses. “I remember once she got
+to eatin' brown paper, and mother told her it would kill her if she
+didn't quit it. Adeline--made up her mind she was going to eat brown
+paper if it did kill her. She never doubted that it would come true
+as mother said. But she prepared to die, and made her will and
+divided her things. Mother found it out and put a stop to the
+business. I remember,” said Grandma Padgett, laughing, “that I was
+disappointed, because I had to give back what she willed to me! yet I
+didn't want Adeline to die. She was a lively child. She jumped out of
+windows and tom-boyed around, but everybody liked her. Once I had
+some candy and divided fair enough, I thought, but Adeline after she
+ate up what she had, said I'd be sorry if I didn't give her more,
+because she was going, to die. It worked so well on my feelings that
+next time I tried that plan on Adeline's feelings, and told her if
+she didn't do something I wanted her to do _she'd_ be sorry; for
+I was going to die. She said she knew it; everybody was going to die
+some day, and she couldn't help it and wasn't going to be sorry for
+any such thing! Poor Adeline: many a year she's been gone, and I'm
+movin' further away from the old home.”
+
+Grandma Padgett lifted the lines and slapped them on the backs of
+old Hickory and Henry. Rousing themselves from coltish recollections
+of their own, perhaps, the horses began to trot.
+
+[Illustration: THE LAWYER.]
+
+In Indiana, some reaches of the 'pike were built on planks instead
+of broken stone, and gave out a hollow rumble instead of a flinty
+roar. The shape and firmness of the road-bed were the same, but the
+ends of boards sometimes cropped out along the sides. In this day,
+branches of the old national thoroughfare penetrate to every part of
+the Hoosier State. The people build 'pikes instead of what are called
+dirt roads. There are, of course, many muddy lanes and by-ways. But
+they have some of the best drives which have been lifted out of the
+Mississippi Valley.
+
+Though the small caravan had lost time, and Son Tip might be waiting
+at the Illinois line before they reached that point, Grandma Padgett
+said they would all go to morning meeting in the town where they
+stopped Saturday night, and only drive a short piece on Sunday
+afternoon. She hated to be on expense, but they had much to return
+thanks for; and the Israelites made Sabbath day's journeys when they
+were moving.
+
+The first Sunday--which seemed so remote now--had been partially
+spent in a grove where they camped for dinner, and Grandma Padgett
+read the Bible, and made Bobaday and Corinne answer their catechism.
+But this June Sunday was to be of a thanksgiving character. And they
+spent it in Greenfield.
+
+At Cambridge City little Carrie roused sufficiently to eat with
+evident relish. But no such recollection of Dublin, Jamestown called
+Jimtown for short, by some inhabitants, and only distinguished by its
+location from another Jamestown in the State---Knightstown and
+Charlottesville, remained to her as remained to Bobaday and Corinne.
+The Indiana village did not differ greatly from the Ohio village
+situated on the 'pike. There were always the church with a bonny
+little belfry, and the schoolhouse more or less mutilated as to its
+weather boarding. The 'pike was the principal street, and such houses
+as sat at right angles to it, looked lonesome, and the dirt roads
+weedy or dusty.
+
+Greenfield was a country seat and had a court house surrounded by
+trees. It looked long and straggling in the summer dusk. Zene, riding
+ahead to secure lodgings, came back as far as the culvert to tell
+Grandma Padgett there was no room at the tavern Court, was session,
+and the lawyers on the circuit filled the house. But there was
+another place, near where they now halted, that sometimes took in
+travellers for accommodation's sake. He pointed it out, a roomy
+building with a broad flight of leg steps leading up to the front
+doors. Zene said it was not a tavern, but rather nicer than a tavern.
+He had already prevailed on the man and woman keeping it to take in
+his party.
+
+Robert and aunt Corinne scampered up the log steps and Grandma
+Padgett led Fairy Carrie; after them. A plain tidy woman met them at
+the door and took them into a square room. There were the homemade
+carpet, the centre-table with daguerreotypes standing open and
+glaring such light as they had yet to reflect, samplers and colored
+prints upon the walls, but there was also a strange man busy with
+some papers at the table.
+
+His hat stood beside him on the floor, and he dropped the sorted
+papers into it. He was, as Grandma Padgett supposed, one of the
+lawyers on the circuit. After looking up, he kept on sorting and
+folding his papers.
+
+The woman went out to continue her supper-getting. In a remote part
+of the house bacon could be heard hissing over the fire. Robert and
+Corinne sat upright on black chairs, but their guardian put Carrie on
+a padded lounge.
+
+The little creature was dressed in aunt Corinne's clothing, giving it
+a graceful shape in spite of the broad tucks in sleeve, skirt and
+pantalet, which kept it from draggling over her hands or on the floor,
+She leaned against the wall, gazing around her with half-awakened
+interest. The dark circles were still about her eyes, but her pallor
+was flushed with a warmer color, Grandma Padgett pushed the damp
+curls off her forehead.
+
+“Are you hungry, Sissy?” she inquired.
+
+“No, ma'am,” replied Carrie. “Yes, ma'am,” she added, after a
+moment's reflection.
+
+“She actually doesn't know,” said Bobaday, sitting down on the
+lounge near Carrie. Upon this, aunt Corinne forsook her own black
+chair and sat on the other side of their charge.
+
+“Do you begin to remember, now?” inquired Robert Day, smoothing the
+listless hands on Carrie's lap.
+
+“How we run off with you--you know,” prompted aunt Corinne, dressing
+a curl over her finger.
+
+The child looked at each of them, smiling.
+
+“Don't pester her,” said Grandma Padgett, taking some work out of
+her dress pocket and settling herself by a window to make use of the
+last primrose light in the sky.
+
+“If we don't begin to make her talk, she'll forget how,” exclaimed
+aunt Corinne. “Can't you 'member anything about your father and mother
+now, Carrie?”
+
+[Illustration: THE “YOUNG MAN WHO SOLD TICKETS” APPEARS AT THE DOOR.]
+
+The man who was sorting his papers at the table, turned an attentive
+eye and ear toward the children. But neither Bobaday nor Corinne
+considered that he broke up the family privacy. They scarcely noticed
+him.
+
+“Grandma,” murmured Carrie vaguely, turning her eyes toward their
+guardian by the window.
+
+“Yes, that's Grandma,” said Bobaday. “But don't you know where your
+own pa and ma are?”
+
+“Papa,” whispered Carrie, like a baby trying the words. “Mamma.
+Papa--mamma.”
+
+“Yes, dear,” exclaimed aunt Corinne. “Where do they live? She's big
+enough to know that if she knows anything.”
+
+“Let's get her to sing a song,” suggested Bobaday. “If she can
+remember a song, she can remember what happened before they made her
+sing.”
+
+“That papa?” said Carrie, looking at the stranger by the table.
+
+“No,” returned aunt Corinne, deigning a glance his way. “That's only
+a gentleman goin' to eat supper here. Sing, Carrie. Now, Bobaday
+Padgett,” warned aunt Corinne, shooting her whisper behind the curled
+head, “don't you go and scare her by sayin' anything about that pig-man.”
+
+“Don't you scare her yourself,” returned Robert with a touch of
+indignation. “You've got her eyes to stickin' out now. Sing a pretty
+tune, Carrie. Come on, now.”
+
+The docile child slid off the lounge and stood against it, piping
+directly one of her songs. Yet while her trembling treble arose, she
+had a troubled expression, and twisted her fingers about each other.
+
+In an instant this expression became one of helpless terror. She
+crowded back against the lounge and tried to hide herself behind
+Bobaday and Corinne.
+
+They looked toward the door, and saw standing there the young man
+who sold tickets at the entrance of the pig-headed individual's show.
+His hands were in his pockets, but he appeared ready to intone forth:
+
+“Walk right in, ladies and gentlemen, and hear Fairy Carrie, the
+child vocalist!” And the smoky torch was not needed to reveal his
+satisfaction in standing just where he did.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII. “COME TO MAMMA!”
+
+
+Though the dissipated looking young man only stood at the door a
+moment, and then walked out on the log steps at a sauntering pace, he
+left dismay behind him. Aunt Corinne flew to her mother, imploring
+that Carrie be hid. Robert Day stood up before the child, frowning
+and shaking his head.
+
+“All the pig-headed folks will be after her,” exclaimed aunt
+Corinne. “They'll come right into this room so soon as that fellow
+tells them. Le's run out the back way, Ma Padgett!”
+
+Grandma Padgett, who had been giving the full strength of her
+spectacles to the failing light and her knitting, beheld this
+excitement with disapproval.
+
+“You'll have my needles out,” she objected. “What pig-headed folks
+are after what? Robert, have you hurt Sissy?”
+
+“Why, Grandma Padgett, didn't you see the doorkeeper looking into
+the room?”
+
+“Some person just looked in--person they appear to object to,” said
+the strange man, giving keen attention to what was going forward.
+“Are these your own children, ma'am?”
+
+Grandma Padgett rolled up her knitting, and tipped her head slightly
+back to bring the stranger well under her view.
+
+“This girl and the boy belong to my family,” she replied.
+
+“But whose is the little girl on the lounge?”
+
+“I don't know,” replied Grandma Padgett, somewhat despondently. “I
+wish I did. She's a child that seems to be lost from her friends.”
+
+“But you can't take her away and give her to the show people again,”
+ exclaimed aunt Corinne, turning on this stranger with nervous
+defiance. “She's more ours than she is yours, and that ugly man
+scared her so she couldn't do anything but cry or go to sleep. If
+brother Tip was here he wouldn't let them have her.”
+
+“That man that just went out, is a showman,” explained Robert Day,
+relying somewhat on the stranger for aid and re-inforcement. “She was
+in the show that he tended door for. They were awful people. Aunt
+Krin and I slipped her off with us.”
+
+“That's kidnapping. Stealing, you know,” commented the stranger.
+
+“_They'd_ stolen her,” declared Bobaday.
+
+“How do you know?”
+
+“Look how 'fraid she was! I peeped into their wagon in the woods,
+and as soon as she opened her eyes and saw the man with the pig's
+head, she began to scream, and they smothered her up.”
+
+Grandma Padgett was now sitting on the lounge with Carrie lifted
+into her lap. Her voice was steady, but rather sharp. “This child's
+in a fit! Robert Day, run to the woman of the house and tell her to
+bring hot water as soon as she can.”
+
+During the confusion which followed, and while Carrie was partially
+undressed, rubbed, dipped, and dosed between her set teeth, the
+stranger himself went out to the log steps and stood looking from one
+end of the street to the other. The dissipated young man appeared
+nowhere in the twilight.
+
+Returning, the lawyer found Grandma Padgett holding her patient
+wrapped in shawls. The landlady stood by, much concerned, and talking
+about a great many remedies beside such as she held in her hands.
+Aunt Corinne and Robert Day maintained the attitude of guards, one on
+each side of the door.
+
+Carrie was not only conscious again, but wide awake and tingling
+through all her little body. Her eyes had a different expression.
