They came to the next village in the course of time, and Neale bought
gasoline. Before one o’clock they reached a delightfully wooded place
for camping, and proceeded to have lunch as they had made it the
previous day. They all declared these rustic meals to be the best of
all.

Just beyond the little grove was a pasture, and, looking between the
bars of the old stake and rider fence, Tess and Dot saw that the open
space was studded with flowers of several kinds.

“Let’s pick some for Ruthie,” Tess suggested.

“Let’s. And for Mrs. Heard,” agreed Dot.

She ran back for the Alice-doll—for of course that precious child had to
pick flowers, too—and to tell the older girls what they purposed doing.

Mrs. Heard was taking a nap in the car, which stood in the shade by the
roadside; the older girls were clearing up after the lunch. Neale and
Sammy had gone in the opposite direction, across the road, where there
was a pond and the promise of a bath, and Tom Jonah had gone with them.

So nobody gave the little girls much attention when they crept through
the fence and out of sight of the camping place.

Tess and Dot did not intend to go far. There were plenty of flowers in
sight of the place where they entered the pasture.

But you know how it is. The patches of blossoms at a distance appeared
much more inviting than those close to the fence. The little girls ran
from one to another patch, calling each other, delighted to find such a
wealth of lovely, brilliant blossoms.

“I never _did_ see such a lot of flowers in all my life, Dot Kenway!”
cried Tess.

“Maybe this is the place where all the flowers started from,” suggested
the philosophical younger sister.

“Where all the flowers started from?” repeated Tess. “What do you mean,
Dot Kenway?”

“Why, didn’t the flowers have to start _somewhere_—like everything else?
Our teacher says everything has had a beginning—like the first horses,
and the first cow, and—and Adam and Eve, I s’pose.”

“Humph!” said the less orthodox Tess, “who told you there had to be a
first flower, anyway? Nonsense!”

“How did they come, then, if they didn’t spread—oh! all around—from some
place like this?” demanded Dot, quite excited.

“Oh, they just _came_,” declared Tess. “I suppose,” she added,
reverently, “that God just _thought_ flowers, and at once there were
flowers—everywhere.”

Dot stood up, picking up the Alice-doll, and holding all the blossoms
she could carry in her other hand.

“Well,” she said, softly, looking out across the field so spangled with
the gay flowers, “He must have thought _hard_ about ’em when He made
this place, Tessie, for there’s so many.”

The next moment the smallest Corner House girl forgot all her unfledged
philosophy, for she suddenly shrieked:

“Oh, Tess! Oh, Tess! Look at that _awful, terrible bull_!”

Tess was so startled by her sister’s cry that she jumped up, scattering
the blossoms she had herself gathered.

“Where? What bull?” she demanded, staring all around save in the right
direction.

“There!” moaned Dot, who was dreadfully afraid of all bovine creatures,
crushing both her flowers and her Alice-doll to her bosom.

Tess finally saw what Dot had beheld. A great head, with wide, dangerous
looking horns, had appeared above a clump of bushes not far away. The
animal was calmly chewing its cud; but the very sidewise motion of its
jaws seemed threatening to the two smallest Corner House girls.

“Oh, Tess!” moaned Dot, again. “Will it eat us?”

“Bulls—bulls don’t eat folks,” stammered Tess. “They—they hook ’em. And
how do you know it _is_ a bull, Dot Kenway?”

“Hasn’t it got _horns_?” gasped the smallest Corner House girl. “Of
course it is a bull. Come, Tess Kenway! I’m going to run.”

There seemed nothing else to do. Cow, or bull, it mattered not
which—both were comparatively strange animals to the sisters. Most of
the cattle they had seen were dehorned.

They now scampered away as fast as they could from the vicinity of the
threatening peril. To add wings to their flight the creature lowed after
them mournfully.

“Oh! I just _know_ he wants to eat us,” gasped Dot.

“Hook us, you mean,” corrected Tess, strictly a purist even in her
terror.

They scrambled on, panting. Tess tried to take Dot’s hand; but the
smaller girl would drop neither the doll nor the flowers. Finally they
reached the fence at the edge of the woods, and plunged through it. Thus
defended from the enemy (which had not followed them a step) the little
girls fell to the ground, breathless, but relieved.

“That nawful, nawful bull!” groaned Dot. “I _did_ think he’d get us
before we reached the fence. See Alice! She’s just as scared as she can
be.” And as the blue-eyed doll was a widely staring creature, Dot’s
statement seemed particularly apt.

“I lost all my flowers,” mourned Tess.

“Well, there’s a lot more yonder,” said Dot, pointing ahead. “Mine
aren’t so good. I squashed ’em, running so.”

“Well,” Tess suggested, recovering somewhat from her fright, “let’s pick
some more. That old cow——”

“Bull!” interjected Dot, with confidence.

“Well, bull, then. He needn’t think he’s going to scare us so we can’t
carry a bouquet to Ruthie and Mrs. Heard.”

“No-o,” agreed Dot, rather doubtfully. “But I don’t want to go back
through that fence again, and into that field.”

“We don’t have to,” declared Tess, promptly. She was standing up now and
could see farther than Dot. “There’s another open place where there’re
flowers—and there isn’t any fence.”

“And no bulls?” queried Dot.

“There _can’t_ be,” Tess assured her. “They always fence up cattle. We
shouldn’t have gone through that fence in the first place.”

So, having somewhat recovered from their panic, they pursued their
adventure without for a moment considering that the farther they went in
this direction, the greater the distance back to the place where their
friends and the automobile remained.

Ruth and Agnes did not think anything about the absence of the two
smaller girls until Neale, Sammy and the dog returned from their baths.

As Neale O’Neil came along from the pond and into sight of the
automobile and the girls, he was laughing heartily, while Sammy’s face
was very red.

“What’s the matter, Neale?” demanded Agnes, suspecting a joke.

“This kid’ll be the death of me, girls,” declared Neale, still
chuckling. “I took along a piece of soap with the towels and told Sammy
to see if he couldn’t get some of the dust and grime off his face and
hands. Cricky! I never knew a kid could get so much dirt on him between
breakfast and noontime.”

“Well, he looks clean now,” said Ruth, kindly, seeing that Sammy was not
very happy because of Neale’s fun.

“I guess he is,” Neale chuckled. “I said to him, ‘Sammy, did you scrub
your hands good?’ And he said, ‘Sure!’ ‘And wash your face?’ ‘Yep,’ he
answered. And then I remembered the part of his anatomy that a kid
usually forgets is hitched to him. ‘How about your ears?’ I asked him.
And what do you s’pose he said?”

“I couldn’t even guess,” giggled Agnes. “What?”

“Why, Sammy said: ‘I washed the one that’s next to Aggie when I’m
sitting in the car. You needn’t tell her ‘bout the other one,’” and
Neale O’Neil burst into laughter again—as did all the others, save Sammy
himself.

It was Sammy trying to turn the current of conversation from his ears,
who discovered the continued absence of the two little girls.

“Where’s Tess and Dot?” he inquired.

“Picking flowers,” said Agnes, promptly.

“But, goodness!” added Ruth, “they have been picking them a long time.
Ever since you boys went for your swim. They must have gathered a
bushel.”

“Go call ’em, Sammy,” said Mrs. Heard. “We want to start now, I suppose.
It’s a long way to Parmenter Lake yet, isn’t it?”

Neale pulled out the much-thumbed guide.

“Let’s see,” he said, fluttering the pages. “There’s where we
are—sixteen—no, seventeen miles beyond Procketts—where we bought the
gasoline. That pond we just went to—Oh! that’s Silver Lake. I bet it
used to be called ‘the mud-hole’ before the day of automobile road
guides.

“Just beyond, along this road, is what the guide-book calls ‘a mountain
tarn.’ What’s _that_, do you suppose?”

“A swamp,” declared Ruth, promptly and wrongly.

“It’s right near a village called Frog Hollow. Oh! ‘Recently renamed
Arbutusville.’ What do you know about _that_?” chuckled Neale,
delighted. “And a piece beyond there’s a precipice, ‘from the verge of
which can be seen the ever-changing view of the entire eastern end of
the Oxbow.’ Cricky! I bet the view isn’t half as changing as the names
of these rural frog-ponds and the like. And I bet the precipice is a
stone quarry,” he added, with conviction.

“I expect that ‘wayside inn’ they speak of,” said Agnes, who was looking
over his shoulder, “is nothing but one of those squalid old beer-shops
we see along the road.”

“Humph!” commented Mrs. Heard, with a sniff, “it must take more
imagination to get up one of those road guides for automobilists than it
does to find all the virtues in a Presidential candidate.”

Just then Sammy came plunging through the bushes. “Say!” he cried, “I
can’t find ’em.”

“Why, Sammy!” said Agnes. “Why didn’t you call Tess and Dot?”

“Did,” he declared. “Been hollering my head off.”

“Isn’t that funny?” commented Agnes.

“I don’t know whether it is funny or not,” Mrs. Heard said, briskly.
“Those children should be found.”

“Yes. We’re ready to start,” said Neale.

“Surely they would not have gone far,” Ruth added, in a worried tone.

Silence fell. The older members of the touring party looked at each
other with growing apprehension.

CHAPTER XII—SEEKING

“Why, of course, the children are all right,” Neale said, briskly. “Hold
on! I’ll make them hear.”

He punched the lever of the horn several times and the clarion “Honk!
Honk!” echoed through the grove.

“Oh, mercy!” ejaculated Mrs. Heard, with her hands over her ears. “That
should wake the dead.”

“Well, let’s see if it wakes up Tess and Dot,” laughed Neale O’Neil.
“Come on, Aggie, let you and me run and find them.”

“Don’t get lost yourselves,” Ruth called after them, laughing now.

After being startled for the moment by Sammy’s report, all of them felt
it was really impossible that Tess and Dot should be lost.

Neale and Agnes, with Tom Jonah in pursuit, ran over the slight rise out
of sight, hand in hand and laughing, like the children they were
themselves. They came to the fence and looked through it.

“Of course, that’s where they are,” Agnes said. “Do look at the flowers,
Neale.”

“They must have gone on down the hill,” the boy agreed, and he and Agnes
crept through the fence, on the trail of Tess and Dot.

They saw no trace of the children at first. And the mild-eyed cow that
had caused all the trouble had disappeared. After a while Agnes cried
out: “Oh, Neale! They picked flowers here. See the broken stalks!”

“Sure,” he agreed. “Let’s shout for them.”

Again and again they shouted the little girls’ names—singly and in
unison.

“Where _could_ they have gone—not to hear us?” demanded Agnes.

“Don’t suppose they are playing ’possum, do you?”

“Oh, Neale—never!”

“But there’s no place for them to go. You can see all over this pasture.
Here, Tom Jonah! Find them! Find Tess and Dot!”

“We can’t see behind all the clumps of bushes,” suggested Agnes.

“But, cricky! are they asleep behind the bushes somewhere?” Neale
demanded.

“No-o. Not likely,” Agnes admitted.

“But—here!” shouted Neale. “What’s this?”

He had found the place where Tess, frightened, as was Dot, by the cow,
had stood up and dropped her great bunch of picked flowers. “What do you
know about that?” the boy asked, quite seriously.

“Oh, Neale! Their flowers. They would never have thrown them away unless
something had happened.”

“But what?”

“I can’t imagine,” said Agnes, almost in tears.

“Neither can I,” growled the boy, staring around the field. “Now, don’t
turn on the sprinkler, Aggie. Chirk up. Of course, nothing really _bad_
has happened to them.”

“Why hasn’t there?” choked Agnes.

“Well, how could there? Right here almost in sight of the road. You
girls would have heard them if they had cried out——”

“Do you think they’ve been carried off—stolen—kidnapped? Oh, Neale
O’Neil! do you?” almost shrieked Agnes.

“Oh, stop it, you little goose—stop it,” begged the boy. “Of course
not.”

“Goose yourself——”

“No; gander,” said Neale O’Neil, determined now not to let Agnes see how
serious he felt the disappearance of Tess and Dot was. “Now, Aggie, you
stay here while I run around a bit and see what I can find.”

He started off, Tom Jonah going too. The hot sun had almost immediately
destroyed any scent the children may have left as they passed; and
although the old dog understood very well what the matter was—that his
two little mistresses had disappeared—he could find the trail no better
than could Neale and Agnes.

Neale ran, shouting, toward the far end of the pasture. Almost at once
he and the barking dog started something.

With a puffing snort, and a great crackling of brush, up rose the
peaceful cow that had so startled Tess and Dot Kenway.

“Oh, Neale! come back!” shrieked Agnes, as she saw the wondering cow
looking over the bush at her.

“What’s the matter?” the boy demanded, while Tom Jonah approached the
cow curiously.

“The cow!”

“Oh, she won’t hurt you,” declared Neale O’Neil.

“Just the same I’m afraid of her,” said Agnes. “See her now!”

The cow was shaking her horns at the dog, and threatening him.

“Like enough she has a calf hidden away there in the brush,” said Neale.
“And——Cricky!” suddenly he added; “I bet she scared the kids.”

“Oh, Neale!”

“Sure! That’s what’s the matter. They saw her and ran. And they ran in
the wrong direction, of course,” Neale continued, with very good
judgment.

“Do you really think so, Neale?”

“Just as likely as not. Come here, Tom Jonah! She’ll hook you yet.”

“Oh!” said Agnes, quickly, “then we should be able to find the poor
little things easily.”

“Huh? How do you make that out?” Neale demanded.

“Why, if they ran in the wrong direction, we ought to follow them.”

“That’s all right,” returned the boy. “But there are so many wrong
directions! Which did they take?”

Agnes began to sob. Neale could not comfort her. Tom Jonah came and
lapped her hands with his soft tongue, to show that he, too, sympathized
with her.