+They saw everything, from the candle the landlady held over her, to
+the stranger entering: they searched the walls piteously, and passed
+the faces of Bobaday and aunt Corinne as if they by no means
+recognized these larger children.
+
+“I want my mamma!” she wailed. Tears ran down her face and Grandma
+Padgett wiped them away. But Carrie resisted her hand.
+
+“Go away!” she exclaimed. “You aren't my mamma!”
+
+“Poor little love!” sighed the landlady, who had picked up some
+information about the child.
+
+“And you aren't my mamma!” resented Carrie. “I want my mamma to come
+to her little Rose.”
+
+“Says her name's Rose,” said Grandma Padgett, exchanging a flare of
+her glasses for a startled look from the landlady.
+
+“She says her name's Rose,” repeated the landlady, turning to the
+lawyer as a general public who ought to be informed. Robert and
+Corinne began to hover between the door and the lounge, vigilant at
+both extremes of their beat.
+
+“Rose,” repeated the lawyer, bending forward to inspect the child.
+“Rose what? Have you any other name, my little girl?”
+
+“I not your little girl,” wept their excited patient. “I'm my
+mamma's little girl. Go away! you're an ugly papa.”
+
+Bobaday and Corinne chuckled at this accusation. Aunt Corinne could
+not bring herself to regard the lawyer as an ally. If he wished to
+play a proper part he should have gone out and driven the doorkeeper
+and all the rest of those show-people from Greenfield. Instead of
+that, he stood about, listening.
+
+“I haven't even seen such people,” murmured the landlady in reply to
+a whispered question from Grandma Padgett. “There was a young man
+came in to ask if we had more room, but I didn't like his looks and
+told him no, we had no more. Court-times we can fill our house if we
+want to. But I'm always particular. We don't take shows at all. The
+shows that come through here are often rough. There was a magic-lantern
+man we let put up with us. But circuses and such things can go to
+the regular tavern, says I. And if the regular tavern can't accommodate
+them, it's only twenty mile to Injunop'lis.”
+
+“I was afraid they might have got into the house,” said Grandma
+Padgett. “And I wouldn't know what to do. I couldn't give her up to
+them again, when the bare sight throws her into spasms, unless I was
+made to do it.”
+
+“You couldn't prove any right to her,” observed the lawyer.
+
+“No, I couldn't,” replied Grandma Padgett, expressing some injury in
+her tone. “But on that account ought I to let her go to them that
+would mistreat her?”
+
+“She may be their child,” said the lawyer. “People have been known
+to maltreat their children before. You only infer that they stole her.”
+
+Aunt Corinne told her nephew in a slightly guarded whisper, that she
+never had seen such a mean man as that one was.
+
+“They ought to prove it before they get her, then,” said Grandma
+Padgett.
+
+“Yes,” he assented. “They ought to prove it.”
+
+“And they must be right here in the place,” she continued. “I'm
+afraid I'll have trouble with them.”
+
+“We could go on to-night,” exclaimed Robert Day. “We could go on to
+Indianapolis, and that's where the governor lives, Zene says; and
+when we told the governor, he'd put the pig-headed folks in jail.”
+ Small notice being taken of this suggestion by the elders, Robert and
+Corinne bobbed their heads in unison and discussed it in whispers
+together.
+
+The woman of the house locked up that part which let out upon the
+log steps, before she conducted her guests to supper. She was a
+partisan of Grandma Padgett's.
+
+At table the brown-eyed child whom Grandma Padgett still held upon
+her lap, refused food and continued to demand her mother. She leaned
+against the old lady's shoulder seeing every crack in the walls,
+every dish upon the cloth, the lawyer who sat opposite, and the
+concerned faces of Bobaday and Corinne. Supper was too good to be
+slighted, in spite of Carrie's dangerous position. The man of the
+house was a Quaker, and while his wife stood up to wait on the table,
+he repeatedly asked her in a thee-and-thou language highly edifying
+to aunt Corinne, for certain pickles and jams and stuffed mangoes;
+and as she brought them one after the other, he helped the children
+plentifully, twinkling his eyes at them. He was a delicious old
+fellow; as good in his way as the jams.
+
+“And won't thee have some-in a sasser?” he inquired tenderly of
+Carrie, “and set up and feed thyself? Thee ought to give thy grandame
+a chance to eat her bite--don't thee be a selfish little dear.”
+
+“I want my mamma,” responded Carrie, at once taking this twinkle-eyed
+childless father into her confidence. “I'm waiting for my mamma. When
+she comes she'll give me my supper and put me to bed.”
+
+“Thee's a big enough girl to wait ort thyself,” said the Quaker, not
+understanding the signs his wife made to him.
+
+“She doesn't live at your house,” pursued the child. “She lives at
+papa's house.”
+
+“Where is papa's house?” inquired the lawyer helping himself to
+bread as if that were the chief object of his thoughts.
+
+“It's away off. Away over the woods.”
+
+“And what's papa's name?”
+
+Carrie appeared to consider the questioner rather than the question,
+and for some unexpressed reason, remained silent.
+
+“Mother,” said the Quaker from the abundant goodness of his heart,
+“doesn't thee mind that damson p'serve thee never let's me have
+unless I take the ag'y and shake for it? Some of that would limber a
+little girl's tongue, doesn't thee think?”
+
+“It's in the far pantry on a high shelf,” said the woman of the
+house, demurring slightly.
+
+“I can reach it down.”
+
+“No, I'll bring it myself. The jars are too crowded on that shelf
+for a man's hands to be turned loose among 'em.”
+
+The Quaker smiled, sparkling considerably under his gray eyebrows
+while his wife took another light and went after the damson
+preserve. She had been gone but a moment when knocking began at the
+front door, and the Quaker rose at once from his place to answer it.
+
+[Illustration: “COME TO MAMMA.”]
+
+Robert Day and Corinne looked at each other in apprehension. They
+pictured a fearful procession coming in. Even their guardian gave an
+anxious start. She parted her lips to beg the Quaker not to admit any
+one, but the request was absurd.
+
+Their innocent host piloted straight to the dining-room a woman whom
+Robert and Corinne knew directly. They had seen her in the show, and
+recalled her appearance many a time afterwards when speculating about
+Carrie's parents.
+
+“Here you are!” she exclaimed to the child in a high key. “My poor
+little pet! Come to mamma!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX. FAIRY CARRIE DEPARTS.
+
+
+Neither William Sebastian, the Quaker landlord, nor his wife,
+returning with the damson preserves in her hand--not even Grandma
+Padgett and her family, looked at Fairy Carrie more anxiously than
+the lawyer.
+
+“Is this your mother, Sissy?” inquired Grandma Padgett.
+
+“No,” replied the child; A blank, stupid expression replacing her
+excitement. “Yes. Mamma?”
+
+The woman sat down and took Carrie upon her lap, twisting her curls
+and caressing her.
+
+“Where have you been, frightening us all to death!” she exclaimed.
+“The child is sick; she must have some drugs to quiet her.”
+
+“She's just come out of a spasm,” said Grandma Padgett distantly.
+“Seems as if a young man scared her.”
+
+“Yes; that was Jarvey,” said the woman. “'E found her here. Carrie
+was always afraid of Jarvey after he-tried to teach her wire-walking,
+and let her fall. Jarvey would've fetched her right away with him,
+But 'e knows I don't like to 'ave 'im meddle with her now.”
+
+“She says her name's Rose,” observed the wife of William Sebastian,
+taking no care to veil her suspicion.
+
+“'Tis Rose,” replied the woman indifferently, passing her hand in
+repeated strokes down the child's face as it was pressed to her
+shoulder. “The h'other's professional--Fairy Carrie. We started
+'igher. I never expected to come down with my child to such a
+miserable little combination. But we've 'ad misfortunes. Her father
+died coming over. We're English. We 'ad good engagements in the
+Provinces, and sometimes played in London. The manager as fetched us
+over, failed to keep his promises, and I had no friends 'ere. I had
+to do what I could.”
+
+An actual resemblance to Carrie appeared in the woman's face. She
+wiped tears from, the dark rings under her eyes.
+
+William Sebastian's wife rested her knuckles on the table, still
+regarding Carrie's mother with perplexed distrust.
+
+While returning none of the caresses she received, the child lay
+quite docile and submissive.
+
+“Well,” said Grandma Padgett, still distantly “folks bring up their
+children different. There's gypsies always live in tents, and I
+suppose show-people always expect to travel with shows. I don't know
+anything about it. But I do know when that child came to me she'd
+been dosed nearly to death with laudanum, or some sleepin' drug, and
+didn't really come to her senses till after her spasm.”
+
+The woman cast a piteous expression at her judge.
+
+“She's so nervous, poor pet! Perhaps I'm in the 'abit of giving her
+too much. But she lives in terror of the company we 'ave to associate
+with, and I can't see her nerves be racked.”
+
+“Thee ought to stop such wrong doings,” pronounced William
+Sebastian, laying his palm decidedly on the table. “Set theeself to
+some honest work and put the child to school. Her face is a rebuke to
+us that likes to feel at peace.”
+
+The woman glanced resentfully at him.
+
+“The child is gifted,” she maintained. “I'm going to make a hartist
+of her.”
+
+She smoothed Carrie's wan hands, and, as if noticing her borrowed
+clothing for the first time, looked about the room for the tinsel and
+gauze.
+
+[Illustration: THE CHILD LAY QUITE DOCILE AND SUBMISSIVE.]
+
+“The things she had on her when she come to us,” said Grandma
+Padgett, “were literally gone to nothing. The children had run so far
+and rubbed over fences and sat in the grass. I didn't even think it
+was worth while to save the pieces; and I put my least one's clothes
+on her for some kind of a covering.
+
+“It was her concert dress,” said the woman, regarding aunt Corinne's
+pantalets with some contempt. “I suppose I hought to thank you, but
+since she was hinticed away, I can't. When one 'as her feelings
+'arrowed up for nearly a week as mine have been 'arrowed, one can't
+feel thankful. I will send these 'ere things back by Jarvey. Well,
+ladies and gentlemen, let me bid you good evening. The performance
+'as already begun and we professionals cannot shirk business.”
+
+“You give an exhibition in Greenfield to-night, do you?” inquired
+the lawyer.
+
+“Yes, sir,” replied the woman, standing with Carrie in arms. She had
+some difficulty in getting at her pocket, but threw him a handbill.
+
+Then passing out through the hall, she shut the front door behind her.
+
+There were two other front doors to the house, though only the
+central one was in constant use, being left open in the summer
+weather, excepting on occasions such as the present, when William
+Sebastian's wife thought it should be locked. One of the other front
+doors opened into the sitting-room, but was barred with a tall
+bureau. The third let into a square room devoted to the lumber
+accumulations of the house. A bar and shelves for decanters remained
+there, but these William Sebastian had never permitted to be used
+since his name was painted on the sign.
+
+Mrs. Sebastian felt a desire to confuse the outgoing woman by the
+three doors and imprison her in the old store room.
+
+“I don't think the child's hers,” exclaimed Mrs. Sebastian.