The boy shouted until he was hoarse; but no childish cry was returned to
him on the soft breeze.

And there was very good reason for that. The two smallest Corner House
girls had some time since wandered beyond the sound of Neale’s voice or
the dog’s bark,—even beyond the sound of the automobile horn.

While the older folk were seeking Tess and Dot, the two young explorers
were seeking their friends. At first one could not have convinced the
children that they were lost. No, indeed! It was Ruth and Agnes and
Neale and Tom Jonah and Mrs. Heard and Sammy—and even the
automobile—that had lost themselves.

“I don’t see where they could have gone to,” complained Dot, tired at
last of carrying both the Alice-doll and her flowers so far.

“I didn’t s’pose we’d come so far from that road,” agreed Tess.

“Oh, I see it!” Dot cried, suddenly.

“The auto?”

“No, no! The road.”

“Oh,” said Tess, gladly. “Then we’ll find them now.”

The little girls climbed down a bank into a road which—had they known
it—would have taken them out into the more important highway the
motorcar was on. But unfortunately Tess and Dot turned in the wrong
direction. They kept on walking away from their friends.

Had they not done this, or had they sat down and waited, Neale O’Neil
and Tom Jonah would have found them in time; for they searched the patch
of woods clear to this back road before returning, hopelessly, to the
automobile to report their failure.

However, Tess and Dot walked and walked, until they really could walk no
farther without resting. And then, having been absent from their friends
for fully three hours, they had to sit down.

Dot cried a bit and Tess put her arms about her and tried to comfort the
smallest Corner House girl. They had both long since thrown their
flowers away, for the blossoms had wilted.

“Never mind, Dot,” Tess said, trying to be very brave, “Ruthie and Aggie
and the rest can’t be far away.”

“But why did they go off and leave us behind?” wailed the little girl.
“And—and—I _ache_!”

“Where do you ache, dear?” asked the sympathetic Tess.

“In—in that funny bone that goes up and down my back,” sobbed Dot.

“Funny-bone! Why, Dot!” cried Tess, “that isn’t in your back. Your
funny-bone is in your elbow.”

“I guess I know where I hurt, Tess Kenway!” responded Dot, indignantly.
“And it isn’t in my elbow. It’s that long, straight bone in my back I’m
talking about. You know, Tess—your head sits on one end of it and you
sit on the other. And it’s all—just—one—big—ache——So there!” and she
cried again.

“Now, I tell you what, Dot Kenway,” said Tess, briskly. “There’s one
thing never does any good—not when your folks is lost from you.”

“Wha—what’s that?” choked the smallest Corner House girl.

“Crying,” the older sister said, firmly.

“We—ell,” sniffed Dot.

“So let’s not do it. We can rest here as long as you want. When your
backbone stops aching, we can go on.”

“But where’ll we go to?” was Dot’s very pertinent query.

“Why—why, we’ll just walk on—along the road.”

“And where does _it_ go to?”

“Why, does that matter?” returned Tess, bravely. “Of course our
automobile will come along and pick us up. Or, if it doesn’t, we’ll
reach a house and the lady will invite us in.”

“Well,” whimpered Dot, “I don’t care how soon we reach that house—and
the lady ‘vites us in—and gives us our supper. I’m hungry, Tess.”

“Don’t you s’pose _I_ am, too?” asked the older girl, with some
asperity. Dot _did_ sound rather selfish. “And Alice?”

“Oh! the poor, dear child must be just starved,” sniffed Dot, hugging
the doll closer.

“But she isn’t complaining all the time,” said Tess, scornfully.

Dot fought back her tears. “I think you’re horrid, cruel, cross, Tess
Kenway!” she said. “But I’ll try not to cry.”

There was reason for the children’s hunger. It was now after six
o’clock, the sun had disappeared behind the woods, and they had walked a
long way.

Once they heard a great crashing in the bushes.

“Bears! bears!” whispered the excitable Dot.

“No-o,” Tess said, gravely. “It didn’t say anything about there being
bears in this neighborhood, in that book of Neale’s. If there were
bears, he’d have told us about them.”

“Well—well——whales, maybe.”

“Goodness, Dot! you are the tryingest child! Whales live in the sea.”

“Don’t they ever come out?”

“Of course not,” declared Tess, with conviction.

“Not even to rest themselves?” demanded Dot, with wonder. “I should
think they would get awful tired swimming all the time. It must be more
tireful than walking,” and she sighed.

“Tire-some,” corrected Tess, but without enthusiasm, and thinking of the
whales. “Perhaps they come into shallow water and lie down on the bottom
of the sea with their heads sticking out to breathe. Yes, that must be
it.”

“Oh, dear!” sighed Dot, for at least the twentieth time, and with
lapsing interest in the whale. “Oh, dear! I wish Tom Jonah were with
us.”

“So do I! So do I!” agreed Tess, for as dusk came on she, like the
smallest Corner House girl, was becoming truly frightened.

The disturbance in the bushes was repeated, and the children tried to
run. A loud bell jangled—a most annoying bell; and in the distance a
voice sounded:

“So, boss! So, boss! So, boss!”

It only frightened Tess and Dot the more to hear such strange sounds.
They had never before heard the cows called home. And, besides, after
their recent experience, they would have been only the more disturbed
had they been aware that the thrashing in the bushes was Sukey, getting
ready to go up to the bars to be milked.

No house did they see, however; not even a barn. They were on a back
road, very seldom traveled, and the farms, what few there were in the
neighborhood, faced on other highways.

The children trudged on, hand in hand, both crying now. Tess was weeping
softly; but Dot was crying aloud, not caring who heard her.

When they came to a field beside the road, Tess stared all about for a
light. But there was no beckoning lamp in a farmhouse window; nor even a
flickering lantern to point the way to the farm outbuildings.

The streak of violet, shading to light blue, that evening had painted
along the horizon with her careless brush, disappeared. Tall, black
figures of trees upreared themselves between the children and the sky,
and seemed to stalk nearer, threateningly.

A great nightbird floated out of the wood and swept low across the field
with a “swish, swish, swish” of powerful wings. When it rose into the
trees again it said:

“Who? Who-o? Who-o-o?”

“Oh! Who _is_ he?” gasped Dot, clinging close to her sister.

“Mr. Owl,” said Tess, promptly. “You _know_ you’ve heard about owls, Dot
Kenway!”

“But—but I didn’t know they could _talk_,” breathed the smallest Corner
House girl, with a sigh. “Tessie, I can’t walk any farther,” she
suddenly announced. “It isn’t only that funny bone in my back; but my
ankles are breaking right off—so now!”

“But—but there isn’t any good place for us to stop till our automobile
comes along,” hesitated Tess.

“I don’t care, Tess Kenway! _I’ve got to stop!_”

That settled it. At the edge of the dark wood the two little girls crept
up on a grassy bank, between two roots of a great tree, sheltered at the
back by a thick brush clump, and there they sat, clinging to each
other’s hand.

They were too frightened to talk. Too alarmed even to weep any more.

Around them, when they were still, scurried the little creatures of the
night—the field mice, and the moles, perhaps, and the baby rabbits, and
other small animals who shiver—as Dot did—when the great owl swoops low,
crying his eternal question:

“Who? Who-o? Who-o-o shall I take for supper?”

The small fry of the fields and woods tremble at that cry more than did
the two lost Corner House girls.

There may have been other enemies of the helpless, furry little animals
lurking near, too—the weasel, the polecat, the ferret; even a red fox
might have wandered that way and joined the bright-eyed company that
kept watch and ward over two sleepy, sobbing children.

But nothing harmful was near them and, finally, Tess and Dot Kenway
slept as sweetly and as soundly as though they were in their own beds in
the old Corner House in Milton.

CHAPTER XIII—THE GREEN AND ORANGE PETTICOAT

Ruth and Agnes Kenway were in tears. Once before—when the Corner House
girls were at Pleasant Cove—the two smaller sisters had been lost, and
on that occasion circumstances seemed to blame Agnes.

Now neither of the older girls was to blame for the absence of Tess and
Dot. Mrs. Heard said so. But both Ruth and Agnes felt condemned.

After searching the pasture and the patch of woodland beyond it, clear
to the back road, Neale, disappointed, was inclined to scold Tom Jonah
for not picking up the trail of the lost children.

Tom Jonah, however, was not a hunting dog; his nose was not as keen as
some breeds possess—especially now that he was old. But he showed almost
as much anxiety as his human friends on this occasion.

“Don’t scold him, Neale,” begged Agnes, sobbing. “He’d find Tess and Dot
if he could—poor old fellow. See! he knows what I am saying.”

The dog whined and lay down, panting. Indeed, it did seem as though
there was nothing more to do here. The children, whether they had
wandered away or had been carried off, certainly were not in the
vicinity.

“Two hours have been wasted,” said Mrs. Heard; “although we did not know
we were wasting them, of course. We had to do what we could toward
finding the children near by. But now we must waste no more hours. We
must get help.”

“Oh! what help?” cried Agnes.

“We must run to the next town—Frog Hollow,” said Neale, in an
undertone“—and get the constable or sheriff or _somebody_. We must start
a crowd with lanterns to beat the woods. Maybe somebody has seen the
children. They may be safe already in somebody’s house.”

“Or in the police station,” put in Sammy Pinkney. “I got lost once and
that’s where they found me. Of course, I was a kid then. The cops was
real good to me. One of ’em bought me ten cents worth of
butter-scotch—you know, that awful, sticky, pully candy, Neale. And when
my father come I couldn’t holler to him ’cause my teeth was all stuck
up.”

“I bet that cop gave you the candy on purpose to shut your mouth,”
growled Neale. “You were talking them to death, it is probable.”

“Oh, dear, me!” cried Agnes, “don’t let us just talk; let’s do
something.”

“Mrs. Heard is quite right, I can see,” Ruth observed, recovered now in
a measure from her first panic. “We must ask the authorities to help us.
I should have been more careful.”

“Why, Ruth,” said the chaperone, “don’t blame yourself. How could you
have foreseen this?”

“I should not have allowed them out of my sight without Tom Jonah with
them,” the oldest Corner House girl declared. “Nor will I again on this
trip, you may be sure.”

“Come on, now,” growled Neale, who felt very much disturbed about the
loss of the little girls but who, boy like, did not wish to show his
feelings. “Come on, now; we’ve talked enough. Let’s do something. Get in
here, Tom Jonah—you useless old thing! You’re not half a dog or you’d
have been able to follow ’em.”

The big Newfoundland, with drooping flag and sheepish look, scrambled
into the front of the car. So did Sammy. The automobile started and they
sped away toward Frog Hollow, or Arbutusville, each revolution of the
wheels taking them farther and farther from the lost children, sleeping
under the great tree at the edge of the distant wood lot.

The automobile party were to spend a very anxious night—much more so
than Tess and Dot Kenway, who had sobbed themselves to sleep among the
huge tree-roots. Their sylvan couch was soft; the night was warm; and
not a thing disturbed them after their eyes were shut.

A fretful bird, crying in the dusk of early dawn, aroused Dot for a
moment; but she found Tess beside her, so went off to sleep again
without realizing that she was not in her own bed at home.

Dawn soon smeared her pink finger-prints along the gray horizon. Other
birds sleepily awoke. The morning breeze rustled the leaves, which took
up their eternal gossip again just where it had ceased when the night
wind died.

One morning call after another resounded through the forest patch. The
light grew stronger and the tiny, furry things crept away to bed. The
owl had long since ceased his querulous call. A feathered martinet that
had at intervals, all the night long, declared for the castigation of
“poor Will,” pitched for a last time upon a dead limb at the edge of the
wood and shouted forty-three times in succession: “Whip-poor-will!”
without awakening Tess and Dot Kenway.

They slept on as day broke and the World yawned and threw off the
coverlet of night to hop out of bed. The first red ray of the sun
finally slanted over the tree-tops and struck right into the face and
eyes of the smallest Corner House girl.

“Oh, my! I don’t like that sun,” complained Dot. “Mo—move over, Tess
Kenway.”

Tess’ eyes popped open and she was immediately wide awake, while Dot was
still snuggling down and trying to go to sleep again.

“Well, Dot Kenway!” exclaimed the older girl, “do you know what we’ve
done?”

“No-o,” mumbled Dot.

“Why! we’ve slept all through the night.”

“Aw—ri’,” Dot said, with very little interest.

“And do you know where we are?” pursued the lively Tess.

“I—I——Oh! is it time to get up?” yawned Dot.

Then she opened her eyes, too, and saw what Tess saw—the curve of the
shaded road stretching away into the wood. The two little girls had been
well sheltered under the thick umbrella of the tree; but in the open the
grass blades sparkled with dew.

Birds hopped about, hunting their breakfasts—big, fat robins in their
red vests; a chattering jay that flirted his topknot knowingly as he
peered at the two Corner House girls; a clape, running spirals around a
neighboring tree trunk like a little striped mouse, and looking at the
children with interest. Across a broken wall a red squirrel ran—that
pirate of his tribe. A rabbit started suddenly from his form in the
grass, and, with a resounding thump or two, shot off across the field as
though hearing a sudden call to breakfast at his house. The stirring of
the little girls stirred everything else here to sudden activity.

“Why, dear me, Tess Kenway,” gasped Dot, “we—we didn’t get home, did
we?”

“I guess we didn’t,” cried Tess, getting up quickly.

“Oh! nor we didn’t find the automobile,” added Dot, the memory of what
had happened returning quickly. “Why, Tess! we’re lost.”

“Well, I guess we are,” admitted her sister. “I thought Ruth and Agnes
and the others were lost; but I guess it’s us, after all, who don’t know
where we are.”

“Wha—what’ll we do?” asked Dot, yawning again, and scarcely alert enough
yet to appreciate the serious side of the situation.

“Well! we needn’t be afraid of anything now that it’s daylight. Come
along, Dot—let’s find a brook,” said the practical Tess. “I want to wash
my face.”

“We haven’t any towels,” objected Dot, trotting along the road beside
her sister. “Nor any soap, Tess.”

“Why! what do you suppose the squirrels and the rabbits and all the
other woodsy things do for towels and soap?” demanded Tess, briskly. “I
guess water’s _clean_; it’ll wash you.”

“And our teeth-brushes, Tess?”

Tess overcame even that seemingly insurmountable difficulty. After they
had found the brook—a quiet brown pool beside the road—and had bathed
their faces and hands, Tess broke a twig and chewed the end to a
brush-like swab, and so brushed her teeth thoroughly. Dot followed her
example, and laughed.

“We are two wild girls,” she declared. “We haven’t any home—nor
anything. That is, for a little while,” she added, rather doubtful as to
how this new game would “pan out.”

“Why, when our clothes wear out we’ll have to make new ones. And for
Alice, too.”

“How?” asked Tess, in turn curious. “What out of?”

“Oh, we’ll weave new dresses out of grass and leaves, and trim them with
flowers,” declared the smallest girl, gaily.

“Well, so we could,” agreed Tess, catching fire from her sister’s
enthusiasm.

“Of course. And shoes——”

“Oh, I know!” Tess cried. “We’d find rushes beside the pond and weave
basket-work sandals to wear ‘stead of shoes. And we might weave
hats—like the Chinese do. And we’d build ourselves a house, and thatch
it all over to keep the rain out—”

Dot had suddenly grown silent and allowed Tess to do all the talking.
Tess looked at the smallest Corner House girl quickly. Dot’s lips were
puckered into a pout and her dark eyes were filling rapidly.

“What is the matter now, dear?” Tess asked, tenderly.

“Do—don’t let’s talk about it any more,” choked Dot. “Besides, I’m
hungry.”

Tragedy stalked into the situation right then and there. They had no
more imagination to waste upon the supposed life of a “wild girl.” The
principal question was: How were two little girls, fast becoming “wild,”
to eat?

They were walking along the road again when Tess suddenly spied
something which brought a cry of delight from her lips.

“Look! Look, Dot!” she said. “What’s on those bushes?”

The bushes in question overhung the bank above their heads.

“Oh, Dot! aren’t those blueberries?” the older girl added.

“Of course they are, Tess Kenway,” agreed her sister. “My, I could eat
just bushels of ’em.”

They scrambled up the bank and climbed the wall. Not only was there this
clump of berry bushes which they had first sighted; but back of the wall
was a great field, rocky and barren otherwise, but a fine berry pasture.

Farther out where the sun shone, the berries were larger and more had
ripened. The little girls went on and on, picking the berries in
handfuls and actually cramming them into their mouths. They were very
hungry.

Their fingers and lips became stained; and if the truth were told some
of the crushed berries left stains upon their mussed frocks as well as
upon their faces. They reached the farther end of the field before they
realized that they were so far from the road.

Tess was about to suggest that they go back. Somebody might come by on
the lonely road they had been following. And then she saw the orange and
green petticoat fluttering in the bushes.

“Oh, Dot! what’s that, do you suppose?” Tess whispered, seizing her
sister quickly by the hand.

“Oh-ee! A bear?” returned Dot, without even seeing the gay garment
beyond the brush clump.

“Goodness! A bear _that_ color?” demanded Tess, with some exasperation.

Suddenly the wearer of the gay garment stood up. She was a very brown
woman, with great hoops of gold in her ears, and she wore other gay
garments besides the green and orange petticoat.

“Oh!” murmured Tess, again, “I—I believe she must be a Gypsy woman, Dot
Kenway.”

Had the two little Corner House girls not been so much excited at just
this minute they must have heard the passing of an automobile on the
road, now out of their sight. Or, if Neale O’Neil had chanced to blow
the horn just then Tess and Dot would surely have been attracted by the
sound.

To the older Corner House girls and to Mrs. Heard that night had
certainly been one of extreme anxiety. Neale had found lodgings for them
in the squalid little village which the post-office authorities
recognized as “Arbutusville,” but which was still “Frog Holler” in the
minds of the older inhabitants.

Neale found, too, a number of kind-hearted persons who were easily
interested in the fate of Tess and Dot Kenway. There was a constable,
and with that official at their head a dozen men started abroad at nine
o’clock, with lanterns and a pack of “’coon dogs,” to beat up the woods
all about the place where the automobilists had camped.

Neale went with them; but despite Agnes’ determination to attend she was
refused the privilege. And Sammy, of course, remained with the
women—they needing the protection of some manly spirit—and fell asleep
in two minutes.

Neale O’Neil dragged back about dawn. The search had been
resultless—save that the dogs had started a raccoon—and the party had
swept woods, fields, and swamps for miles as well as it could be done at
night. They had shouted. They had roused every householder. Nobody had
heard of the lost children or seen them.

But Neale had heard one thing that greatly troubled him; and yet which
offered a possible clue to the little girls’ disappearance.

On the way back to the village somebody in the crowd of searchers had
told him that one of the aroused householders had mentioned the fact
that there was a Gypsy encampment not many miles away.

The boy was instantly excited. He learned from his informant just where
the camp was, and immediately put the idea before the constable.

“Why, that’s too fur away, bub,” said Constable Munro. “It’s five mile
beyond where you an’ your folks stopped to eat—and on another road.”

“The children might not have walked all that way,” said Neale O’Neil.
“They might have been carried there.”

“Uh-huh? Against their will?”

“Well, why not?” returned Neale. “We hear all kind of stories about
Gypsies. I’ve seen some bad ones myself.”

“Aw, they’re petty thieves, and bad horse traders sometimes. But to
steal a couple of kids—I dunno ’bout that. Still—if you air bound to go
there——”

“I am,” Neale declared. “I’ll have the machine ready as soon as I get a
bite of breakfast.”

He was sorry to have no good report to make to the girls and Mrs. Heard,
and could only tell them, while he ate his hasty breakfast, where he was
going and what he hoped to accomplish.

“I’m going with you,” announced Agnes and Sammy in a breath.

“No,” he said to the girl. “You can’t go. The constable won’t like it.”

“Well, I don’t see——”

“I am sure you would not like to go with a party of rough men,” said
Mrs. Heard, with such finality that Agnes became quiet.

But that did not stop Sammy’s teasing. “Say, us men ought to go,
anyway,” he said. “Come on! Lemme go, Neale. I won’t be in the way. Tom
Jonah’s going.”

So in the car that had passed so near the two little lost girls as they
picked berries, were Neale and Sammy, as well as Tom Jonah and the
constable, Mr. Munro. Tess and Dot were too greatly interested just
then, however, in that vivid petticoat and in the strange looking woman
who wore it to think about anything else.

CHAPTER XIV—WITH THE ROMANY FOLK

The woman had a very brown face and wore great hoops of gold in her
ears, while on her head was a sort of turban with a fringed end hanging
down behind. She certainly was dressed in very gay colors.

She had bright, beady black eyes, and when she saw Tess and Dot Kenway
she looked at them very kindly indeed. At least, her smile was broad and
her voice, when she spoke, was pleasant. She carried a heaping basket of
berries.

“You leetle children out early to pick the berry, eh?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” said Tess, gravely.

But Dot was more communicative. She said promptly: “We’ve been out all
night.”

“Picking berries?” queried the woman. “Not alone, eh?”

“We only just found the berries,” declared Dot, the chatterbox. “And,
oh! we _were_ so hungry.”

“You are out all night?” asked the puzzled woman. “Is it so?”

“We—we got lost from our folks,” Tess said, at last.

“You leeve near here, eh?”

“Oh, no,” said Tess, now more communicative, “We live in Milton. We were
riding in an automobile——”

“No, we weren’t!” interposed Dot, rather impolite in her eagerness to
get the story perfectly straight. “We were stopping for lunch. Right
beside the road. And Tess and I came to pick flowers.”

“So you wandered from your friends?” asked the Gypsy. “I see. I see.”

“And,” added Dot, confidently, “we’re hungry.”

“Oh, Dot!” exclaimed the scandalized Tess. “Not _now_! Not after eating
all these berries!”

“Huh! what’s berries?” demanded the smallest Corner House girl. “I want
an egg—and milk—and hot muffins—and——”

The Gypsy woman laughed merrily. Although she did not speak English
quite like other people, she seemed to understand the language well
enough.

“You leetle ‘Merican girls come wit’ me,” she said. “I will find you
food. Then we will find your friends.”

Tess was a little doubtful of their new acquaintance. She had some fear
of Gypsies as a tribe. This one seemed kind enough, and looked kind
enough. Nevertheless, Tess felt that they should be careful while in her
company.

[Illustration: “You leetle ‘Merican girls come wit’ me.”]

But she could not explain this to Dot, and Dot was a prattler. The
smaller girl’s tongue went as fast as a mill-clapper, as Aunt Sarah
Maltby often said; and it was particularly energetic this morning as she
trotted along beside the Gypsy woman in the green and orange petticoat.

“Ah,” said the woman, at last, “your people are reech, eh? They have one
of these motor cars, and you leeve in a fine, big house? They will give
reward, then, to get you back, eh?”

Just then, before either Tess or Dot could make a rejoinder, they broke
through the bushes and entered a beautiful little park in which was
pitched the Gypsy camp.

Of course, the two smallest Corner House girls had often heard of
Gypsies. Indeed, they had seen more than a few of them. The women often
came into Milton to sell basket-work and to tell fortunes.

Indeed, the summer before, when the Corner House girls and Neale O’Neil
were at Pleasant Cove, they had had quite an experience with Gypsies—and
not a very pleasant experience at that. Tess remembered this, though Dot
did not; therefore the older sister was a little troubled as they
approached the Gypsy encampment with the gaily dressed woman.

This opening in the woods, with a grassy road running through its
center, which was plainly no main-traveled highway, was a lovely spot.
The Gypsies are thorough exponents of the out-of-door life, now so much
talked about; and they have, too, some idea of the beautiful and
picturesque.

This encampment had been selected because of the pleasant little brook
running near, and the real beauty of the spot. There were six big
covered wagons, all brightly painted. Besides, four tents were set up,
and there were coops of chickens and other signs that the encampment was
more or less permanent.

On the appearance of the two strange little girls with the Gypsy woman,
there was a rush of dogs, chickens, goats, pigs and children toward the
newcomers. Tess and Dot clung together and tried to get behind the green
and orange petticoat. The woman shouted something in a strange tongue,
and drove the children and dogs back. The other curious riff-raff of the
camp had to be actually kicked out of the path.

There were several cooking fires in the camp, a number of men and women
in sight, and at least fifty horses grazing at one end of the park,
watched by several half-grown youths. Plainly there was a big tribe of
the Romany folk encamped in this spot.

The woman with the gay petticoat, having given up her basket of berries
to a girl, led the visitors by the hand, one on either side, to the
nearest fire, where a big man in brown velveteen garments, including a
peaked cap, and wearing gold hoops in his ears and a heavy gold chain
around his neck, was sitting in a green-painted easy chair.

This man was a person of much importance, it was evident. Nobody else
came near him as the woman approached with the two little Corner House
girls.

He was not a bad looking man at all, though his face was deeply graven
in lines, and wind and weather had tanned his face and hands like
leather. Again in that strange language which Tess and Dot did not know,
the woman spoke to this man, who was certainly the leader of the
Gypsies.

The man’s eyes twinkled at the children, and he smiled. But he did not
win their confidence. However, he shouted for another woman almost at
once, and she came from the fire with two plates of steaming hot
stew—either of rabbits or squirrels, Tess did not know which. And
neither she nor Dot cared.

They were, indeed, very hungry. A diet of blueberries is not a filling
one—especially when one has been without anything else to eat for so
long as had the little Corner House girls. The woman with whom they had
come into the camp sat down with them, having reported to the big man,
and ate, too. They sat cross-legged on the grass, and had only spoons to
eat with, and thick slices of very good ryebread to sop up the gravy of
the stew. The woman said her name was Mira, and the children found her
very pleasant and talkative.

“I wish our folks would come along in the automobile,” Tess said,
longingly, when their hunger was partly appeased.

“Do you s’pose they _will_ come this way?” asked Dot of Mira.

“We shall see. _He_ will ’tend to that,” said the woman, coolly, nodding
towards the big man in the chair.

Tess was very curious. “Who _is_ he?” she asked, in a whisper. “Who is
the man in the chair?”

“King David,” said Mira.

“Oh!” gasped Dot. “I’ve heard of him. Didn’t he play on a salt-cellar?”

“Oh, dear me!” cried Tess. “A ‘psalter,’ Dot—a ‘psalter’!”

“Well, what’s the difference?” asked the smallest Corner House girl,
pouting.

“A good deal,” declared Tess, although she had no idea herself just what
a psaltery was, and was unaware that she had made a mistake quite as
inexcusable as Dot’s. “And, anyway,” pursued Tess, whose confidence
swamped her ignorance of the subject and duly impressed Dot, “anyway,
this can’t be the same King David.”

“No,” said the woman. “He is King David Stanley. We are English
Gypsies.”

“But—but you and he didn’t talk English?” Tess suggested, hesitatingly.

“Among ourselves we talk Egyptian,” said the woman, proudly. So she
called the language of the Gypsies. “We are all Romany folk.”

Of course, the children did not understand much about this. But Dot was
anxious upon one point, and she whispered to Tess:

“How can that big man be a king? He doesn’t wear a crown. Don’t all
kings wear ’em? I never saw a picture of a king without one on his
head—though I should think ’twould make ’em bald.”