+
+“Thee isn't Solomon,” observed the Quaker, twinkling at his wife.
+“Thee cannot judge who the true mother may be.”
+
+“She shouldn't got in here if I'd had the keeping of the door,”
+ continued Mrs. Sebastian. “I may not be Solomon, but I think I could
+keep the varmints out of my own chicken house.”
+
+Grandma Padgett set her glasses in a perplexed stare at the door.
+
+“She didn't let us say good-by to Fairy Carrie,” exclaimed aunt
+Corinne indignantly, “and kept her face hid away all the time so she
+couldn't look at us. I'd hate to have such a ma!”
+
+“She'll whip the poor little thing for running off with us, when she
+gets her away,” said Robert Day, listening for doleful sounds.
+
+“Well, what does thee think of this business?” inquired William
+Sebastian of the lawyer who was busying himself drawing squares on
+the tablecloth with a steel fork. “It ought to come in thy line. Thee
+deals with criminals and knows the deceitfulness of our human hearts.
+What does thee say to the woman?”
+
+The lawyer smiled as he laid down his fork, and barely mentioned the
+conflicting facts:
+
+“She took considerable pains to tell something about herself: more
+than was necessary. But if they kidnapped the child, they are
+dangerously bold and confident in exhibiting and claiming her.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX. SUNDAY ON THE ROAD.
+
+
+Aunt Corinne occupied with her mother a huge apartment over the
+sitting-room, in which was duplicated the fireplace below. At this
+season the fireplace was closed with a black board on which paraded
+balloon-skirted women cut out of fashion plates.
+
+The chimneys were built in two huge stacks at the gable-ends of the
+house, outside the weather boarding: a plan the architects of this
+day utterly condemn. The outside chimney was, however, as far beyond
+the stick-and-clay stacks of the cabin, as our fire-stone flues are
+now beyond it. This house with log steps no longer stands as an old
+landmark by the 'pike side in Greenfield. But on that June morning it
+looked very pleasant, and the locust-trees in front of it made the
+air heavy with perfume. There is no flower like the locust for
+feeding honey to the sense of smell. Half the bees from William
+Sebastian's hives were buzzing overhead, when Bobaday and aunt
+Corinne sat down by Zene on the log steps to unload their troubles.
+All three were in their Sunday clothes. Zene had even greased his
+boots, and looked with satisfaction on the moist surfaces which he
+stretched forth to dry in the sun.
+
+He had not seen Carrie borne away, but he had been to the show
+afterwards, and heard her sing one of her songs. He told the children
+she acted like she never see a thing before her, and would go dead
+asleep if they didn't stick pins in her like they did in a woman he
+seen walkin' for money once. Robert was fain to wander aside on the
+subject of this walking woman, but aunt Corinne kept to Fairy Carrie,
+and made Zene tell every scrap of information he had about her.
+
+“After I rubbed the horses this mornin',” he proceeded, “I took a
+stroll around the burg, and their tent and wagon's gone!”
+
+“Gone!” exclaimed aunt Corinne. “Clear out of town?”
+
+Zene said he allowed so. He could show the children where the tent
+and wagon stood, and it was bare ground now. He had also discovered
+the time-honored circus-ring, where every summer the tinseled host
+rode and tumbled. But under the circumstances, a circus-ring had no
+charms.
+
+“Then they've got her,” said Bobaday. “We'll never see the pretty
+little thing again. If I'd been a man I wouldn't let that woman have
+her, like Grandma Padgett did. Grown folks are so funny. I did wish
+some grand people would come in the night and say she was their
+child, and make the show give her up.”
+
+Aunt Corinne arose to fly to her mother and Mrs. Sebastian with the
+news. But the central door opening on the instant and Mrs. Sebastian,
+her husband and guest coming out, aunt Corinne had not far to fly.
+
+“The woman is a stealer,” she added to her breathless recital. “She
+didn't even send my things back.”
+
+“She's welcome to them,” said Grandma Padgett, shaking her head,
+“but I feel for that child, whether the rightful owners has her or
+not.”
+
+“This is Lord's Day,” said William Sebastian to the children, “along
+the whole length of the pike, and across the whole breadth of the
+country. Thy little friend will get her First Day blessing.”
+
+He wore a gray hat, half-high in the crown, and a gray coat which
+flapped his calves when he walked. His trousers were of a cut which
+reached nearly to his armpits, but this fact was kept from the public
+by a vest crawling well toward his knees. Yet he looked beautifully
+tidy and well-dressed. His wife, who was not a Quaker, had by no
+means such an air of simple grandeur.
+
+Grandma Padgett and aunt Corinne, somewhat reluctantly followed by
+Zene, were going to the Methodist church. Already its bell was
+filling the air. But Robert hung back and asked if he might not go to
+Quaker meeting.
+
+“Thee couldn't sit and meditate,” said William Sebastian.
+
+Bobaday assured William Sebastian he could sit very still, and he
+always meditated. When he ran after his grandmother to get her
+consent, it occurred to him to find out from Zene how the pig-headed
+man was, and if he looked as ugly as ever. But aunt Corinne scorned
+the question, and quite flew af him for asking it.
+
+The Methodist services Robert knew by heart: the open windows, the
+high pulpit where the preacher silently knelt first thing, hymn books
+rustling cheerfully, the hymn given out two lines at a time to be
+sung by the congregation, then the kneeling of everybody and the
+prayer, more singing, and the sermon, perhaps followed by an
+exhortation, when the preacher talked loud enough for the boys
+sitting out on the fence to hear every word. Perhaps a few children
+whispered, or a baby cried and its mother took it out. Everybody
+seemed happy and astir. After church there was so much handshaking
+that the house emptied very slowly.
+
+But on his return he described the Quaker meeting to aunt Corinne.
+
+“They all sat and sat,” said Bobaday. “It was a little bit of a
+house and not half so many folks could get in it as sit in the
+corners by the pulpit in Methodist meeting. And they sat and sat, and
+nobody said a word or gave out a hymn. The women looked at the cracks
+in the floor. You could hear everything outdoors. After a long time
+they all got up and shook hands. Mrs. Sebastian said to Mr. Sebastian
+when we came away, 'The spirit didn't appear to move anybody this
+morning.' And he said, 'No: but it was a blessed meeting.'”
+
+“Didn't your legs cramp?” inquired aunt Corinne.
+
+“Yes; and my nose tickled and I wanted to sneeze.”
+
+“But you dursn't move your thumb even. That lawyer that ate supper
+here last night would like such a meeting, wouldn't he?”
+
+The lawyer was coming up the log steps while Robert spoke of him.
+And with him was a lady who looked agitated, and whom he had to assist.
+
+Robert and Corinne, at the open sitting-room window, looked at each
+other with quick apprehension.
+
+“Aunt Krin, _that's_ her mother,” said aunt Krin's nephew. His
+young relative grasped his arm and exclaimed in an awe-struck whisper:
+
+“Bobaday Padgett!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI. HER MOTHER ARRIVES.
+
+
+Both children regarded the strange lady with breathless interest
+when the lawyer seated her in the room. They silently classed her
+among the rich, handsome and powerful people of the earth. She had
+what in later years they learned to call refinement, but at that date
+they could give it no name except niceness. When Grandma Padgett and
+the landlord's wife were summoned to the room, she grew even younger
+and more elegant in appearance, though her face was anxious and her
+eyes were darkened by crying.
+
+“This is Mrs. Tracy from Baltimore,” said the lawyer. “She was in
+Chicago yesterday, and I telegraphed for her a half-hour or so before
+the child was taken out of the house. She came as far as
+Indianapolis, and found no Pan Handle train, this morning, so she was
+obliged to get a carriage and drive over. Mrs. Sebastian, will you be
+kind enough to set out something for her to eat as soon as you can?
+She has not thought of eating since she started. And Mrs.--what did I
+understand your name to be?”
+
+[Illustration: “THIS IS LORD'S DAY,” SAID WILLIAM SEBASTIAN.]
+
+“Padgett,” replied the children's guardian.
+
+“Yes; Mrs. Padgett. Mrs. Padgett, my client is hunting a lost child,
+and hearing this little girl was with you some days, she would like
+to make some inquiries.”
+
+“But the child's taken clear away!” exclaimed Grandma Padgett.
+
+“If you drove out from Injunop'lis,” said the Quaker's wife, “you
+must have met the show-wagon on the 'pike.”
+
+“The show-wagon took to a by-road,” observed the lawyer. “We have
+men tracking it now.”
+
+“I knew it wasn't right for them to carry off that child,” said the
+Quaker's wife, “and if I'd tended the door they wouldn't carried her
+off.”
+
+“It was best not to arouse their suspicions before she could be
+identified,” said the lawyer. “It's easy enough to take her when we
+know she is the child we want.”
+
+“Maybe so,” said the Quaker's wife.
+
+“Easy enough. The vagabonds can't put themselves beyond arrest
+before we can reach them, and on the other hand, they could make a
+case against us if we meddle with them unnecessarily. Since Mrs.
+Tracy came West a couple of weeks ago, and since she engaged me in
+her cause, we have had a dozen wrong parties drawn up for
+examination; children of all ages and sizes.”
+
+“Did she,” inquired Mrs. Tracy, bringing her chair close to Grandma
+Padgett and resting appealing eyes on the blue glasses, “have hair
+that curled? Rather long hair for a child of her years.”
+
+“Yes'm,” replied Grandma Padgett with dignified tenderness. “Long
+for a child about five or six, as I took her to be. But she was
+babyish for all that.”
+
+“Yes--oh, yes!” said Mrs. Tracy.
+
+“And curly. How long since you lost her?”
+
+The lady from Baltimore sobbed on her handkerchief, but recovered
+with a resolute effort, and replied:
+
+“It was nearly three months ago. She was on the street with her
+nurse, and was taken away almost miraculously. We could not find a
+trace. Her papa is dead, but I have always kept his memory alive to
+her. My friends have helped me search, but it has seemed day after
+day as if I could not bear the strain any longer.”
+
+Grandma Padgett took off her glasses and polished them.
+
+“I know how you feel,” she observed, glancing at Robert Day and
+Corinne. “I had a scare at Richmond, in this State.”
+
+“Are these your children?”
+
+“My youngest and my grandson. It was their notion of running away
+with the little girl, and their gettin' lost, that put me to such a
+worry:”
+
+Mrs. Tracy extended her hands to Bobaday and aunt Corinne, drawing
+one to each side of her, and made the most minute inquiries about
+Fairy Carrie. She knew that the child had called herself Rose, and
+that she had been in a partially stupified state during her stay with
+the little caravan. But when Robert mentioned the dark circles in the
+child's face, and her crying behind the tent, the lady turned white
+and leaned back, closing her eyes and groping for a small yellow
+bottle in her pocket. Having smelled of this, she recovered herself.