“Sh!” whispered back Tess. “Maybe they aren’t comfortable to wear.”

“Well! where’s his scalper?”

“His _what_?” gasped Tess.

“His scalper,” declared Dot. “Kings always carry ’em in their hands.”

“Oh, for mercy’s sake!” ejaculated Tess. “A sceptre, you mean.”

“Aren’t they what kings scalp folks with?”

“Dear me, Dot Kenway!” said Tess, in despair. “Kings aren’t like
Indians. They don’t scalp folks.”

“But they order their heads cut off if they don’t please ’em,” said Dot,
unconvinced, and eyeing King David askance.

The Gypsies were, however, all very kind to the visitors. Mira would not
allow the wild and scantily dressed children of the camp to annoy the
little Corner House girls. And she always drove the dogs away when they
came too near, for Dot was frankly afraid of the hungry looking beasts.

But Mira brought a clothes-basket out of one of the tents, and covered
in that were six little blind, black puppies, “too cute for anything,”
as Dot admitted. There were kittens, too, and a hutch of little
chickens, and some tame rabbits. When the visiting children were shown
two little kids—twins—gamboling around the mother goat, their delight
knew no bounds.

These interests held their attention for much of the forenoon—especially
Dot’s. But Tess began to wonder if something would not soon be done
about finding the automobile and their friends. She grew more anxious as
noon approached and nothing was said about this mystery.

The King of the Gypsies had disappeared some time before. Mira was busy.
And Dot, in spite of a lapful of kittens, began to ask her sister:

“Tess, when are we going to find Ruth and Aggie? I—I don’t want to stay
here much longer, do you?”

CHAPTER XV—ANOTHER CLUE

Neale O’Neil’s early morning visit to the Gypsy camp had been very
disappointing. The camp had been fully aroused, and there were plenty of
children about; but none of these were Tess and Dot.

“But say!” Sammy Pinkney whispered to Neale in an awestruck voice, “you
know how the Gypsies do when they steal kids, don’t you? They stain ’em
with walnut juice and you can’t tell ’em then from their own kids.”

“Well, I guess we should know Tess and Dot, if they were stained as
black as Petunia Blossom’s pickaninnies,” snorted Neale. “The little
girls aren’t in this bunch, for sure!”

Meanwhile the constable had shown his star to King David Stanley and
explained the errand they were here upon. The chief Gypsy vigorously
denied having seen the lost children—as indeed he had not at that
time—but he promised to look for them and have the tribe look in that
vicinity immediately after breakfast.

“And if we find them you shall learn of it at once, young sir,” the big
Gypsy assured Neale. “I will myself bring you word at the village where
you are stopping.”

He spoke very good English, did the king, and seemed to be really
sympathetic. But Neale O’Neil turned the automobile about, and with
anxious heart drove back to Arbutusville.

They made him go to bed, once he arrived at the lodging where the older
girls and Mrs. Heard were staying. Neale was completely worn out, and
even Agnes refrained from letting him see how troubled and distraught
they all were because of his non-success in finding Tess and Dot.
Therefore, Neale was sound asleep when a man wearing brown velveteen and
with gold rings in his ears rattled into town in a ramshackle old buggy,
but behind a high-stepping horse. It was King David Stanley, and he
hunted out Constable Munro at once and told him that the two lost
children had been found and had been brought into the Gypsy camp.

Not being entirely sure that Tess and Dot were the two in which the
automobile party were interested, the chief of the Romany tribe had
judged it better to bring the news rather than the children.

“You know how our people are sometimes looked upon by the Gentiles,” he
said gravely. “If I had taken the little girls away from the camp, and
their friends had appeared there, asking for them, my act in removing
them would look suspicious.”

“You’re an all-right feller, if ye be a Gyp.,” declared Mr. Munro, and
he took King David over to the lodging where the automobile party was
staying.

By this time the girls and Mrs. Heard were in the lowest depths of
despair. Ruth was even seriously discussing sending a telegram to Mr.
Howbridge.

“Though what he could do more than we are doing ourselves, I don’t see,”
Mrs. Heard sighed.

“We are not doing anything!” cried Agnes, beginning to cry again. “I
believe if they’d have let me go with them into the woods last night, I
could have found poor, precious little Dot and Tessie. What _shall_ we
do——”

“I’ll go with you, too, Aggie,” declared Sammy, having hard work to keep
back the tears himself. “I bet you and I can find ’em.”

“It is the easiest thing in the world to be a critic,” Ruth said
quietly. “But we should first know how better to do a thing before
finding fault with the person who has done it. I think——”

And just then Constable Munro and the big Gypsy appeared in their
sitting-room, and immediately their despair was changed to joy. Neale
came stumbling out of the bedroom, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes,
and led the cheering. For a few moments the automobile tourists
certainly were quite beside themselves.

Nothing would do but all must run out to the encampment to get the lost
little girls. And although King David started before them, the motor car
passed him and his swift pacer on the road and arrived at the Gypsy
encampment a good fifteen minutes before he appeared.

Tess and Dot, by this time, had become rather lachrymose. They dared not
ask Mira again about their lost friends; and even the lapful of kittens
palled at last on Dot. With the coming of the automobile, however, all
this was changed. At once both Tess and Dot could see nothing but good
in their friends, the Gypsies. Ruth and Agnes, with Sammy, had to be led
all about the encampment, to see the pets and to learn how the Gypsies
lived in their wagons and tents, and otherwise to be shown the wonders
of the place. Mrs. Heard and Ruth ransacked their purses for pennies to
distribute to the bare-legged children attached to the camp.

“And _we_ were wild girls, too—for a little while,” said Dot. “Weren’t
we, Tess?”

“Too bad you were so wild that I didn’t find you when I was over this
way early this morning,” grumbled Neale O’Neil. “Anyway, if I hadn’t
insisted on coming we wouldn’t have found the kids yet.”

“My! aren’t you smart?” scoffed Agnes, who felt happy enough to bicker
with him now. “Well! somebody, I suppose, must blow a horn for you—why
not yourself?”

“Oh, I don’t make a practice of parading my virtues,” began Neale, when
Agnes stopped him with:

“I should say you didn’t, Neale O’Neil. Let me tell you it takes quite a
number to make a _parade_.”

“Got me there! Got me there!” admitted the boy, grinning. He did not
mind the tartness of his girl chum’s tongue, now that the little ones
were found. Everybody was joyful over the reunion.

The king of the Gypsies had been examining the automobile most curiously
during this time.

“Fine car,” he said to Neale. “I’m thinking some of getting one myself.
Only trouble is, sure to frighten the horses, and if we didn’t have
horses to trade they wouldn’t believe we were Gypsies,” and he smiled
with a wonderful flash of strong, white teeth.

Neale laughed. “I suppose pretty soon all up-to-date Gypsies will go
about the country in auto-vans instead of those green and yellow painted
wagons,” he suggested.

“Mebbe,” said the man. “We had a couple of men here one night not long
ago with a car. They came from Milton. At least, I heard one of them say
so.”

Agnes was beside Neale. Suddenly she seized his arm and squeezed it
tightly.

“Oh, Neale!” she gasped.

The boy had noted the significance of King David’s speech too. He nodded
to the girl and asked the big Gypsy at the same time:

“What sort of car did those fellows have?”

“Oh, it was a small car. A runabout—Maybrouke make. Good car, but not
like this.”

“Mr. Collinger’s runabout,” whispered Agnes. “That was his make.”

“When were these fellows here?” asked Neale. Then he explained: “We’re
very much interested. One of our friends lost a car like the one you
describe. Can you remember just when it was?”

“Oh, yes, young sir. It is fixed in my memory,” and the Gypsy mentioned
a date immediately following the day on which the car of the county
surveyor had been taken away from the Milton court house.

“It was those men!” cried Agnes decidedly.

King David looked at her curiously. “They tried to sell the car to me,”
he said. “I was not sure they came by it honestly. So many people try to
foist stolen goods on us because we are Gypsies.”

This was a new light on that subject; yet Neale O’Neil thought it might
be quite true. “Give a dog a bad name and hang him” is not only a trite
saying, but a true one.

“What did the fellows look like?” he asked the chief, and quickly
described in particular the fellow they knew as Saleratus Joe.

“No mistaking him, young sir,” said the chief Gypsy. “He was one. The
other was an older man.”

“I don’t know him so well,” admitted Neale. “But I am sure it is lucky
you did not buy the car. There would have been trouble. Do you know
where they went from here?”

“No. They remained over night with us because a storm came up. I
sheltered the car in one of our tents. But about a week ago I saw them
and the car again,” he added.

“No!” cried Neale, in surprise.

“Yes. I drove over into what they call the Fixville district—it’s beyond
Parmenter Lake—to look at a horse. There is a big farm over there that
isn’t being worked this year—owned by a man named Higgins. They’re only
getting the hay off it. You see, last winter the house burned to the
ground and Mr. Higgins, who is an old man, was badly burned and isn’t
able yet to take up his work again. He is with friends somewhere. Well,”
went on the Gypsy, “the outbuildings and barns were saved. As I drove by
the place I saw this freckled chap and that other backing the car into
one of the big hay barns. It was just at nightfall. Of course, I don’t
know that they stayed there more than one night.”

Neale and Agnes were greatly excited by this story. It seemed as though
it were the clearest clue yet discovered regarding the stealing of Mr.
Collinger’s runabout. From the Gypsy Neale obtained a very clear and
particular account of the place where the suspected men and car had last
been seen, and how to get there.

“We’ll just go around that way after we leave the hotel at Parmenter
Lake,” declared Agnes. “Why! maybe we’ll find the car right there.”

“It’s too late for _May_ bees,” grinned Neale. “This is July.”

But he had some little hope of tracing the lost car himself, in spite of
his fun. However, as Mrs. Heard declared with decision, first of all the
party would run on to the hotel at Parmenter Lake where they had rooms
and their trunks awaiting them, and there recuperate.

“So much excitement is not good for me, I declare,” said the lady. “I
feel it in my legs.”

That puzzled Dot Kenway immensely. Yet she was too polite to ask Mrs.
Heard how it could be. Nevertheless, she whispered to Tess:

“How do you suppose she could feel _our_ being lost in _her_ legs? We
did the walking.”

Tess failed to give a satisfactory reply.

They arrived not long after mid-afternoon at the resort on Parmenter
Lake, which was, indeed, a very popular inland summer place. Mrs. Heard
felt the need of quietness, and Ruth spent most of her time watching the
children; but Agnes felt no necessity for “recuperation.”

She had a delightful time the two days and evenings they spent at the
hotel. There was a dance each night, and she danced more than she ever
had before in her life in forty-eight successive hours.

There were so many young people of about her age at the hotel and in
neighboring cottages, that Agnes was sure to have her fill of enjoyment.
Neale, meanwhile, overhauled the motor car and made all shipshape for
their continued tour.

Tess and Dot lived in a sort of Land of Romance because of their recent
adventure. They were much sought after by other little girls because
they had been lost, had stayed in the woods all night, and had joined
(if for only a brief time) a band of Gypsies.

Master Sammy was tipped out of a boat on the lake and came near
drowning. Then he led a newly formed crew of “fresh water pirates” in a
raid on an orchard and was caught and well spanked by the owner. He
certainly was a trial; but he was growing strong and healthy looking.
This outing was doing Sammy Pinkney a world of good, whether the older
members of the touring party benefited or not.

When they finally left the Parmenter Lake hotel the motor car was in
fine fettle and so were all the young people in it. And Mrs. Heard
declared that her nerves had recovered from the shock they had suffered
when Tess and Dot were lost.

Agnes and Neale, one may be sure, had not forgotten what King David
Stanley had told them about Saleratus Joe and the missing runabout. They
had heard nothing further about the stolen car, although both had asked.

Neale had looked up the roads in the guide book and they now sped
directly over the nearest route for the abandoned farm where Joe and the
car had last been observed by the Gypsy chief.

Mrs. Heard was quite as eager as Agnes and Neale to learn if trace of
her nephew’s car could be found in this neighborhood. She had written
one letter to Mr. Collinger regarding their suspicions of Joe Dawson and
his appearance with a runabout in this part of the State.

They ran on beyond the end of the lake and thence into a much more
scantily populated country than that through which they had previously
traveled.

They struck into the road at last on which King David had said the site
of the burned farmhouse was. Not another dwelling was on this cross
highway, and the road map gave its length as twelve miles.

Save for the cleared acres of the Higgins farm, on both sides thick
woods bordered the road. Of course, they could not mistake the farm
itself when they came to it. The fire had left nothing of the great
house but the cellar walls.

However, there were several good outbuildings, especially the hay barns.
The Gypsy had told Neale clearly into which of the two barns he had seen
the men running the automobile.

“I’m going to have a squint, anyway,” said Neale, stopping the car and
promptly getting out.

“Be careful,” urged Mrs. Heard. “Don’t get into trouble,” though how he
could do that in this forsaken place it was not easy to guess.

There was not a soul around the place as far as the touring party could
see.

CHAPTER XVI—SEARCHING THE BARN

“I’m going too! I’m going too!” exclaimed Sammy Pinkney, scrambling out
of the car after Neale O’Neil.

Agnes was opening the door on her side of the car, but Neale said
quietly:

“Now, wait a little, both of you. Aggie, you’d spoil everything. And,
Sammy, you keep still,” and he tossed that offended youngster back into
the front seat.

“Aw, say!” bristled Sammy.

“You’re so bossy, Neale O’Neil,” declared Agnes. “I’d like to know——”

“See here,” interrupted the youth, with his back to the burned house and
the barns, “if there _should_ be anybody on watch, it wouldn’t do to let
’em see we’d come here just for the sake of looking into that hay barn.”

“Oh!” observed Agnes, sitting down again.

Neale had opened the hood and made a pretense of fumbling inside.

“You see,” he said, still in a low voice, “I want it to appear that
something has happened to our car. Now I’m going to hunt in the tool
kit——”

“Whuffor?” demanded Sammy. “I’ll find it for you.”

“You’ll sit where you are,” declared Neale O’Neil sternly. “I’m supposed
to be hunting for something I can’t find. Then I’ll go up to that old
barn and try to find it. It won’t look right if everybody gets out of
the car and goes snooping around.”

“I admire your language, Neale O’Neil,” sighed Ruth.

“Do go ahead and see what you can find, boy,” urged Mrs. Heard, very
much excited now.

“Goodness!” murmured Agnes. “He acts as though he expected to find that
barn full of robbers.”

“Nothin’ but rats in it, I bet,” grumbled Sammy, feeling much abused.

“Oh, there! You don’t catch _me_ going near it, then!” cried Agnes.

Neale, undisturbed by either Ruth’s criticism or Agnes’ fun-making,
proceeded to act as though the motor car had really met with an
accident. Finally he started for the barn, which stood some distance
back from the road.

“Look out for the rats—oh, _do_ look out for the rats, Neale!” Tess
called after him.

“He can’t whisper to the _rats_, anyway,” remarked Dot. “I guess Neale
O’Neil, even if he did come from a circus, can’t tame _all_ animals.”

The approach to the barn was by a broad, well graveled drive which
sloped smoothly upward to the wide barn door. Almost at once Neale
O’Neil saw that there had been an automobile on this piece of gravel. He
could see where the wheels had skidded and disturbed much of the surface
of the drive—whether when the car entered the barn or when it came out,
he could not say.

He looked sharply around on all sides, but saw nobody. By the strands of
twisted hay hanging from the closed loft door he presumed the upper part
of the barn was filled with the only crop being harvested on the Higgins
farm this year. On trying the main door, Neale found it barred; but
there was a small door beside the great one, and this opened at his
touch upon the latch.

The great barn was filled with a brown dusk in which Neale O’Neil could
see nothing at first. But by stepping within and leaving the door open,
he was able to obtain some idea of what was on the barn floor. On either
side were the mows, the hay stacked in them down to the ground. The
loosely boarded loft over the runway of the barn had also been filled,
he supposed. The sweet, dusty odor of the cured grasses was almost
overpowering at first. Dim outlines of a few old agricultural tools were
to be seen in the gloom. These were shoved back out of the way so as to
clear the middle of the course.

Neale, still curious, fumbled at the bar which held closed the
two-leaved door, and finally opened this. The door swung open slowly and
the strong July sunlight rushed in. Millions of motes danced in the
sunshine that spread across the barn floor. Now all was revealed.

“Can you find it?” cried Agnes from the seat of the automobile.

Neale had to wag his head in negation. There was nothing here that
looked like a motor car. Back, at the rear of the barn floor, the hay
had overflowed the mows and loft, and was heaped in a fragrant pile on
the barn floor to the height of the floor of the loft.

“One sure thing, they’ve got an abundant hay crop stored away,” thought
Neale O’Neil. “Uncle Bill Sorber’s elephants would find plenty of fodder
here.”

He laughed, barring the big doors again securely. As he came out of the
barn he glanced sharply around, but saw nobody save his own friends in
the motor car.

Naturally his examination of the other farm buildings was hasty; but he
neglected to look into no shed large enough to have housed the runabout
of which he was so eagerly in search. He came back to the Corner House
automobile with the assurance that there was no car but their own at the
Higgins farm, and made the statement boldly.

“Well, but,” pouted Agnes, shaking her head at him, “I’d feel much more
satisfied if you had let me look.”

“Me, too,” grumbled Sammy. “I bet I could see into smaller places than
_you_ could, Neale O’Neil.”

Neale just grinned at them. “This isn’t a flivver we are looking for,
I’d have you know. The Maybrouke is some car, believe me! You folks talk
like the funny-man who went into the flivver factory to look around; and
when he came out he kept scratching himself—said he was sure he had got
one of the things on him!”

There was no use of waiting around on this lonely road any longer, so
Neale got in and started the car again. As they had got off their
original route some distance in coming to this farm, it would be
impossible to make a good hotel that night.

“But,” as Mrs. Heard said, “we have nothing to fear after that lodging
in Frog Hollow——”

“Arbutusville, Mrs. Heard—do!” laughed Agnes, in correction.

“Well. That woman had the hardest beds I ever saw. If the street
pavements had been as hard they would certainly have had good roads in
that town.”

They stopped at a countryside store for lunch and bought crackers and
cheese and milk, and feasted while sitting in the automobile under the
shade of a great elm.

“We’re almost like Gypsies ourselves,” said Tess, ruminating as she
crunched the crackers and cheese. “Aren’t we, Dot?”

“No. We’re cleaner,” said the smallest Corner House girl; “and we
haven’t any little goaties—_and_ pigs! But this is lots of fun, just the
same; and I wish we _could_ sleep out again all night—just for once—all
of us, of course.”

She came near having her wish that very night, or so it seemed when
sunset came. In some way they got off the marked route they had been
following, and, on stopping at a crossroads to ask a blacksmith who was
just closing his shop, they found that they were far away from the
beaten track of automobile tourists.

“We might have known that,” grumbled Ruth, “from the state of the
roads.”

“The worst of it is,” said Mrs. Heard, a little worried, “it is going to
be hard on the children. They are tired out now. And it is a dark
night.”

“No moon till late—that’s a fac’, ma’am,” said the blacksmith, leaning
on the mud-guard while Neale lit the lamps.

“And have we got to go back over that rocky piece of road to get to the
Tailtown Pike?” asked Agnes, trying to study out the lost route in the
guide book.

“It’s forty-five miles to Tailtown, where we were going to stop. And
over the meanest roads in the State, I bet,” growled Neale.

“Dear me!” sighed Ruth.

“There are _some_ objections to touring the country roads in an
automobile,” admitted Mrs. Heard. “And things seemed to be going so
smoothly!”

“I dunno what you’ll do,” drawled the blacksmith. “’Nless you talk to
mother.”

“To _whom_?” chorused the older girls and the chaperone.

“Mother. Mebbe she kin advise ye,” drawled the man. “We live down the
road jest a piece. I dunno what she’d say——”

“Does she know the roads better than you do?” asked Neale bluntly.

The blacksmith laughed mellowly. “I don’t reckon she does—’cept the road
to Heaven, son,” he said. “She sure knows all about _that_. But she
might be helpful. I’ve been takin’ her advice, off and on, for forty
years, and whenever I’ve took it I’ve not been sorry.”

“Come!” exclaimed Ruth suddenly, “let us drive on to this gentleman’s
house.”

“Where is it?” asked Neale, getting in behind the steering wheel again.

“You can see our kitchen lamp twinkling in the window yonder,” said the
blacksmith, stepping upon the running-board as Neale started the car.

They jolted down the rough road, and quickly came to the house in
question. As far as they could see, it was rather a large country house
with a terraced lawn before it and a driveway running up beside the
dwelling to the rear premises.

“Drive her right up to the door, young man,” advised the blacksmith.

“Room to turn around up there?” asked Neale, the careful.

“Plenty,” agreed the man. “Don’t have no fear about that.”

Neale immediately turned the car up the little incline and the
blacksmith leaped to the ground as it stopped.

“Now,” he said jovially, “one of you young misses just go up there on
the porch and tell mother how you’re fixed. You can git out, ma’am, I’m
sure,” he added, to Mrs. Heard, as Ruth jumped from the car. “Get out
your baggage too—this here little shaver can help at that,” and he
rumpled Sammy’s hair with his big hand.

“But—but——Do you mean we can stay here?” gasped Mrs. Heard.

Ruth had scarcely reached the door when it was opened from within. A
comfortable figure of a woman, with spectacles and gray hair, faced the
oldest Corner House girl.

“Well, well!” said “Mother,” in just the hearty tone of voice a mother
should possess. “An automobile party? Well, well! how many of you air
there, my dear?”

“But, my goodness me!” gasped Ruth. “You’re not going to take us in
‘sight unseen,’ in this way, are you?”

The woman laughed. “Why not?” she asked. “If you are going to do
anything for anybody, it ain’t perlite to hem and haw about it, I’m
sure. Leastways, that’s the way _I_ was brought up, my dear. And there’s
little children with you, too! Of course you shall stay.”

Ruth and the others were speechless. Such hospitality—and evidently this
was not a house of public entertainment—was quite unexpected.

“That you, Buckley?” she called to her husband. “You see to putting up
the car. How many did you say there was? I want to know how much ham to
slice,” and she chuckled unctuously again.

“There’s seven of ’em, Mother,” called the blacksmith’s mellow voice
from the dark, “_and_ a dog. B’sides, mebbe you’d better take notice
that two of ’em’s boys, and like enough they’ve got their appetites with
’em,” and he broke into another mellow guffaw.

“Well,” Agnes later whispered to Ruth, “this is certainly the unexpected
end of a perfect day! Goodness! what should we have done if these good
people hadn’t taken us in? The blacksmith says they are rebuilding the
bridge over Mason’s Creek and we couldn’t have got across.”

“Oh!”

“And that would have made us go around so far that the run to Tailtown
would have been nearer sixty miles than forty-five.”

They were all glad; and such a supper of ham and eggs as they ate! The
accommodations the blacksmith’s wife put at the party’s disposal were
ample too.

“Just the same,” yawned Neale, before retiring, “this has sure been an
empty day. There hasn’t been much doing.”

“Well, what do you expect to happen in these perfectly civilized
places?” responded Agnes.

“And we have surely had enough excitement to last us for a while—the
children getting lost, and all,” Ruth said.

“And you hunted for that car of Mr. Collinger’s,” said Agnes, slyly.
“_That_ was exciting, I’m sure.”

“Oh—ouch!” yawned Neale. “Don’t knock, Aggie. We may find that car—and
Saleratus Joe—yet.”

“Your desire for low company shocks me, Neale,” giggled Agnes.
“Saleratus Joe, indeed!”

“Don’t say a word,” the boy retorted. “You and Ruth met the gentleman
first—don’t forget that,” and they separated for the night with
laughter.

CHAPTER XVII—ONE THING AFTER ANOTHER

Things began to happen, however, bright and early the next morning. “The
kids,” as Neale called the two smaller Corner House girls and Sammy
Pinkney, were out of their beds betimes, and out of doors as soon as
they were dressed. The blacksmith’s house was an old-fashioned place,
and there were many things interesting to the little folks about it.
Besides, if there had not been a thing in sight, the three juveniles
would have dug up something interesting in a very short time.

The blacksmith was already off to start his smithy fire in the shop at
the fork of the roads. “Mother,” with the help of a neighbor’s daughter
called in for this emergency, was hurrying about the kitchen and dining
room preparing the huge breakfast she thought necessary for these
unexpected guests.

Neale O’Neil came out, yawning as he had gone to bed, and opened the
door of the shed in which the automobile had been lodged in lieu of a
proper garage. Neale always looked over the car before they started the
day’s run, as all careful chauffeurs should.

The children ran for the automobile, of course, before Neale could back
it out of the shed; and as Tess and Dot and Sammy jumped on the steps to
ride out, a white hen flew from the tonneau with a wild squawk.

“Oh, for goodness’ sake!” cried Tess. “What do you s’pose that hen was
doing there?”

The hen had flown to the top rail of the calf pen, and there proceeded
to “cut, cut, cu-da-cut!” just as loud as she could.

“Aw, what are you squalling about?” Sammy demanded. “Nobody hurt you.”

“Maybe she wants to go to ride with us in our automobile,” said Dot
demurely.

When the automobile was backed out upon the gravel it was Tess who
looked into the tonneau and spied the reason for Mrs. White Hen’s loud
remarks. There it lay, white and warm, upon the rear seat.

“Goodness! Goodness me!” gasped Tess, with clasped hands. “Isn’t that
cunning? She laid an egg right here for us, Dot.”

“My,” Dot observed, “maybe she thought she could pay for a ride with
us.”

“I guess she must know something about the way gas has gone up,”
chuckled Neale O’Neil, “and she wanted to pay for her share.”

They had to secure that egg at once and run to ask “mother” if they
could have it. Though, as Dot Kenway declared:

“It’s the most mysteriousest thing why that blacksmith calls her
‘mother’ when she isn’t, but she’s his wife.”

However, that “mysteriousest thing” was not on the carpet just then. It
was the egg found in the automobile that was in question, and the
blacksmith’s wife said:

“Yes, of course you shall have it. Them dratted hens lay everywhere. I
guess they’d lay in the parson’s hat.”

“Oo-oo! not if he had it on,” murmured Dot.

Then immediately, there was another subject of discussion. What should
they do with the fresh-laid egg?

“Eat it, of course,” said Sammy.

“It won’t go far—one egg—among three such savage appetites as you kids
possess,” Neale declared.

“Why—no,” murmured Tess. “You couldn’t very well divide an egg in three
parts.”

“Not till it’s cooked,” Sammy put in, promptly. “Let’s have it fried.”

“Oh! I like eggs soft-boiled,” Dot exclaimed.

“Why! then we can’t divide it even after it’s cooked,” cried Tess; “for
I like my eggs hard-boiled.”

“It can’t be done, then,” said Neale O’Neil, solemnly, but vastly
amused. “You can’t first boil an egg hard, and then soft, and then fry
it.”

“She—she ought to have laid three eggs,” growled Sammy.

“You should speak to her about that,” Neale returned. Then he added, as
a suggestion: “Why don’t you cast lots for it?”