+
+But aunt Corinne, in spite of her passionate sympathy, could barely
+keep from tittering at the latter action. Though the smelling bottle
+was yellow, instead of a dull blue, like the one Ma Padgett kept in
+the top bureau drawer at home, aunt Corinne recognized her enemy and
+remembered the time she hunted out that treasure and took a long,
+strong, tremendous snuff at it, expecting to revel in odors of
+delight. Her head tingled again while she thought about it; she felt
+a thousand needles running through her nose, and saw herself sitting
+on the floor shedding tears. How anybody could sniff at a hartshorn
+bottle and find it a consolation or restorative under any
+circumstances, she could not understand.
+
+Mrs. Sebastian, in her First Day clothes, and unwilling to lose a
+word of what was going on in the sitting-room, had left the early
+dinner to her assistant. But she brought in a cup of strong tea, and
+some cream toast, begging the bereaved mother to stay her stomach
+with that until the meal's victuals was ready. Mrs. Tracy appeared to
+have forgotten that her stomach needed staying, but she thanked the
+landlady and drank the tea as if thirsty, between her further
+inquiries about the child.
+
+“Are you not sure,” she asked the lawyer, “that we are on the right
+track this time?”
+
+He said he was not sure, but indications were better than they had
+been before.
+
+“I don't wish to reproach you,” said Mrs. Tracy, “but it is a
+fearful thought to me, that they may be poisoning my child with
+opiates again and injuring her perhaps for life. You might have
+detained her.”
+
+“That's what I've said right along,” exclaimed Mrs. Sebastian.
+
+“But there was that woman who pretended to be her rightful mother,”
+ observed Grandma Padget, who, though not obliged to set up any
+defence, wanted the case seen in all its bearings. “There _she_
+set, easy and deliberate, telling _her_ story, how the little
+thing's father died comin' over the water, and how hard, it was for
+her to do the right thing by the child. She maintained she only dosed
+the child to keep her from sufferin'. I didn't believe her, but we
+had nothing to set up against her.”
+
+Mrs. Tracy became as erect and fierce in aspect as such a delicate
+creature could become. The long veil of crape which hung from her
+bonnet and swept the floor, emphasizing the blackness of all her
+other garments, trembled as she rose.
+
+“Why am I sitting here and waiting for anything, when that woman is
+claiming my child for her own? The idea of anybody's daring to own my
+child! It is more cruel than abuse. I never thought of their being
+able to teach her to forget me--that they could confuse her mamma
+with another person in her mind!”
+
+“You're tired out,” said the lawyer, “and matters are moving just as
+rapidly as if you were chasing over all the roads in Hancock County.
+You must quiet yourself, ma'am, or you'll break down.”
+
+Mrs. Tracy made apparent effort to quiet herself. She took hold of
+Grandma Padgett's arm when they were called out to dinner. Robert
+walked on the other side of her, having her hand on his shoulder and
+aunt Corinne went behind, carrying the end of the crape veil as if
+Fairy Carrie's real mother could thus receive support and consolation
+through the back of the head.
+
+Nobody was more concerned about her trouble than William Sebastian.
+And he remembered more tempting pickles and jellies than had ever
+been on the table before at once. Yet the dinner was soon over.
+
+Grandma Padgett said she had intended to go a piece on the road that
+afternoon anyhow, but she could not feel easy in her mind to go very
+far until the child was found. Virginia folks and Marylanders were
+the same as neighbors. If Mrs. Tracy would take a seat in the
+carriage, they would make it their business to dally along the road
+and meet the word the men out searching were to bring in. Mrs. Tracy
+clung to Grandma Padgett's arm as if she knew what a stay the Ohio
+neighbors had always found this vigorous old lady. The conveyance
+which brought her from Indianapolis had been sent back. She was glad
+to be with, the Padgetts. No railroad trains would pass through until
+next day. William Sebastian helped her up the carriage steps, and
+aunt Corinne set down reverently on the back seat beside her. Zene
+was already rumbling ahead with the wagon. Mrs. Sebastian came down
+the steps of log and put a hearty lunch in. It was particularly for
+the child they hoped to find.
+
+[Illustration: MRS. TRACY MAKES INQUIRIES.]
+
+“Make her eat something,” she counselled the mother. “She hardly
+tasted a bite of supper last night, and according to all accounts,
+she ain't in hands that understands feedin' children now.”
+
+“The Lord prosper all thy undertakings,” said William Sebastian,
+“and don't thee forget to let us know what hour we may begin to
+rejoice with thee.”
+
+The lawyer touched his hat as Hickory and Henry stepped away on the
+plank 'pike. He remained in Greenfield, and was to ride after them if
+any news came in about Fairy Carrie.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII. A COUNTRY SUNDAY-SCHOOL.
+
+
+However we may spend our Sabbath, it is different from the other
+days of the week. I have often thought the little creatures of field
+and woods knew the difference. They run or sing with more gladness
+and a less business-like air. The friskiest lambs, measuring strength
+with each other by stiff-legged jumps, are followed by gentle bleats
+from their mothers, and come back after a frolic to meditate and
+switch their tails. The fleecy roll of a lamb's tail, and the dimples
+which seem to dint its first coat, the pinkness of its nose, and the
+drollery of its eye, are all worth watching under a cloudless Sunday
+sky.
+
+As the carriage and wagon rolled along the 'pike, they met other
+vehicles full of people driving for an outing, or going to afternoon
+Sunday-school held in schoolhouses along the various by-roads.
+
+Mrs. Tracy leaned forward every time a buggy passed the wagon, and
+scanned its occupants until they turned towards the right to pass
+Grandma Padgett.
+
+The first messenger they met entered on the 'pike from a cross-road
+some distance ahead of them, but was checked in his canter toward
+Greenfield by Zene, who stopped the wagon for a parley. Mrs. Tracy
+was half irritated by such officiousness, and Grandma Padgett herself
+intended to call Zene to account, when he left the white and gray and
+came limping to the carriage at the rider's side. However, the news
+he helped to bring, and the interest he took in it, at once excused
+him. This man, scouring the country north and south since early
+morning, had heard nothing of the show-wagon.
+
+It might be somewhere in the woods, or jogging innocently along a
+dirt road. It was no longer an object to the searchers. He believed
+the woman and child had left it, intending to rejoin it at some
+appointed place when all excitement was over. He said he thought he
+had the very woman and child back here a piece, though they might
+give him the slip before he could bring anybody to certainly identify
+them.
+
+“My little one 'give me the slip'!” exclaimed Mrs. Tracy indignantly.
+
+The man said his meaning was, she might be slipped off by her keeper.
+
+“Where have you got them?” inquired Grandma Padgett.
+
+“He saw 'em goin' into Sunday-school, marm,” explained Zene.
+“There's a meetin'-house over yonder three or four mile,” pointing
+with his whip.
+
+“It's the unlikeliest place that ever was,” said the messenger,
+polishing his horse's wet neck. “And I suppose that's what the woman
+thought when she slipped in there. If I hadn't happened by in the
+nick of time I wouldn't mistrusted. She didn't see me. She was goin'
+up the steps, with her back to the road, and the meetin'-house sets a
+considerable piece from the fence. They was all singin' loud enough
+to drown a horse's feet in the dust.”
+
+“And both were like the descriptions you had?” said Mrs. Tracy.
+
+“So nigh like that I half-pulled up and had a notion to go in and
+see for myself. Then, thinks I, you better wait and bring-the ones
+that would know for sure. There ain't no harm in that.”
+
+Before the mother could speak again, Grandma Padgett told the man to
+turn back and direct them, and Zene to fall behind the carriage with
+his load. He could jog leisurely in the wake of the carriage, to
+avoid getting separated from it: that would be all he need attempt.
+She took up her whip to touch Hickory and Henry.
+
+After turning off on the by-road, Grandma Padgett heard Zene
+leisurely jogging in the wake of the carriage, and remembered for a
+moment, with dismay, the number of breakable things in his load. He
+drove all the way to the meeting-house with the white and gray
+constantly rearing their noses from contact with the hind carriage
+curtains; up swells, when the road wound through stump-bordered
+sward, and down into sudden gullies, when all his movables clanged
+and rumbled, as if protesting against the unusual speed they had to
+endure. Zene was as anxious to reach the meeting-house as the man who
+cantered ahead.
+
+They drew up to where it basked on the rising ground, an old brown
+frame with lichens crusting the roof. There were two front doors, a
+flight of wooden steps leading up to each, and three high windows
+along the visible side. All these stood open letting out a pleasant
+hum, through which the cracked voice of an old man occasionally
+broke. No hump of belfry stood upon its back. The afternoon sun was
+the bell which called that neighborhood together for Sunday-school.
+And this unconscious duty performed, the afternoon sun now brightened
+the graves which crowded to the very fence, brought out the glint and
+polish of the new marble headstones, or showed the grooved names in
+the old and leaning slate ones. Some graves were enclosed by rails,
+and others barely lifted their tops above the long grass. There were
+baby-nests hollowing into the turf, and clay-colored piles set head
+and foot with fresh boards. And on all these aunt Corinne looked with
+an interest which graves never failed to rouse in her, no matter what
+the occasion might be.
+
+[Illustration: THE FIRST MESSENGER.]
+
+The horses switched their tails along the outside of the fence. One
+backed his vehicle as far as his hitching-strap would let him,
+against the wheels of another's buggy, that other immediately
+responding by a similar movement. Some of them turned their heads and
+challenged Hickory and Henry and the saddle-horse with speaking
+whinneys. “Whe-hee-hee-hee! You going to be tied up here for the
+grass-flies to bite too? Where do you come from, and why don't you
+kick your folks for going to afternoon meeting in hot June time?”
+
+The pilot of the caravan had helped take horse-thieves in his time,
+and he considered this a similar excursion. He dismounted swiftly,
+but with an air of caution, and as he let down the carriage steps,
+said he thought they better surround the house.
+
+But Mrs. Tracy reached the ground as if she did not see him, and ran
+through the open gate with her black draperies flowing in a rush
+behind her. Robert Day and aunt Corinne were anxious to follow, and
+the man tied Grandma Padgett's horses to a rail fence across the
+road, while some protest was made among the fly-bitten row against
+the white cover of Zene's moving-wagon.
+
+Although Bobaday felt excited and eager as he trotted up the grass
+path after Mrs. Tracy, the spirit of the country Sunday-school came
+out of doors to meet him.
+
+There were the class of old men and the class of old women in the
+corner seats each side of the pulpit, and their lesson was in the Old
+Testament. The young ladies listened to the instruction of the smart
+young man of the neighborhood, and his sonorous words rolled against
+the echoing walls. He usually taught the winter district and singing
+schools. The young girl who did for summer schoolmiss, had a class of
+rosebud children in the middle of the meetinghouse, and they crowded
+to Her lap and crawled up on her shoulders, though their mothers, in
+the mothers' class, shook warning heads at them. Scent of cloves,
+roses and sweetbrier mingled with the woody smell of a building shut
+close six days out of seven. Two rascals in the boys' class, who,
+evading their teacher's count, had been down under the seats kicking
+each other with stiff new shoes, emerged just as the librarian came
+around with a pile of books, ready to fight good-naturedly over the
+one with the brightest cover. The boy who got possession would never
+read the book, but he could pull it out of his jacket pocket and
+tantalize the other boy going home.
+
+The Sunday-school was a wholesome, happy place, even for these young
+heathen who were enjoying their bodies too much to care particularly
+about their souls. And when the superintendent stood up to rap the
+school to order for the close of the session, and line out one of
+Watts's sober hymns, there was a pleasant flutter of getting ready,
+and the smart young man of the neighborhood took his tuning-fork from
+his vest pocket to hit against his teeth so he could set the tune. He
+wore a very short-tailed coat, and had his hair brushed up in a high
+roach from his forehead, and these two facts conspired to give him a
+brisk and wide awake appearance as he stepped into the aisle holding
+a singing book in his hand.
+
+But no peaceful, long-drawn hymn floated through the windows and
+wandered into the woods. The twang of the tuning-fork was drowned by
+a succession of cries. The smart young man's eyebrows went up to meet
+his roach while he stood in the aisle astonished to see a lady in
+trailing black clothes pounce upon a child strange to the
+neighborhood, and exclaim over, and cover it with kisses.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII. FORWARD.
+
+
+Some of the boys climbed upon seats to look, and there was
+confusion. A baby or two in the mothers' class began to cry, but the
+mothers themselves soon understood what was taking place, and forgot
+the decorum of Sunday-school, to crowd up to Mrs. Tracy.
+
+“The child is hers,” one said to another. “It must have been lost.
+Who brought it in here?”
+
+The fortunate messenger who had been successful in his undertaking,
+talked in undertones to the superintendent, telling the whole story
+with an air of playing the most important part in it. In return, the
+superintendent mentioned the notice he had taken of those two
+strangers, his attempt to induce the woman to go to the mothers'
+class, her restlessness and the child's lassitude.
+
+The smart young man stood close by, receiving the correct version of
+the affair, and holding his tuning-fork and book behind him; and all
+the children, following their elders, flocked to seats around Mrs.
+Tracy, gazing over one another's shoulders, until she looked up
+abashed at the chaos her excitement had made.
+
+“It's really your child?” said Grandma Padgett, sitting down beside
+the mother with a satisfied and benevolent expression.
+
+“Oh, indeed, yes! Don't you know mamma, darling?”
+
+For reply, the little girl was clinging mutely to her mother's neck.
+Her curls were damp and her eyes very dark-ringed. But there was
+recognition in her face very different from the puzzled and crouching
+obedience she had yielded to the one who claimed her before.
+
+“They've been dosing her again,” pronounced Grandma Padgett severely.
+
+“And she's all beat out tramping, poor little thing!” said one of
+the neighborhood mothers. “Look at them dusty feet!”
+
+Mrs. Tracy gathered the dusty feet into her lap and wiped them with
+her lace handkerchief.
+
+Word went forth to the edge of the crowd that the little girl needed
+water to revive her, and half a dozen boys raced to the nearest house
+for a tin pailful.
+
+With love-feast tenderness the neighborhood mothers administered the
+dripping cup to little Rose Tracy when the boys returned. Her face
+and head were bathed, and hands and feet cooled. The old women all
+prescribed for her, and her mother listened to everybody with
+distended eyes, but fell into such frequent paroxysms of kissing her
+little girl that some of the boys ducked their heads to chuckle. This
+extravagant affection was more than they could endure.
+
+“But where's that woman?” inquired Robert Day. He stood up on the
+seat behind his grandmother and Mrs. Tracy, and could see all over
+the house, but his eyes roamed unsuccessfully after the English
+player. The people having their interest diverted by that question,
+turned their heads and began to ask each other where she was. Nobody
+had noticed her leave the church, but it was a common thing to be
+passing in and out during Sunday school. She had made her escape.
+Half the assembly would have pursued her on the instant; she could
+not be far away. But Mrs. Tracy begged them to let her go; she did
+not want the woman, could not endure the sight of her, and never
+wished to hear of her again. Whatever harm was done to her child, was
+done. Her child was what she had come in search of, and she had it.
+
+So the group eager to track a kidnapper across fields and along
+fence-corners, calmed their zeal and contented themselves with going
+outdoors and betting on what direction the fugitive from punishment
+had taken.
+
+Perhaps she had grown to love little Rose, and was punished in
+having to give her up. In any case, the Pig-headed man and the
+various people attached to his show, no more appeared on the track
+followed by Grandma Padgett's caravan. Mrs. Tracy would not have him
+sought out and arrested, and he only remained in the minds of Robert
+and aunt Corinne as a type of monster.
+
+When they left the meeting-house, the weather had changed. People
+dismissed from Sunday-school with scanter ceremony than usual, got
+into their conveyances to hurry home, for thunder sounded in the
+west, and the hot air was already cooled by a rush of wet fragrance
+from the advancing rain.
+
+[Illustration: THEY BADE FAIRY CARRIE GOOD-BY.]
+
+It proved to be a quick shower, white and violent while it lasted,
+making the fields smoke, and walling out distant views. Spouts of
+water ran off the carriage top down the oil cloth apron which
+protected Robert and his grandmother. Mrs. Tracy held her little girl
+in her lap, and leaned back with an expression of perfect happiness.
+The rain came just as her comfort had come, after so much parching
+suspense. Aunt Corinne wondered in silence if anything could be nicer
+than riding under a snug cover on which the sky-streams pelted,
+through a wonderland of fragrance. Every grateful shrub and bit of
+sod, the pawpaw leaves and spicewood stems, the half-formed hazel-nuts
+in fluted sheaths, and even new hay-stacks in the meadows, breathed
+out their best to the rain. The world never seems so fresh and lovable
+as after a June shower.
+
+Presently the sun was shining, and the ground-incense steaming with
+stronger sweetness, and they came to the wet 'pike stretching like a
+russet-colored ribbon east and west, and turned west toward
+Indianapolis.
+
+On the 'pike they met another of the men sent out by Mrs. Tracy and
+the lawyer. His horse's coat was smoking. Mrs. Tracy took up a gold
+pencil attached to her watch, and wrote a note to the lawyer. She was
+going on to the city, and would return directly home with her child.
+The note she sent by the men, after thanking them, and paying them in
+what Robert and his aunt considered a prodigal and wealthy manner.
+
+So large a slice out of the afternoon had their trip to the meeting-house
+taken, that it was quite dark when the party drove briskly into
+Indianapolis.
+
+It was a little city at that date. Still, Bobaday felt exalted by
+clanging car-bells and railroad crossings. It being Sunday evening,
+the freights were making up. The main street, called Washington, was
+but an extension of the 'pike, stretching broad and straight through
+the city. He noticed houses with balconies, set back on sloping
+lawns. Here a light disclosed a broad hall with dim stairs at the
+back. And in another place children were playing under trees; he
+could hear their calls, and by straining his eyes, barely discern
+that they wore sumptuous white city raiment. The tide of home-makers
+and beautifiers had not then rolled so far north of East Washington
+street as to leave it a mere boundary line.
+
+Grandma Padgett and her party stopped at a tavern on Illinois
+street. Late in the night they were to separate, Mrs. Tracy taking
+the first train for Baltimore. So aunt Corinne and Robert, before
+going to bed, bade good-by to the child who had scarcely been a
+playmate to them, but more like a delicate plaything in whose
+helplessness they had felt such interest.
+
+Rose, obeying her mamma, put her arms around their necks and kissed
+them, telling them to come and see her at home. She looked brighter
+than hitherto, and remembered a dollhouse and her birds at mamma's
+house; yet, her long course of opiates left her little recognition of
+the boy and girl she had so dimly seen.
+
+Her mamma hugged them warmly, and Bobaday endured his share of the
+hugging with a very good grace, though he was so old. Then it seemed
+but a breath until morning, and but another breath until they were
+under way, the wagon creaking along the dewy 'pike ahead of them, an
+opal clearness growing through the morning twilight, and no Fairy
+Carrie asleep, like some tiny enchanted princess, on the back seat.
+
+“The rest of the way,” observed Robert Day to his aunt, “there won't
+be anything happening--you see if there will. Zene says we're half
+across the State now. And I know we'll never see J. D. Matthews
+again. And nobody will be lost and have to be found, and there's no
+tellin' where that great big crowd Jonathan and his folks moved with,
+are.”
+
+“I feel lonesome,” observed aunt Corinne somewhat pensively. “When
+Mrs. Tracy was sending back word to the Quaker tavern man, I wished
+we's going back to stay awhile longer. Some places are so nice!”
+
+“Now it's a pretty thing for you to begin at your time of life,”
+ said Grandma Padgett, “to set your faces backward and wish for what's
+behind. That's a silly notion. Folks that encourage themselves in
+doin' it don't show sound sense. The One that made us knew better
+than to let us stand still in our experience, and I've always found
+them that go forward cheerfully will pretty generally keep the land
+of Beulah right around them. Git up, Hickory!”
+
+Thus admonished, the children entered the lone bridge over White
+River, or that branch of White River on which Indianapolis is
+situated. The stream, seen between chinks in the floor, appeared
+deep, but not particularly limpid. How the horses' feet thundered on
+the boards, and how long they trod before the little star at the
+other end grew to an opening quite large enough to let any vehicle
+out of the bridge!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV. THE TOLL-WOMAN.
+
+
+Still, as crossing the Sciota at Columbus, had been entering a land
+of adventure, crossing the White River at Indianapolis, seemed at
+first entering a land of commonplace.
+
+The children were very tired of the wagon. Even aunt Corinne got
+permission to ride stretches of the road with Robert Day and Zene in
+the wagon. It gave out a different creak and jolted her until she was
+grateful for springs and cushions when obliged to go back to them.
+The landscape was still hazy, the woods grew more beautiful. But
+neither of the children cared for the little towns along the route:
+Bellville, Stilesville, Meridian, Manhattan, Pleasant Garden. Hills
+appeared and ledges of rock cropped out in them. Yet even hills may
+be observed with indifference by eyes weary of an endless panorama.
+
+They drove more rapidly now to make up for lost time. Both children
+dived into the carriage pockets for amusement, and aunt Corinne
+dressed her rag doll a number of times each day. They talked of Rose
+Tracy, still calling her Fairy Carrie. Of the wonderful clothes her
+mother laid out to put upon her the night of her departure, in place
+of aunt Corinne's over-grown things, and the show woman's tawdry
+additions. They wondered about her home and the colored people who
+waited on her, and if she would be quite well and cured of her stupor
+by the time she reached Baltimore. Grandma Padgett told them
+Baltimore was an old city down in Maryland, and the National 'Pike
+started in its main street. From Baltimore over the mountains to
+Wheeling, in the Pan Handle of Virginia, was a grand route. There
+used to be a great deal of wagoning and stage-coaching, and driving
+droves of horses and cattle by that road. Perhaps, suggested aunt
+Corinne, Fairy Carrie would watch the 'pike for the Padgett family,
+but Bobaday ridiculed the idea. When he grew up a man he meant to go
+to Baltimore but the railroad would be his choice of routes.
+
+Both Robert and his aunt were glad the day they stopped for dinner
+near a toll-house, and the woman came and invited them to dine with
+her.