“Cast lots for _what_, Neale O’Neil!” demanded Dot, wonderingly.

“Is—isn’t that _wicked_—like gambling?” asked Tess, slowly, “or playing
marbles for keeps?”

“No,” Neale told her, “I don’t believe it is. You can take three straws
of different lengths. I’ll hold ’em. The one that draws the longest
straw takes the egg—and can have it cooked any way she or he pleases.”

“But then the others won’t get any,” wailed Dot, whose appetite was
evidently sharpened by the morning air.

“Shucks!” said Neale, washing his hands of the matter. “Give it to Tom
Jonah, then. He’ll eat it raw—shell and all.”

“Oh, no,” said Tess, with sudden inspiration. “We must give it to Mrs.
Heard for her breakfast. I’ll ask the blacksmith’s wife to cook it.”

That suited everybody and Tess and Dot ran to make the proper culinary
arrangements for the wonderful egg laid on the automobile seat.

It was a very hilarious breakfast, indeed; and the older girls and Mrs.
Heard thought the “automobile egg” quite wonderful indeed. And such a
breakfast as it was—with eggs galore, and fried chicken, and hot bread,
and honey from “Mother’s own combs.”

When Dot heard that, she was puzzled a good deal at first, for all the
comb she had seen about the blacksmith’s wife was a high-backed,
old-fashioned tortoise-shell comb that was prominent in the woman’s
“bob” of hair. It had to be explained to the smallest Corner House girl
what “honey from the comb” meant. All of that succulent dainty Dot had
ever seen before had been strained honey.

The blacksmith’s wife put up a hamper of lunch for the automobile
tourists, too, and when they drove away at nine o’clock the Corner House
girls and their companions felt as though they were bidding good-bye to
two old and valued friends. It did not seem possible that they had never
met the jolly blacksmith and his kindly wife before the previous
evening; and they promised to stop again, if only to call, on their
return journey.

“I’m sure we shall never forget the dears,” Agnes sighed, some hours
later, when they had stopped for lunch. “Just _look_ at all this fried
chicken!”

“We won’t forget ‘Mother’ while the grub holds out, that’s sure,”
grinned Neale O’Neil.

“Horrid boy!” retorted Agnes. “We girls, I should hope, think of
something besides our stomachs.”

“Hm—yes. But you weren’t _talking_ about anything else,” rejoined Neale.

The party had another subject of thought the next moment, however. Neale
was just setting up the tripod, and Sammy was scurrying about for dry
wood for the fire to be built under it, when a tall and roughly dressed
man broke through the brush into the open patch of turf on which the
party was preparing camp, and at once hailed them:

“Hey, you! what are ye doing here, I’d like to know?”

Neale took it upon himself to reply—and he did not feel very pleasant
about it. The man did not speak in a nice way.

“I don’t know that it’s any of your affair,” the boy said quietly; “but
we are just preparing lunch.”

“Oh, you _be?_” snarled the fellow. “Wal, by jinks! ye _ben’t_ neither!
We don’t want no ortermobile parties here. Get out!”

“Do you own this land?” asked Neale, his voice shaking.

“Never mind him. Come away—do!” cried Ruth to Neale, while she retreated
to the car, dragging the hamper with her.

“I hate to do that,” said the boy, who was very angry. “I don’t believe
he has any right to send us away. We’re doing no harm.”

“Ye air trespassin’,” declared the man. “Going to build a fire, too, was
ye? That’s against the law, anyway.”

“To build a campfire?” demanded Neale, quickly. “I guess not. And you’ve
got to prove trespass.”

“I’ll prove it with the flat o’ my hand on your ears, ye young rascal!”
declared the man, hotly. “You ain’t paid anybody for the right to camp
here, have you?”

“_Paid_ anybody? Of course not. Who’d we pay?” demanded Neale, still
inclined to stand his ground.

“Shows ye don’t know the law in _this_ town,” said the man, with
satisfaction. “I’m a consterble—see?” and he threw back his coat and
showed a big, shiny star pinned to his “gallus.” “I got the authority.”

“You’ve got the authority to _what?_” asked Neale, sourly. “Trying to
tree us for a collection, are you? I—guess—not!”

“Oh, Neale,” begged Ruth. “Do come away.”

“The boy is right,” said Mrs. Heard, vigorously. “I believe the man is
overstepping his rights. But we don’t want to fight him here. Oh! what
is that child about?”

Sammy Pinkney had procured several smooth pebbles of about the size of
hen’s eggs, and now approached the contending parties. Tom Jonah, too,
stood beside Neale and began to show his remaining fangs.

“What are you going to do with those stones, Sammy Pinkney?” demanded
Agnes.

“Goin’ to give some of ’em to Neale if he wants ’em,” declared the
youngster, with a grin.

Neale O’Neil laughed at that. “I guess we won’t come to blows, Sammy,”
he said. “We’ll just get in the car and have our lunch. This constable
can’t keep us from eating on the county road, that is sure. Get out the
alcohol lamp, folks, if you want your tea.”

They put up the board, and unlimbered the lamp and soon had the kettle
boiling; but the constable sat down near by and watched them—and with no
pleasant face—the while. Evidently, although they had obeyed his
command, he was not wholly satisfied.

It was while they were still eating their lunch that the sky became
overcast.

“It really looks as though we should have a tempest, and we ought to get
under cover,” remarked Mrs. Heard.

“Oh, yes, do!” said Agnes, eagerly. “I dislike getting drenched.”

They were some distance on the road to Tailtown, however, before the
first flash of lightning assured them that the storm was going to
overtake them before they could reach any haven.

Neale stopped immediately and put up the top and drew the curtains on
either side. He made Agnes get back into the tonneau, although that
crowded the others somewhat. But under the rubber blanket in front there
was scarcely room for Sammy, Neale, and Tom Jonah.

The rain began drumming on the top of the car before they started again.
They were in a locality where there seemed to be no farms. At least they
had not passed a barn within the hour that promised shelter for the car.
So it was better to go ahead and risk it, than to run back.

CHAPTER XVIII—A VERY ANNOYING SITUATION

In a minute or two the rain was falling torrentially—beating upon the
automobile cover and quickly turning the sandy road to an actual mire.

It grew rapidly dark, although it was only mid-afternoon. Overhead the
lightning crackled and the thunder ricochetted from the distant hills.
The trees bordering the road swayed in the wind and the weight of the
falling rain bent them like saplings.

Neale O’Neil could not drive the automobile rapidly, much as they
desired to reach a place of refuge from the storm, for the wind-shield
was blurred so that he had to poke his head out at the side every now
and then to watch the road.

The roar of the elements was appalling. The girls and Mrs. Heard shut
their eyes and cowered in the tonneau when the sharp flashes of
lightning came. But they were perfectly dry.

Sammy was in a state of hysterical delight. He was not frightened, but
he jumped every time the thunder broke above them. Once Neale told him
to keep still, but Sammy cried:

“I can’t, Neale. I don’t mean to jump—and I wouldn’t if it wasn’t for
that old thunder. I know the bolt of lightning I see won’t hit me—my dad
told me that. I guess if I was deaf so I wouldn’t hear the thunder, I’d
keep as still as still!”

Not much was said by the girls, and Tom Jonah merely hung his pink
tongue out like a flag, whining sometimes when the thunder rolled; for,
like Sammy, he was mostly disturbed by it.

The narrow road ahead, as they swooped down into a hollow, seemed to be
flooded. The shallow gutters could not contain the amount of water which
had fallen, and the wheels of the automobile rolled through a brown
stream of sand and water. At the bottom of this hill was a sharp turn;
but Neale saw this in plenty of time. However, what lay beyond was
completely hidden by an outthrust bank. The water in the driveway
deepened as they descended. Despite the hard going the automobile gained
momentum from the descent, and Neale steered carefully.

“Just like riding through a river, ain’t it, Neale?” shrieked Sammy.

Tom Jonah, as excited as Sammy himself, barked. Neale punched the horn,
although he did not expect to meet anybody or anything in such a storm
and in such a lonely place. He slipped in the clutch at the bottom of
the hill, turning out slightly to make the turn. He could not foresee
the result of this last move; but he realized his mistake in just ten
seconds—when it was too late.

The rear wheels skidded a little, and then the car, on the right side,
slumped down into the mud and water, hub deep, and stopped dead!

The girls screamed, and Mrs. Heard, too, was frightened by the sudden
jolt and the way the car tipped over. It did seem for a moment or two as
though there might be a complete overturn.

“Now you’ve done it, Neale O’Neil!” cried Agnes, in her excitement.

“I s’pose I made it rain, too,” sniffed Neale, in disgust. “You give me
a pain, Aggie.”

“What nonsense to blame Neale,” Ruth, the fair-minded, hastened to put
in. “What shall we do?”

“Stay where we are and keep dry,” Mrs. Heard declared, with decision.

“But Neale can’t get the car out of the mud with us in it,” Agnes cried.

“Nor with you out of it, I reckon,” said the boy, crossly; “wait till I
see.”

He crawled out with some difficulty to look the situation over, having
to drive back Sammy and Tom Jonah with decision. “I don’t want you two
ramping around out here,” he growled.

Neale had put on his slicker when the downpour began, and it was well he
had, for this was no ordinary rain. The rush of water had filled the
gutter with sand in solution, and there was now a regular quagmire where
the wheels of the automobile stood. The fury of the storm had somewhat
relaxed, but the rain fell steadily. Even should the rain stop, the
water would not run out of this spot for hours. It did not take “half an
eye,” as Neale himself said, to see that they were stuck.

“And this is a nice place to spend the night in,” complained Agnes.

“Can nothing really be done, Neale?” asked Mrs. Heard, much worried.

“I can’t get her out without help,” admitted the boy, in a discouraged
tone.

Tess and Dot were crying a little, and Sammy looked at them scornfully.
“Aw, you kids make me sick,” he said. “You don’t see me bawling, do you?
S’pose you was in a pirate ship, ‘way out in the ocean, and she was
wrecked?”

“I don’t want to be a pirate—so there!” sobbed Dot.

Tess said, solemnly: “Wait till you get hungry, Sammy Pinkney.”

This silenced Sammy—for the time being, at least.

Suddenly Agnes cried aloud: “Oh, dear me! here it comes again.”

It certainly sounded as though the tempest were returning, there was
such a rattling and jangling behind them on the hill. Neale ran around
the automobile to look.

A big wagon with a tarpaulin over it, making it look as large as a load
of hay, and drawn by a pair of drenched horses, came rattling down the
hill. There were two figures in slickers and rubber hats on the seat
under the hood.

“A tin peddler’s outfit, sure as you live,” he cried.

“Oh, dear, Neale,” said Ruth, “maybe they will be rough men and will not
help you.”

“I reckon they’ll help us if we make it worth their while,” said the
boy, with assurance, peering through the rain to try to make out the
faces of the two on the wagon seat.

“Be careful, boy,” said Mrs. Heard. “Don’t show them much money. We
don’t know what sort of men they may be. Peddlers——”

Neale reached back into the car and seized a heavy wrench. “Nothing like
‘preparedness,’” he said, with a grin.

“My goodness!” exclaimed Agnes, giggling suddenly, “they’ll think you
are a highway robber.”

“I’m going to hold them up all right,” returned Neale O’Neil, with
assurance.

The wagon was evidently hung with a large supply of tinware and the
like, but all under the canvas cover. Yet it came down the hill at such
a pace that the horses must not have found their load a heavy one to
draw.

Of course the two strangers saw Neale, and the stalled car could not be
overlooked, either. The one driving pulled in his team. Neale could make
out the features of neither, for the turned-down brims of their hats hid
their faces.

But the one driving called out in a very pleasant and unexpectedly
cultivated voice:

“Hello there! What’s the matter? In a hole?”

“That’s just what we _are_ in,” Neale responded, and immediately tossed
the wrench back into the car. He knew they had nothing to fear from a
man with a voice like that.

“Is she in deep?” asked the stranger.

“You can see how she’s bogged down,” Neale returned. “No chance of my
humping her out under her own engine, that’s sure.”

“You need something more—about two-horse power, eh?” said the driver of
the peddler’s cart, with a laugh.

“It must be a very annoying situation,” said the second person on the
seat of the cart.

Neale fairly jumped. It was a most astonishing thing, and he gaped
impolitely for a moment up into the speaker’s face. It was a girl!

Neale O’Neil was sure that she laughed at his surprise. But the young
man said nothing further as he wrapped the lines around the whipstock
and began to climb down.

By this time the Corner House girls were peering out of the curtains of
the automobile, very much interested. The young man, when he got upon
the ground, appeared to be about twenty-one, and his face was keen and
pleasant, if not handsome. It seemed very queer indeed to find two young
people of this character driving a tin peddler’s wagon through the
country.

“It is a girl!” whispered Agnes, shrilly. “Goodness me! what fun!”

“And a _nice_ girl, too,” murmured Ruth. “That man looks like a college
student.”

“Do you s’pose they are on their honeymoon?” suggested the romantic
Agnes.

“For pity’s sake don’t ask them till you are a little better
acquainted,” begged Ruth.

Mrs. Heard asked the strange girl: “Won’t you get wet up there?”

“Oh, no; I’m quite dry, thanks. And then I can go inside the wagon if it
gets _too_ rough.”

Not only Mrs. Heard, but the girls expressed their surprise at this
statement.

“You see,” explained the girl, “we have the cart fixed like a van
inside. We can sleep in it if we don’t want to put up our tent. It’s
very cozy indeed.”

“Why,” said Mrs. Heard, “this seems to be an entirely new idea. And do
you really peddle tinware?”