+
+The house stood on the edge of the 'pike, with its gate-pole ready
+to be lowered by a rope, looking like any other toll place. But the
+woman was very brisk and Yankee-like, and different from the many
+slatternly persons who had before taken toll. She said her people
+came from “down East,” but she herself was born in Ohio. She thought
+the old lady would like a cup of strong tea, and her dinner was just
+ready, and it did get lonesome eating by a body's self day after day.
+
+The Padgetts added their store to the square table set in a back
+room, and the toll-woman poured her steaming tea into cups covered
+with flower sprigs. Everything about her was neat and compact as a
+ship's cabin. Her bed stood in one corner, curtained with white
+dimity. There were two rooms to the toll-house, the front one being a
+kind of shop containing a counter, candy jars set in the windows,
+shoestrings and boxes of thread on shelves, and a codfish or two
+sprawled upon nails and covered with netting. From the back door you
+could descend into a garden, and at the end of the garden was a pig-sty,
+occupied by a white pig almost as tidy and precise as his owner. In
+the toll-woman's living room there was a cupboard fringed with tissue
+paper, a rocking-chair cushioned in red calico, curtains to match, a
+cooking-stove so small it seemed made for a play-thing, and yellow
+chairs having gold-leaf ornaments on their backs. She herself was a
+straight, flat woman, looking much broader in a front or back view
+than when she stood sidewise toward you. Her face was very good-natured.
+Altogether she seemed just the ready and capable wife for whom the
+man went to London after the rats and the mice led him such a life.
+Though in her case it is probable the wheelbarrow would not have
+broken, nor would any other mishap have marred the journey.
+
+“You don't live here by yourself, do you?” inquired Grandma Padgett
+as the tea and the meal in common warmed an acquaintance which the
+fact of their being from one State had readily begun.
+
+“Since father died I have,” replied the toll-woman. “Father moved in
+here when about everything else failed him, and he'd lost ambition,
+and laws! now I am used to it. I might gone back to Ohio, but when
+you fit me into a place I never want to pull up out of it.”
+
+“And don't you ever get afraid, nights or any time, without men
+folks about?”
+
+“Before I got used to being alone, I did. And there's reason yet
+every little while. But I only got one bad scare.”
+
+A wagon paused at the front door, so near the horses might have put
+their heads in and sniffed up the merchandise, and the woman went to
+take toll, before telling about her bad scare.
+
+“How do you manage in the nights?” inquired her guest.
+
+“That's bad about fair-times, when the wild young men get to racin'
+late along. The pole's been cut when I tied it down, and sometimes
+they've tried to jump it. But generally the travellers are peaceable
+enough. I've got a box in the front door like a letter-box, with a
+slit outside for them to drop change into, and the pole rope pulls
+down through the window-frame. There ain't so much travel by night as
+there used to be, and a body learns to be wakeful anyhow if they've
+ever had the care of sick old people.”
+
+“You didn't say how you got scared,” remarked aunt Corinne, sitting
+straight in one of the yellow chairs to impress upon her mind the
+image of this heroine of the road.
+
+“Well, it was robbers,” confessed the toll-woman, “breakin' into the
+house, that scared me.”
+
+Robbers! Aunt Corinne's nephew mentally saw a cavern in one of the
+neighboring hills, and men in scarlet cloaks and feathers lurking
+among the bushes. If there is any word sweeter to the young male ear
+than Indian or Tagger, it is robbers.
+
+“Are there many robbers around here?” he inquired, fixing intent
+eyes on the toll-woman.
+
+“There used to be plenty of horse-thieves, and is, yet,” she replied.
+“They've come huntin' them from away over in Illinois. I remember that
+year the milk-sick was so bad there was more horse-thieves than we've
+ever heard of since.”
+
+“But they ain't true robbers, are they?” said aunt Corinne's nephew
+in some disgust, his scarlet bandits paling.
+
+“Not the kind that come tryin' the house when I got scared,”
+ admitted the toll-woman.
+
+“And did they get in?” exclaimed Robert Day's aunt.
+
+“I don't like to think about it yet,” remarked the toll-woman,
+cooling her tea and intent on enjoying her own story. “'Twasn't so
+very long ago, either. First comes word from this direction that a
+toll-gate keeper and his wife was tied and robbed at the dead o'
+night. And then comes word from the other direction of an old man
+bein' knocked on the head when he opened his door. It wouldn't seem
+to you there'd be enough money at a toll-gate to make it an object,”
+ said the woman, looking at Zene's cross eyes with unconcealed
+disfavor. “But folks of that kind don't want much of an object.”
+
+“They love to rob,” suggested Bobaday, enjoying himself.
+
+“They're a desp'rate, evil set,” said the toll-woman sternly. “Why,
+I could tell things that would make your hair all stand on end, about
+robberies I've known.”
+
+Aunt Corinne felt a warning stir in her scalp-lock. But her nephew began
+to desire permanent encampment in the neighborhood of this toll-gate.
+Robber-stories which his grandmother not only allowed recited, but
+drank in with her tea, were luxuries of the road not to be left behind.
+
+“Tell some of them,” he urged.
+
+“I'll tell you about their comin' _here_,” said the toll-woman.
+“'Twas soon after father's death. They must known there was a lone
+woman here, and calculated on findin' it an easy job. He'd kept me
+awake a good deal, for father suffered constant in his last sickness,
+and though I was done out, I still had the habit of wakin' regular at
+his medicine-hours. The time was along in the fall, and there was a
+high wind that night. Fair time, too, so there was more travel on the
+'pike of people comin' and goin' to the Fair and from it, in one day,
+than in a whole week ordinary times.”
+
+[Illustration: THE TOLL-WOMAN.]
+
+“I opened my eyes just as the clock struck two and seemed like I
+heard something at the front door. I listened and listened. It wasn't
+the wind singin' along the telegraph wires as it does when there's a
+strong draught east and west. And it wasn't anybody tryin' to wake me
+up. Some of our farmers that buys stock and has to be out early and
+late in a droviete way, often tells me beforehand what time o' night
+they'll be likely to come by, and I set the pole so it'll be easy for
+them that knows how to tip up. Then they put their money in the box,
+and tip the pole back after they drive through, to save wakin' me,
+for the neighbors are real accommodating and they knew father took a
+heap of care. But the noise I heard wasn't anybody droppin' coppers
+in the box, nor raisin' or lowerin' the pole. The rope rasps against
+the hole when the gate goes up or down. It was just like a lock was
+bein' picked, or a rattly old window bein' slid up by inches.
+
+“I mistrusted right away. It wouldn't do any good for me to holler.
+The nearest neighbor was two miles off. I hadn't any gun, and never
+shot off a gun in my life. I would hate to hurt a human bein' that
+way. Still, I was excited and afraid of gettin' killed myself; so if
+I'd _had_ a gun I _might_ have shot it off, for by the time
+I got my dress and stockin's on, that window was up, and somethin'
+was in that front room. I could hear him step, still as a cat.
+
+“I thought about the toll-money. Everybody knew the box's inside the
+door, so I was far from leavin' it there till the collector came. I
+always took the money out and tied it in a canvas sack and hid it. A
+body would never think of lookin' where I hid that money.”
+
+“Where did you hide it?” inquired aunt Corinne.
+
+The toll-woman rose up and went to collect from a carriage at the
+door. The merry face of a girl in the carriage peeped through the
+house, and some pleasant jokes were exchanged.
+
+“That's the daughter of the biggest stock man around here,” said the
+toll-woman, returning, and passing over aunt Corinne's question. “She
+goes to college, but it don't make a simpleton of _her_. She always
+has a smile and a pleasant word. Her folks are real good friends of
+mine. They knew our folks in Ohio.”
+
+“And did he come right in and grab you?” urged Bobaday, keeping to
+the main narrative.
+
+“I was that scared for a minute,” resumed the toll-woman, “that I
+hadn't any strength. The middle door never is locked. I leave it on
+the latch like, so I can hear wheels better. What to do I didn't
+know, but a body thinks fast at such times. First thing I knew I was
+on the back doorstep, hookin' the door on the outside. Then a gust of
+wind like, came around the corner of the house, and voices came with
+it, and I felt sure there were more men waitin' there to ketch me, if
+I tried to run.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV. ROBBERS.
+
+
+It was a light night, but the new moon looked just like it was
+blowed through the sky by the high wind. I noticed that, because I
+remembered it afterwards.
+
+“Now I was outside, I didn't know which way to turn. If I run to
+either side, there were the men, and if I took toward the pig-pen
+they'd see me. And they'd be comin' around and 'd ketch me where I
+was.”
+
+“What did you do?” exclaimed aunt Corinne, preserving a rigid
+attitude.
+
+The toll-woman laughed cheerfully as she poured out more tea for
+herself, Grandma Padgett having waved back the teapot spout.
+
+“I took the only chance I saw and jumped for that there cave.”
+
+Both Robert and his aunt arose from their chairs to look out of the
+back door.
+
+The cave was a structure which I believe is peculiar to the West,
+being in reality a kind of dug-out. It flourished before people built
+substantial houses with cellars under them, and held the same
+relation to the family's summer economy as the potato, apple, and
+turnip holes did to its winter comfort. Milk, butter, perishable
+fruit, lard, meats, and even preserves were kept in the cave. It was
+intended for summer coolness and winter warmth. To make a cave, you
+lifted the sod and dug out a foot of earth. The bottom was covered
+with straw. Over this you made boards meet and brace each other with
+the slope of the roof. The ends were boarded up, leaving room for a
+door, and the whole outside sodded thickly, so that a cave looked
+like a sharp-printed bulge in the sward, excepting at that end where
+the heavy padlocked door closed it. It was a temptation to bad boys
+and active girls; they always wanted to run over it and hear the
+hollow sound of the boards under their feet. I once saw a cave break
+through and swallow one out of such a galloping troup, to his great
+dismay, for he was running over an imaginary volcano, and when he sat
+down to his shoulders in an apple-butter jar, the hot lava seemed
+ready made to his hand.
+
+From the toll-woman's cave-roof, spikes of yellow mustard were
+shooting up into the air. The door looked as stout as the opening to
+a bank vault, though this comparison did not occur to the children,
+and was secure with staple and padlock and three huge hinges.
+Evidently, no mischievous feet had cantered over the ridge of this
+cave.
+
+It stood a few yards from the back door.
+
+“I had the key in my pocket,” said the toll-woman, “and ever since
+then I've never carried it anywhere else. I clapped, it into the
+padlock and turned, but just as I pulled the door I heard feet comin'
+around the house full drive. Instead of jumpin' into the cave I
+jumped behind it. I thought they had me, but I wasn't goin' to be
+crunched to death in a hole, like a mouse. My stocking-feet slipped,
+and I came down flat, but right where the shadow of the house and the
+shadow of the cave fell all over me. If I hadn't slipped I'd been
+runnin' across that field, and they'd seen me sure. Folks around here
+made a good deal of fuss over the way things turned out, but I don't,
+take any more credit than's my due, so I say it just happened that I
+didn't try to run further.
+
+“The two men outside unlocked the back door and the one inside came
+on to the step.
+
+“'There's nothin' in the box and nobody in here,' says he. 'She's
+jumped out o' bed and run and carried the cash with her.'
+
+“'Did you look under the bed?' says one of the outsiders. And he ran
+and looked himself; anyway, he went in the house and came out again.
+I was glad I hadn't got under the bed.
+
+“'This job has to be done quick,' says the first one. 'And the best
+way is to ketch the woman and make her give up or tell where the
+stuff is hid. She ain't got far, because I heard her open this door.'
+
+“Then they must have seen the cave door stannin' open. I heard them
+say something about 'cave,' and come runnin' up.
+
+“'Hold on,' says one, and he fires a pistol-shot right into the
+cave. I was down with my mouth to the ground, flat as I could lay,
+but the sound of a gun always made me holler out, and holler I did as
+the ball seemed to come thud! right at me; but it stuck in the back
+of the cave.
+
+“'All right. Here she is!' says the foremost man, and in they all
+went. I heard them stumble as they stepped down, and one began to
+blame the others for crowdin' after him when they ought to stopped at
+the mouth to ketch me if I slipped through his fingers.
+
+“I don't know to this hour how I did it,” exclaimed the toll-woman,
+fanning herself, “nor when I thought of it. But the first thing I
+felt sure of I had that door slammed to, and the key turned in the
+padlock, and them three robbers was ketched like mice in a trap,
+instead of it's bein' me!”
+
+Robert Day gave a chuckle of satisfaction, but aunt Corinne braced
+herself against the door-frame and gazed upon the magic cave with
+still wider eyes.
+
+“Did they yell?” inquired Bobaday.
+
+“It ain't fit to tell,” resumed the toll-woman, “what awful language
+them men used; and they kicked the door and the boards until I
+thought break through they would if they had to heave the whole
+weight, of dirt and sod out of the top. Then I heard somebody comin'
+along the 'pike, and for a minute I felt real discouraged; for,
+thinks I, if there's more engaged to help them, what's a poor body to
+do?
+
+“But 'twas a couple of stock-men, riding home, and they stopped at
+the gate, and I run through the open house to tell my story, and it
+didn't take long for them with pistols in their pockets and big black
+whips loaded with lead in the handles, to get the fellows out and tie
+'em up firm. I hunted all the new rope in the house, and they took
+the firearms away from the robbers, and drove 'em off to jail, and
+the robbers turned out to be three of the most desp'rate characters
+in the State, and they're in prison now for a long term of years.”
+
+“What did you do the rest of the night?” inquired Grandma Padgett.
+
+“O, I locked everything tight again, and laid down till daylight,”
+ replied the toll-woman, with somewhat boastful indifference. “Folks
+haven't got done talkin' yet about that little jail in my back yard,”
+ she added, laughing. “They came from miles around to look into it and
+see where the men pretty nigh kicked the boards loose.”
+
+This narrative was turned over and over by the children after they
+resumed their journey, and the toll-woman and her cave had faded out
+in distance. If they saw a deserted cabin among the hollows of the
+woods, it became the meeting place of robbers. Now that aunt
+Corinne's nephew turned his mind to the subject, he began to think
+the whole expedition out West would be a failure--an experience not
+worth alluding to in future times--unless the family were well robbed
+on the way. Jonathan and Thrusty Ellen, in the great overland colony,
+would have Indians to shudder at, a desert and mountains to cross,
+besides the tremendous Mississippi River. Robert would hate to meet
+Jonathan in coming days--and he had a boy's faith that he should be
+constantly repassing old acquaintances in this world--and have no
+peril to put in the balance against Jonathan's adventures. Of course
+he wanted to come out on the right side of the peril, it does not
+tell well otherwise.
+
+But while aunt Corinne's mind ran as constantly on robbers, they had
+no charms for her. She did not want to be robbed, and was glad her
+lines had not fallen in the lonely toll-house. Being robbed appeared
+to her like the measles, mumps, or whooping-cough; more interesting
+in a neighboring family than in your own. She would avoid it if
+possible, yet the conviction grew upon her that it was not to be
+escaped. The strange passers-by who once pleasantly varied the road,
+now became objects of dread. Though Zene got past them in safety, and
+though they gave the carriage a wide road, aunt Corinne never failed
+to turn and watch them to a safe distance, lest they should make a
+treacherous charge in the rear.
+
+Had they been riding through some dismal swamp, the landscape's
+influence would have accounted for all these terrors. But it was the
+pretty region of Western Indiana, containing hills and bird-songs
+enough to swallow up a thousand stories of toll-gate robberies in
+happy sight and sound.
+
+Grandma Padgett, indeed, soon put her ban upon the subject of caves
+and night-attacks. But she could not prevent the children thinking.
+Nor was she able to drive the carriage and at the same time sit in
+the wagon when they rode with Zene and stop the flow of recollection
+to which they stimulated him. While sward, sky, and trees became
+violet-tinted to her through her glasses, and she calmly meditated
+and chewed a bit of calamus or a fennel seed, Bobaday and aunt
+Corinne huddled at the wagon's mouth, and Zene indulgently harrowed
+up their souls with what he heard from a gentleman who had been in
+the Mexican war.
+
+“The very gentleman used to visit at your grand-marm's house,” said
+Zene to Robert, “and your marm always said he was much of a
+gentleman,” added Zene to aunt Corinne. “Down in the Mexican country
+when they didn't fight they stayed in camp, and sometimes they'd go
+out and hunt. Man that'd been huntin', come runnin' in one day scared
+nigh to death. He said he'd seen the old Bad Man. So this gentleman
+and some more of the fine officers, they went to take a look for
+themselves. They hunted around a good spell. Most of them gave it up
+and went back: all but four. The four got right up to him.”
+
+“O don't, Zene!” begged aunt Corinne, feeling that she could not
+bear the description.
+
+But to Robert Day's mind arose the picture of Apollyon, in _Pilgrim's
+Progress_, and he uttered something like a snort of enjoyment, saying:
+
+“Go on, Zene.”
+
+[Illustration: ZENE'S WILD MAN.]
+
+“I guess it was a crazy darkey or Mexican,” Zene was careful to
+explain. “He was covered with oxhide all over, so he looked red and
+white hairy, and the horns and ears were on his head. He had a long
+knife, and cut weeds and bark, and muttered and chuckled to himself.
+He was ugly,” acknowledged Zene. “The gentleman said he never saw
+anything better calkilated to look scary, and the four men followed
+him to his den. They wouldn't shoot him, but they wanted to see what
+he was, and he never mistrusted. After a long round-about, they
+watched him crawl on all-fours into a hole in a hill, and round the
+mouth of the hole he'd built up a tunnel of bones. The bones smelt
+awful,” said Zene. “And he crawled in with his weeds and bark in his
+hand, and they didn't see any more of him. That's a true story,”
+ vouched Zene, snapping his whip-lash at Johnson, “but your grandmarm
+wouldn't like for me to tell it to you. Such things ain't fit for
+children to hear.”
+
+Robert Day felt glad that Zene's qualms of repentance always came
+after the offence instead of before, and in time to prevent the
+forbidden tale.
+
+Yet, having made such ardent preparation for robbers, and tuned
+their minds to the subject by every possible influence, the children
+found they were approaching the last large town on the journey
+without encountering any.
+
+This was Terre Haute. One farmer on the road, being asked the distance,
+said, it was so many miles to Tarry Hoot. Another, a little later met,
+pronounced the place Turry Hut; and a very trim, smooth-looking man
+whom Zene classed as a banker or judge, called it Tare Hote. So the
+inhabitants and neighbors of Terra Haute were not at all unanimous in
+the sound they gave her French name; nor are they so to this day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI. THE FAIR AND THE FIERCE BANDIT.
+
+
+At Terra Haute, where they halted for the night, Robert Day was made
+to feel the only sting which the caravan mode of removal ever caused
+him.
+
+The tavern shone resplendent with lights. When Grandma Padgett's
+party went by the double doors of the dining-room, to ascend the
+stairs, they glanced into what appeared a bower or a bazaar of
+wonderful sights. They had supper in a temporary eating-room, and the
+waiter said there was a fair in the house. Not an agricultural
+display, but something got up by a ladies' sewing-society to raise
+money for poor people.
+
+Now Robert Day and Corinne knew all about an agricultural display.
+They had been to the State Fair at Columbus, and seen cattle standing
+in long lines of booths, quilts, and plows, and chickens, pies,
+bread, and fancy knitting, horses, cake stands, and crowds of people.
+They considered it the finest sight in the world, except, perhaps, a
+fabulous crystal palace which was or had been somewhere a great ways
+off, and which everybody talked about a great deal, and some folks
+had pictured on their window blinds. But a fair got up by a ladies'
+sewing-society to raise money for the poor, was so entirely new and
+tantalizing to them that they begged their guardian to take them in.
+
+Grandma Padgett said she had no money to spare for foolishness, and
+her expenses during the trip footed up to a high figure. Neither
+could she undertake to have the trunks in from the wagon and get out
+their Sunday clothes. But in the end, as both children were neatly
+dressed, and the fair was to help the poor, she gave them a five-cent
+piece each, over and above admission money, which was a fip'ney-bit,
+for children, the waiter said. Zene concluded he would black his
+boots and look into the fair awhile also, and as he could keep a
+protecting eye on her young family, and had authority to send them
+up-stairs in one hour and a half by the bar-room time, Grandma Padgett
+went to bed. She was glad the journey was so nearly over, for every
+night found her quite tired out.
+
+Zene, magnifying his own importance and authority, ushered aunt
+Corinne and Robert into the fair, and limped after them whenever he
+thought they needed admonition or advice. The landlord's pert young
+son noticed this and made his intimates laugh at it. Besides, he was
+gorgeously attired in blue velvet jacket and ruffles and white
+trousers, and among the crowds of grown people coming and going,
+other children shone in resplendent attire. Aunt Corinne felt the
+commonness of her calico dress. She had a “white” herself, if Ma
+Padgett had only let her put it on, but this could not be explained
+to all the people at the fair. And there were so many things to look
+at, she soon forgot the white. Dolls of pink and pearly wax, with
+actual hair, candy or wooden dogs, cats, and all domestic animals,
+tables of cakes, and lines of made-up clothing which represented the
+sewing society's labors. There was too much crowding for comfort, and
+too much pastry trodden into the floor; and aunt Corinne and her
+nephew felt keen anxiety to spend their five-cent pieces to the best
+advantage. She was near investing in candy kisses, when yellow and
+scarlet-backed books containing the history of “Mother Hubbard,” or
+the “Babes in the Woods,” or “Little Red Riding Hood,” attracted her
+eye, and she realized what life-long regret she must have suffered
+for spending five cents on candy kisses, when one such volume might
+be hers for the same money.