“Oh, yes. Just like other peddlers. Only the country people would rather
trade with us, for we look honest,” and she laughed merrily. “Besides,
we did it last summer, too, and almost everybody remembers us in this
country.”

“I should think it would be splendid!” cried Agnes, with her usual
enthusiasm over anything new.

“Oh, yes; it’s fine. And we are having a nice vacation, Luke and I. Luke
is my brother. Luke Shepard. I am Cecile.”

Ruth at once gave in turn the names of the automobile party. Meanwhile
Dot said to Tess:

“I guess _she_ knows how to be a wild girl better’n you and me did,” and
Tess agreed, though with a whispered protest over her sister’s grammar.

Neale and young Mr. Shepard had finally decided that the only way to get
the car out of the mire was to unhitch the team from the peddler’s wagon
and use that “two horse power engine.”

“You’ll all have to get out while it’s being done, too,” said Neale to
his party. “There’ll be weight enough for one pair of horses, at best.”

At once Cecile Shepard hopped down from the seat of the cart, and while
the boys unhitched the horses, she got an umbrella and took Mrs. Heard
first from the automobile to the rear of the van. There were steps and a
door which gave entrance to the strange vehicle; and a lamp was quickly
lighted inside. Then Cecile came back with the umbrella for the girls,
and the entire touring party, save Neale and Tom Jonah, but including
Sammy, were soon cozily ensconced in the peddler’s wagon.

The Corner House girls were delighted with the way the van was
arranged—and they were delighted with the cheerful, intelligent Cecile
Shepard, too. They had a very talkative time while the boys worked hard
to get the stranded automobile out of the mud.

The rain thundered down upon the huge tarpaulin that covered the van. A
sweet breath of damp air blew through the wagon from the opening in
front to the open door behind. Cecile told them something of the
experiences of herself and her brother as tin peddlers.

Luke had a rope long enough to surround the body of the stalled
automobile, so that the strain could be properly distributed. He and
Neale tackled on the horses and carefully started them.

At the second trial the automobile wheels came out of the mud, and she
rolled out upon the harder center of the road.

“Whoop—ee!” yelled Neale. “Now we’re all right. And—and the rain is
stopping! What do you know about that?”

CHAPTER XIX—THE TIN BADGE OF THE LAW

“The roads will be full of mudholes for miles,” said Luke Shepard.
“Never mind if it does stop raining, it will be bad traveling for an
automobile. You see, I know this section of the country pretty well.”

“Cracky!” groaned Neale. “We may get into another mess, then.”

“You’re likely to do so,” agreed Luke. “Of course, by morning, if it
rains no more, the water will have practically all run off. The roads
being sandy hereabout they soon dry out.”

“And meanwhile we’ll be running risks every mile,” growled Neale O’Neil.

“Every rod,” said Luke, smiling.

“Cracky! but you’re a cheerful fellow,” said the boy from Milton. “Don’t
let the girls hear you say it. Agnes, especially. She’ll go up in the
air.”

“You’d better take shelter with us, then,” proposed the young tinware
peddler.

“How’s that?” asked Neale, curiously. “Not in that party-wagon of yours?
We’d sure be a ‘close corporation.’”

“Oh, no!” and the other laughed. “We’re going to Alonzo Keech’s barn.
It’s up a side road a piece—just around this turn. That’s where sis and
I were heading for. You see,” Luke Shepard further explained, “we have
established a regular route for our wares, and we have been here
before—and put up at Keech’s barn, too.”

Meanwhile Cecile Shepard had suggested the same thing to Mrs. Heard and
the Corner House girls. They all agreed to this, for to the automobile
touring party it was “any port in a storm.”

The boys rehitched the span of very good horses to the peddler’s wagon,
Luke got on the driver’s seat and the girls and Sammy returned to the
automobile, and the procession started, the peddler’s wagon going ahead
to lead the way.

Neale was very careful to keep in the middle of the road thereafter; for
although the rain had ceased, as Luke foretold, the roads were still
rivers. The branch road they turned into led back in the same general
direction from which the tourists had come; but that made no difference
now. It was shelter for the night they wanted, and in the on-coming
darkness and the storm they all felt only too glad to be led without
question.

In a half hour or so, they came out of the woods, after surmounting a
hill, and found open fields all about them. The sky remained overcast
and it was a dark night; but it was better here in the open than in the
woods where the accident to the automobile had happened. There was not a
gleam of lamplight anywhere; and when the peddler’s wagon stopped
finally in front of a great hay barn, Luke Shepard assured them that the
dwelling of the owner of the farm was beyond a patch of woods and could
not be seen even in daylight.

“I hope he will not object to our stopping here,” Mrs. Heard said, when
she climbed down from the van, in which she had stayed for the ride to
the barn.

“Yes. We have had one experience with the natives,” Agnes said,
laughing, “that was not pleasant.”

“Oh! Mr. Keech will not object,” Cecile assured them. “We have found the
people around here very nice indeed.”

“So have we—for the most part,” Ruth hastened to say. “Nobody could be
nicer than the people we stayed with last night”; and she told the
Shepards about the blacksmith and “Mother.”

“Oh, we know them! _They_ are the salt of the earth!” cried Cecile.

“Then that constable that wouldn’t let us eat our lunch in the woods
over yonder must be the pepper,” said Neale, with a grin.

Luke and Cecile had to be told about that. But they did not recognize
the officious constable.

“He must be a new one, and feels his oats,” said Luke.

“I think he was a cheap grafter and wanted to be tipped,” said Neale
O’Neil. “That’s what _I_ think.”

“But of course he was an officer of the law,” Mrs. Heard said. “He wore
a badge.”

“‘The tin badge of courage,’” said Luke with a laugh. “I don’t know who
he could be. But this Mr. Keech who owns this place is the county
sheriff. So we have the law on our side while we stop here. Mr. Keech is
our friend. We shall stop at his house to-morrow and spend most of the
day. We always do when we get around this way.”

The door of the barn was found unbarred, and with the automobile lights
and Luke’s lanterns, the party “made camp” very nicely indeed. The
automobile was backed in on the floor of the barn, and the big doors
left open. The Shepards’ tent—a very good wall tent—was erected on a
well-drained piece of ground. It was decided that Mrs. Heard and the
girls should sleep in the tent and in the van, while the male members of
the two parties put back the motor car cover and made themselves
comfortable on the cushioned seats of the car.

Of course, supper came before this scheme of retiring had been adjusted.
And a delightful time they had getting the meal and eating it. The food
was mostly supplied by the “tin peddlers,” as Agnes insisted upon
calling Luke and Cecile Shepard.

“I shall lay in some condensed foods myself just as soon as we find a
town again,” declared Mrs. Heard. “These chances of being caught in
lonely places without anything to eat come too frequently. Touring the
country in a motor car is not very different from being cast away on a
desert island!”

The children, of course, thought the experience quite as exciting as
anything that had previously occurred.

“I like it better than the Gypsy camp,” said Dot, warmly. “That cart we
are going to sleep in is just the _cutest_ thing.”

“Just the same, I am glad Tom Jonah is with us this time,” Tess said.
“Everything is so sort of open around here.”

The presence of the big dog made them all feel safer when the time to
retire came, although the Shepards were used to camping out, and had
never yet been molested in their two years’ experience.

The two parties gave each other full personal particulars. The brother
and sister had friends in Milton, whom the Corner House girls knew. And
then, there was another bond between Luke and Cecile Shepard and the
four Corner House girls. They were all orphans.

Luke was in his sophomore year at college. Cecile was attending a
preparatory school, and was going to have a college education, too. But
they had partly to work for it, for their only relative was a maiden
aunt who could help them but little, and there had been only money
enough left by their mother to partly educate the brother and sister.

“And we get a nice vacation and lots of fun and some money by going out
with our van for three months each year,” Cecile explained. “The rest of
the year we rent the horses and van and the route to a man who has a
little restaurant business at the shore in the summer. So we do pretty
well.”

Tom Jonah, as watchman, made no sound all night long. The weather
gradually cleared, and at daybreak there was every promise of a
beautiful day, with everything washed clean by the rain.

The motoring party decided to make an early start—and without breakfast.
The Shepards knew just where there was a good roadside hotel only twenty
miles away, and Neale was sure they would get there in season for
breakfast.

Their host and hostess, however, insisted upon their having coffee
before they started, and when the automobile got under way, the Corner
House girls and their party felt, as they had the morning previous, that
they were leaving some very good friends behind. They hoped to meet Luke
and Cecile again on their return trip; if not, Cecile was to write to
Ruth. The “tin peddlers” had also promised to make the old Corner House,
in Milton, a visit during the next winter.

“Dear me suz!” sighed Agnes, as they wheeled away, using one of Mrs.
MacCall’s exclamations, “isn’t this just delightful? I think touring the
country in this way, and meeting folks, and making friends, is just
delightful.”

“Not so delightful last night when that storm was beating down upon us,”
Mrs. Heard reminded her.

“And you did your share of the kicking then, all right all right,” put
in Neale O’Neil. “Oh, you did squall, Aggie.”

“Horrid thing!” exclaimed Agnes. “Don’t remind me of unpleasant things
this morning. I feel—I feel as happy as a big sunflower.”

Just then they turned a curve in the level road and saw a lanky man in a
drooping-brimmed hat, standing in the middle of the way.

“Hul-_lo_!” ejaculated Neale, slowing down.

“Is the man deaf?” demanded Mrs. Heard.

Neale punched the horn a couple of times, and the man merely turned to
face them and held up a warning hand.

“Oh, cracky!” cried Neale. “Another tin-badger.”

“And he’s holding one of those tin watches on us, too,” said Agnes, in
despair.

“Say!” observed Sammy, the sharp-eyed. “That’s the cop that wouldn’t let
us build the fire yesterday.”

“It certainly _is_,” gasped Ruth. “Now what shall we do?”

“I feel like bumping him,” growled Neale. Nevertheless, he shut off the
engine as the constable seemed to have no intention of moving out of the
road.

“Wal!” said the tall man, finally facing them completely and snapping
the case of his watch shut in a very business-like way. “Got ye that
time, I swan! Comin’ fifty mile an hour if ye was an inch——”

Suddenly he discovered that he was not entirely a stranger to the
touring party. His mouth sagged open for a moment and he did not
continue his remarks before Neale got in a word or two.

“You are very much mistaken, constable,” he said. “I could not drive
this car on this road at the speed you state—and if you knew anything
about an auto _you’d_ know it, too.”

“Oh, don’t, Neale!” whispered Ruth, from behind.

“So! I’ve seen ye before, have I, young cock o’ the walk?” snarled the
constable. “You was running over speed, an’ don’t you fergit it. And I’m
goin’ to take ye all back to Tuckerville and let Jedge Winslow tell ye
sumpin’.”

“Oh, dear me!” moaned Agnes. “And we haven’t had breakfast!”

Mrs. Heard here put in her word—and she spoke sternly:

“You are making a grave mistake, Mr. Officer. We do not drive our
automobile at any time faster than the law allows. And certainly we were
not doing so now. How do you _know_ how fast we were coming? You could
not even see us until we came around that curve.”

“Oh, I’ve had experience, _I_ have, ma’am,” said the fellow with a mean
grin on his homely face.

“This is a regular hold-up!” exclaimed Neale, in wrath. “Why didn’t you
pull a gun and tell us to hold up our hands while you went through our
pockets? It wouldn’t be any worse.”

“I’m likely to pull me a good switch an’ wear it out on ye, ye fresh
Ike!” declared the constable. “Don’t you hand me no more sass—now I warn
ye.”

“But to go away back to Tuckerville!” groaned Ruth.

“And not a hotel there,” Agnes said.

“I do not believe any justice of the peace will uphold this fellow if we
_do_ appear before him,” Mrs. Heard said.

“If ye don’t want to go,” said the constable, whose ears seemed to be as
preternaturally keen as they were unnaturally large—“if ye don’t want to
go back to Tuckerville, ye kin pay yer fine right here—ten dollars.
That’ll be about right, unless I add on a coupla dollars more to pay for
this boy’s sass.”

“What did I tell you?” exclaimed Neale, to the others. “It’s a hold-up!”

CHAPTER XX—EXCITEMENT

Neale O’Neil may not have been very wise in talking so plainly in the
hearing of the mean-spirited fellow; but he could not be blamed for
being indignant. It was positive that the Corner House girls’ automobile
had not been speeding when the man with the badge stopped it. And now
his demand for ten dollars showed plainly that his petty mind was
interested only in getting money easily rather than in enforcing the
law.

“You’d better keep a civil lip on you, young man,” said the constable,
scowling at Neale. Then to Mrs. Heard he added: “Come now, lady, you can
pay the fine to me and drive on; or you can go back to Tuckerville under
arrest and pay it to Jedge Winslow. Take yer ch’ice.”

“Oh, dear me!” whispered Agnes. “Let’s give him the money and go on to
the hotel Cecile Shepard told us about. Tuckerville, they say, is an
awful place.”

“Yes. Pay him the ten dollars—do, Mrs. Heard,” Ruth urged the chaperone.

“Very well,” said the lady. “I disapprove of such a thing, but it at
least will relieve us of this man’s presence——”

“Here comes another car,” cried Tess, who was not wholly attentive to
the argument.

“Now you’ll get a chance to sting another party,” snapped Neale, glaring
at the constable.

But the latter made him no reply. In fact, he had suddenly changed his
attitude. Instead of standing boldly before the machine, he cringed
along to the tonneau door with his hand held out for the money Mrs.
Heard was selecting from her bag.

“Hold on!” exclaimed Neale, suddenly. “Don’t pay that fellow too
quickly. Let’s have witnesses. Here comes the car.”

“You pay me now, or ’twill be too late,” cried the constable, angrily.