+
+Just as aunt Corinne laid her silver on the book counter, however,
+and gave her trembling preference to the “History of Old Dame Trot
+and her Cat,” Bobaday seized her wrist and excitedly told her there
+was a magic-lantern show connected with the fair, which could be seen
+at five cents per pair of eyes. Dame Trot remained unpurchased, and
+the coin returned to aunt Corinne's warm palm. But she inquired with
+caution,
+
+“What's a magic-lantern show?”
+
+“Why, the man, you know,” explained Robert, “has pitctures in a
+lantern, and throws light through 'em, and they spread out on a wet
+sheet on the wall. The room's all dark except the place on the wall.
+A Chinese man eatin' mice in his sleep: he works his jaws! And about
+Saul in the Bible, when he was goin' to kill the good people, and it
+says, 'Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?' And when they let him
+down in a basket. And there's a big star like grandma's star quilt,
+only it keeps turning all kinds of colors and working in and out on
+itself. And a good many more. Zene went in. He said he wanted to see
+if we ought to look at it. And he'll stand by the door and pay our
+money to the man if we want to go. There's such a crowd to get in.”
+
+Robert Day's aunt caught the fire of his enthusiasm and went
+straight with him to the door wherein the magic lantern performed. A
+crowd of children were pushing up, but Zene, more energetic than
+courteous pushed his charges ahead so that they gained chairs before
+the landlord's son could make his choice.
+
+[Illustration: AT THE SEWING SOCIETY FAIR.]
+
+He sat down directly behind Robert and aunt Corinne, and at once
+began to annoy them with impertinent remarks.
+
+“Movers' young ones are spry,” said the landlord's son, who had been
+petted on account of his pretty face until he was the nuisance of the
+house. “I wouldn't be a movers' young one.”
+
+Robert felt a stinging throb in his blood, but sat still, looking at
+the wall. Aunt Corinne, however, turned her head and looked
+witheringly at the blue-jacketed boy.
+
+“Movers' young ones have to wear calico,” he continued, “and their
+lame pap goes lippity-clink around after them.”
+
+“He thinks Zene's our father!” exclaimed aunt Corinne, blazing at
+the affront she received.
+
+“Don't mind him,” said Robert, slowly. “He's the hostler's boy, and
+used to staying in the stable. He doesn't know how to behave when
+they let him into the house.”
+
+This bitter skirmishing might have become an open engagement at the
+next exchange of fires, for the landlord's son stood up in rage while
+his chums giggled, and Robert felt terribly equal to the occasion. He
+told Zene next day he had his fist already doubled, and he didn't
+care if the landlord put them all in jail. But just then the magic
+light was turned upon the wall, the landlord's son was told by twenty
+voices to sit down out of the way, the lantern man himself sternly
+commanding it. So he sunk into his seat feeling much less important,
+and the wonders proceeded though Aunt Corinne felt she should always
+regret turning her back on the Dame Trot book and coming in there to
+have Zene called her lame pap, while Robert wondered gloomily if any
+stigma did attach to movers' children. He had supposed them a class
+to be envied.
+
+This grievance put the robbers out of his mind when they trotted
+ahead next day. The Wabash River could scarcely soothe his ruffled
+complacence. And never an inch of the Wabash River have I seen that
+was not beautiful and restful to the eye. It flows limpidly between
+varying banks, and has a trick of throwing up bars and islands,
+wooded to the very edges--captivating places for any tiny Crusoe to
+be wrecked upon. Skiffs lay along the shore, and small steamers felt
+their way in the channel. It was a river full of all sorts of
+promises; so shallow here that the pebbles shone in broad sheets like
+a floor of opals wherever you might wade in delight, so deep and
+shady with sycamore canopies there, that a good swimmer would want to
+lie in ambush like a trout, at the bottom of the swimming hole, half
+a June day.
+
+Perhaps it was the sight of the Wabash River which suggested washing
+clothes to Grandma Padgett. She said they were now near the Illinois
+State line, and she would not like to reach the place with everything
+dirty. There was always plenty to do when a body first got home,
+without hurrying up wash-day.
+
+So when they passed a small place called Macksville, and came to
+Sugar Creek, she called a halt, and they spent the day in the woods.
+Sugar Creek, though not sweet, was clear. Zene carried pails full of
+it to fill the great copper kettle, and slung this over a fire. The
+horses munched at their feed-box or cropped grass, wandering with
+their heads tied to their forefeet to prevent their cantering off.
+Grandma Padgett at the creek's brink, set up her tubs and buried
+herself to the elbows in suds, and aunt Corinne with a matronly
+countenance, assisted. All that day Robert went barelegged, and
+splashed water, wading out far to dip up a gourdful; and he thought
+it was fun to help stretch the clothes-line among saplings, and lift
+the scalded linen on a paddle into the tub, losing himself in the
+stream. Ordinary washdays as he remembered them, were rather disagreeable.
+Everybody had to wake early, and a great deal of fine-split wood was
+needed. The kitchen smelt of suds, and the school-lunch was scraps
+left from Sunday instead of new cake, turnovers and gingerbread.
+
+[Illustration: GRANDMA PADGETT'S WASHING-DAY IN THE WOODS.]
+
+But this woods wash-day was an experience to delight in, like
+sailing on a log in the water, and pretending you are a bold
+navigator, or lashing the rocking-chair to a sled for a sleighride.
+It was something out of the common. It was turning labor into
+fantastic tricks.
+
+They had an excellent supper, too, and after dusk the clothes stood
+in glintly array on the line, the camp-fire shone ruddy in a place
+where its smoke could not offend them, and they were really like
+white stones encircling an unusual day.
+
+But when Robert awoke in the night they gave him a pang of fright,
+and he was sorry his grandma had decided to let them bleach in the
+dew of the June woods. From his bed in the carriage he could see both
+the road and the lines of clothes. A horseman came along the road and
+halted. He was not attracted by the camp-fire, because that had died
+to ashes. He probably would not have heard the horses stamp in their
+sleep, for his own horse's feet made a noise. And the wagon cover was
+hid by foliage. But woods and sight were not dark enough to keep the
+glint of the washing out of his eyes. Robert saw this rider dismount
+and heard him walking cautiously into their camp.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII. A NIGHT PICTURE OF HOME.
+
+
+Here at last was the robber. After you have given over expecting a
+robber, and even feel that you can do without him, to find him
+stealing up in the night when you are camped in a lonely place and
+not near enough either tent or wagon to wake the other sleepers for
+reinforcements, is trying to the nerves.
+
+Bobaday sat up in the carriage, bracing his courage for the
+emergency. He could take a cushion, jump out and attack the man with
+that. It was not a deadly weapon, and would require considerable
+force back of it to do damage. The whip might be better. He reached
+for the whip and turned the handle uppermost. There was no cave at
+hand to trap this robber in, but a toll-woman should not show more
+spirit than Robert Day Padgett in the moment of peril.
+
+Though the robber advanced cautiously, he struck his foot against a
+root or two, and stumbled, making the horse take irregular steps
+also, for he was leading his horse with the bridle over his arm.
+
+And he came directly up to the carriage. Robert grasped the whip
+around the middle with both hands, but some familiar attitude in the
+stranger's dim outline made him lower it.
+
+“Bobby,” said the robber, speaking guardedly, “are you in here?”
+
+“Pa Padgett,” exclaimed Robert Day, “is that you?”
+
+“Hush! Yes. It's me, of course. Don't wake your grandma. Old folks
+are always light sleepers.”
+
+Pa Padgett reached into the carriage, shook hands with his boy, and
+kissed him. How good the bushy beard felt against Bobaday's face.
+
+He said nothing about robbers, while his father unsaddled his horse
+and tied the animal snugly to a limb.
+
+Then Pa Padgett put his foot on the hub and sprang into the carriage.
+
+“Is there room for me to stretch myself in here tonight too?”
+
+“Of course there is. But don't you want to see grandma and aunt
+Krin?”
+
+“Wait till morning. We'll all take an early start. Have they kept
+well?”
+
+“Everybody's well,” replied Bobaday. “But how did you know we were
+here?”
+
+“I'd have passed by,” said Pa Padgett, “if I hadn't seen all that
+white strung along. Been washing clothes?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Then I made out the carriage, and something like a wagon back in
+the bushes. So I came up to examine.”
+
+“We thought you'd be at the State line,” said Robert.
+
+“Oh, I intended to ride out till I met you,” replied his father.
+“But I'd have missed you on the plain road; and gone by to the next
+town to stop for you, if it hadn't been for the washing. You better
+go to sleep again now. Have you had a nice trip?”
+
+“Oh, awful nice! There was a little girl lost, and we got her to her
+mother again, and Zene and the wagon were separated from us once”--
+
+“Zene has taken good care of you, has he?”
+
+“He didn't have to take care of us!” remonstrated Robert. “And last
+night when there was a fair, I thought he stuck around more than he
+was needed: There was the meanest boy that stuck up his hose at
+movers' children.”
+
+Aunt Corinne's brother Tip laughed under his breath.
+
+“You'll not be movers' children much longer. The home is over
+yonder, only half a day's ride or so.”
+
+“Is it a nice place?”
+
+“I think it's a nice place. There's prairie, but there's timber too.
+And there's money to be made. You go to sleep now. You'll wake your
+grandma, and I expect she's tired.”
+
+“Yes, sir, I'm going. Is there a garden?”
+
+“There's a good bit of ground for a garden; and there's a planting
+of young catalpas. Far as the eye can see in one direction, it's
+prairie. On the other side is woods. The house is better than the old
+one. I had to build, and I built pretty substantial. Your grandma's
+growing old. She'll need comforts in her old age, and we must put
+them around her, my man.”
+
+Bobaday thought about this home to which he and his family were to
+grow as trees grasp the soil. Already it seemed better to him than
+the one he had left. There would be new playmates, new landscapes,
+new meadows to run in, new neighbors, new prospects. The home, so
+distant during the journey that he had scarcely thought about it at
+all, now seemed to inclose him with its pleasant walls, which the
+smell of new timbers made pleasant twice over.
+
+Boswell and Johnson, under the carriage, waked by the cautious talk
+from that sound sleep a hard day's hunts after woods things induces,
+and perhaps sniffing the presence of their master and the familiar
+air of home, rose up to shake themselves, and one of them yawned
+until his jaws creaked.
+
+“It's the dogs,” whispered Bobaday.
+
+“We mustn't set them to barking,” cautioned Pa Padgett.
+
+“Well, good-night,” said the boy, turning on his cushion.
+
+“Good-night. This caravan must move on early in the morning.”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Old Caravan Days, by Mary Hartwell Catherwood
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OLD CARAVAN DAYS ***
+
+***** This file should be named 6909-0.txt or 6909-0.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/6/9/0/6909/
+
+Produced by Avinash Kothare, Tom Allen, Juliet Sutherland,
+Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading
+Team. This file was produced from images generously made
+available by the Canadian Institute for Historical
+Microreproductions.
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project
+Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at
+  www.gutenberg.org/license.
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the Foundation”
+ or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the phrase “Project
+Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+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
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase “Project Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+“Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, “Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.”
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+“Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right
+of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at 809
+North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887.  Email
+contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the
+Foundation's web site and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit:  www.gutenberg.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For forty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+