Just then the coming car appeared around the curve—a heavy roadster. The
plainly frightened constable gave the single occupant of the car one
glance, and instantly turned without the money and ran.

“Hi! stop that fellow!” shouted the man in the car.

“With all my heart,” responded Neale O’Neil, joyfully, and, scrambling
out of his seat, he gave chase to the lanky man.

The fellow did not keep long to the road, but vaulted a rail fence and
started across a muddy field. Neale, protected by his leggings, did not
mind the mud, and kept on after the rascal. He had a pretty well defined
idea that this fellow who had tried to collect money from Mrs. Heard had
merely played constable and was nothing more than a cheap robber. Neale
was so angry that he was determined not to let the fellow get away.

He heard the second automobile stop, and supposed the man in it was
following, too; but he did not glance back to see. Just then he felt
that he could master the lanky man alone, if need be.

And that is exactly what happened. The fellow got to the other side of
the field with Neale gaining on him at every jump. Once in the woods
there, however, the Milton boy feared the fugitive would be able to hide
from him. So Neale increased his pace, sprinting for the last few rods,
and caught the fellow just as he reached the fence. Neale tackled low,
in true football fashion, and brought the long-legged man down with a
crash. There they both rolled on the muddy ground, Neale clinging to the
fellow’s knees, and the latter clawing and snarling like a wildcat.

Sammy Pinkney had followed the chase as far as the top rail of the
roadside fence, where Mrs. Heard had commanded him in no uncertain tone
to stop. There the little fellow stood, waving his cap and yelling
encouragement to Neale O’Neil, while the stranger from the second
automobile strode across the field at a rapid gait.

“Good boy!” shouted this stranger, heartily. “Hang on to him.”

Neale hung. His face was scratched and his clothing muddy; but the
long-legged fellow could not do him very much harm before help came.
Indeed, when he once saw that he was bound to be captured he stopped
struggling and began actually to blubber.

“I was only foolin’,” he whined. “Lemme up, boy. I wouldn’t hurt ye.”

“I know you won’t hurt me,” snapped Neale. “I won’t let you—that’s why.”

“Hold on to him!” shouted the other man again.

Neale let the rascal up; but he hung to his coat-collar with both hands.

“I was just a-foolin’,” repeated the captive, and he actually shook with
terror. “Ye know, Sheriff, I’m always foolin’.”

Neale looked then with increased interest upon the big man who was
approaching. This must be Sheriff Keech, Luke Shepard’s friend.

“So you got the ornery critter, did you?” demanded the county officer,
panting from his exertions. “Good boy.”

“Aw, say, now, Sheriff! you know I’m only foolin’,” almost wept the
captive.

“Oh, I know you’re the town cut-up, Abe,” growled the sheriff. “But this
time you’ll have a chance to think it over in jail. Why!” he added, to
Neale, “I knew who this must be the minute Luke Shepard told me about
him; and as I saw him come down the road about an hour ago, I had a
hunch I’d just about catch him at his capers.”

“Aw, Sheriff,” begged the fellow. “Don’t you be too hard on me. I jest
found that star——”

“You are a rascal!” snapped the county officer. “You sent off to a
mail-order house and bought that bum badge and just couldn’t keep from
flirting around with it. Showing what you thought you’d do if you _was_
a constable. Oh, I’ll put you where the dogs won’t bite you.”

“I—I never collected no money from ’em,” whined the would-be constable.

“No. That’s because I came along just a little too soon. I wish you had
got the money. Then I would have had you to rights, sure enough,”
declared the sheriff, bitterly.

“Oh, let him go, young man. He won’t run now; for if he does he’ll be
resisting arrest, and that’ll fix him with the judge for sure.”

“Why, say, he isn’t right in the head, is he?” demanded Neale O’Neil,
wonderingly. “Making out to be a constable, and robbing people, and all
that?”

“He’s one of these half-baked critters you find once in so often that
take correspondence school courses to learn to be detectives, and all
that sort of mush. Ugh!”

“Abe” was a very forlorn looking creature as he came out to the road.
Sammy on the fence waved his cap again and cheered.

“I tell you, Neale, you’re some runner,” declared the boy,
enthusiastically. “What are you going to do—hang him?”

“That horrid child!” exclaimed Agnes. “I never heard of such a
bloodthirsty boy before.”

But the rest of the party were inclined to feel that the punishment to
be meted out to the fellow who had posed as constable could not be too
harsh.

Sheriff Keech ordered Abe to get into his car, and seemed to have no
fear that the mean-spirited fellow might try to run away again.

“I know Abe,” he said to Mrs. Heard, when she suggested this
possibility. “He hasn’t any more character than a dishrag. He’s arrested
now, and he knows it. He wouldn’t dare run away from me once I’ve put my
hand on him.

“Now, ma’am, tell me all about it.”

Mrs. Heard had plenty of help in relating the circumstances surrounding
the touring party’s two adventures with this Abe. Everybody wanted to
tell what he or she thought of the fellow, even to Dot. The latter said,
with conviction:

“He is not a nice man at all, and I’m awfully glad he doesn’t live
anywhere near _our_ house.”

“I don’t know that any neighborhood would give Abe a bonus for moving
into it,” chuckled Mr. Keech. “Well! I won’t detain you. I can scare him
bad enough as it is. And thirty days in jail will do Abe a world of
good. I won’t keep you folks as witnesses; you’ve had trouble enough.”

So the matter was settled very amicably, and the touring party from
Milton hastened on to the Wayside Rose Inn, at Brampton, for breakfast.

“One thing we never thought about,” Agnes said to Neale, when they had
bidden Sheriff Keech good-bye.

“What’s that?”

“Why, about Mr. Collinger’s car and that Joe Dawson fellow. My! what
mean people we _do_ manage to meet.”

“And a little while ago you were thinking what good folks we had met,”
laughed Neale. “But you are mistaken, Aggie. I spoke to the sheriff
about Saleratus Joe and his mate and the lost car. Nothing doing. I’ve
asked everybody else we have talked with—the blacksmith and Luke Shepard
and all—about that bunch.”

“Oh! have you, Neale?” cried Mrs. Heard. “And has nothing come of it?”

“Well, Mrs. Heard,” said the boy, “all trace of that car and those
fellows seems to have ended right there at the Higgins’ farm—where the
Gypsy king saw them for the last time. That’s the way it looks to me.”

“Oh, dear me!” sighed Agnes. “I wish you’d have let _me_ hunt in that
barn for the car.”

“Or _me_,” put in Sammy, with confidence.

“Say! you two give me a pain,” cried Neale, and refused to talk about it
any further.

They made a fine run that day, getting on good roads again, and they
spent the night with friends of Mrs. Heard’s who had been on the lookout
for them for two days. A letter was waiting for the chaperone from her
nephew, stating that the police were looking for Saleratus Joe and
another man in connection with the disappearance of the Maybrouke
runabout, and that the information she had sent might aid in the arrest
of the automobile thieves.

“Well,” said Agnes, “of course I hope the police catch them; but it
would be fun if _we_ could bring about their arrest and find the
machine, too, Neale.”

“Don’t let it worry you, Aggie,” he advised. “There isn’t any reward
offered, so you’d have your work for your pains.”

Just the same, neither of them forgot the matter, and it was a topic of
conversation between them, now and then, throughout the entire tour.

They went on as far as Fort Kritchton, and spent the week-end at the
Monolith Hotel there, to which their trunks had been forwarded. The car
needed some slight repairs, and the girls found pleasant friends. This
point was to be the farthest they expected to travel from Milton.

Neale found a party of boys camping up in the woods above the hotel, and
he enjoyed himself, too; but he had to take Sammy along with him most of
the time, and he declared to Agnes that if he ever went anywhere again
and had his choice of taking Sammy or a flea, he would choose the flea!

“You have no more idea of where to find him from one moment to another
than a flea,” growled the older boy. “I’m coming to the old bachelor’s
belief in the treatment and bringing up of boys.”

“What is that?” asked the amused Agnes, who had had her own experiences
with Sammy Pinkney.

“Why, the crabbed old bachelor, who had six small nephews, declared he
believed all boys should be taken at about three years of age and put in
barrels, the heads nailed on, and that they should be fed through the
bungholes.”

“Goodness!” laughed Agnes. “And when they grew up?”

“‘Drive in the bungs,’” declared Neale, seriously. “That was his creed
and I am about ready to subscribe to it.”

Sammy, however, had a good time. He confided to Mrs. Heard and Ruth that
he had never had such a good time in his life. He got letters and money
from his mother and father, just as the Corner House girls did,
likewise, from home; and he was actually growing sturdy looking as well
as brown.

“Whether this tour does anybody else good or not, Sammy P. is being
helped,” declared Mrs. Heard.

“‘Sammy P. Buttinsky,’” sniffed Agnes. “Such a plague. I believe his
mother will lose ten years of her age in appearance during this time of
Sammy’s absence. She certainly ought to be our friend for life.”

After all, however, they none of them could really be “mad at” Sammy, as
Tess said. He was a plague; but there was something really attractive
about him, too.

“He is the most un-moral child I ever heard of,” Ruth said. “He seems to
have stepped right out of the stone age.”

Mrs. Heard smiled at that statement. “My dear girl,” she said, “most
boys are that way. Philly Collinger was—and look at him now,” for Mrs.
Heard was very proud indeed of the county surveyor. “I think there is
one very helpful thing that you Corner House girls are missing.”

“What is that, Mrs. Heard?” asked Ruth, in curiosity.

“You have missed having a brother or two. They are great educators for
the feminine mind,” laughed the lady.

However, Sammy behaved himself pretty well—considering—all the time the
touring party remained at the Monolith Hotel. The little girls whom Tess
and Dot played with looked somewhat askance at Sammy, for his boasted
intention of following in the sanguinary wake of Captain Kidd,
Blackbeard, and Sir Henry Morgan, set him as a creature apart from the
rest of boykind. In fact, among the little folk, Sammy Pinkney was quite
the sensation for several days. Then little Eddie Haflinger developed a
carbuncle on the back of his neck and Sammy’s swashbuckling tendencies
rather paled before the general interest in Eddie’s stiff neck.

However, everybody had a good time at Fort Kritchton; but the “call of
the wild,” as Agnes expressed it, was the stronger. They had had so many
adventures—pleasant as well as disconcerting—on the road, that even Mrs.
Heard was glad when the time came to leave the resort.

“Let’s send our trunks right back to Milton,” Agnes said. “No more
‘Fluffy Ruffles’ for mine till we get home. Let’s rough it.”

Their bags in the automobile really did contain all they would need, so
it was agreed to live in plain and serviceable garments for the rest of
the trip.

“If we run short of clean linen and handkerchiefs,” said Ruth, “we shall
have to stop and do our washing in a brook. How about that?”

“I suppose you’ll want to stretch lines over the auto and dry your
clothes as we travel,” growled Neale O’Neil. “_Then_ if we meet some
fidgety old farmer-woman with a more fidgety horse—_good_-night!”

“I wish,” Agnes declared, “that we had brought a tent with us—a nice one
like the Shepards have. Wouldn’t it have been fun to camp out every
night—just like those Gypsies?”

“How about it when it rained?” asked Ruth.

“Well, we’ve been out in one rainstorm—and we’re neither sugar nor
salt,” said her sister, sticking to her guns.

“But never again—if I can help it,” cried Mrs. Heard. “It is all right
for you young folks; but my blood is not so young as yours; nor is my
appetite for adventure and what you call ‘fun’ quite so keen as it used
to be.”

It was a fact. The young folks only laughed at that memorable experience
when they were overtaken by the storm. It was all what Agnes called
“fun.”

The touring party planned a roundabout way home to Milton, in order to
see a part of the country that they had not before driven through.

“And we’ll take the good roads, too. I understand more about this map
and guide book than I did,” proclaimed Neale O’Neil.

However, at one point they agreed to leave the better traveled roads so
as to spend another night with the crossroads blacksmith and “Mother.”
And they half hoped to meet the Shepards near there, also.

“That’ll bring us around past the Higgins farm, too,” Neale said,
thoughtfully.

“Oh, Neale! I want to take a look into that barn myself,” cried Agnes.

“Pshaw!” responded her boy friend. “If that car of Mr. Collinger’s was
ever there, Saleratus Joe and his chum have got it away long since, of
course.”

But Agnes was hopeful. She usually was of a sanguine mind.

CHAPTER XXI—THE UNEXPECTED HAPPENS

The automobile party did not travel all day long—whirling over the dusty
roads, past flower-spangled fields, or through pleasant woods. No,
indeed.

Little folks especially—like Tess and Dot and Sammy—cannot sit
patiently, even in an upholstered touring car, hour after hour. It was
pleasant to ride so smoothly through the lovely country; it was nicer
still to halt by the wayside and hunt for adventure.

Tom Jonah, who was by nature a tramp, enjoyed the excursions away from
the automobile as much as did the children—and he was never again off
their trail at such times. If Tess and Dot and Sammy left the party,
somebody would be sure to speak to the old dog, and up he would get in
order to follow the children. He had not forgotten the occasion when the
two smallest Corner House girls had escaped his watchful eye. So Tom
Jonah was what the slangy Sammy Pinkney called “Johnny on the Spot” one
day when something quite exciting happened.

They had stopped beside the road for lunch, as they almost always did,
and as soon as they had eaten the children were anxious to explore.

The almost dry bed of a water-course attracted their attention, and as
they could step from rock to rock, and so keep their feet dry, they
started up this ravine. Sammy, of course, led and recklessly leaped from
rock to rock with the assurance of a goat. The little girls were agile
enough; but Tess gave much attention to Dot, and the latter had to be
sure that the Alice-doll got into no difficulty.

“You mustn’t go so fast, Sammy,” urged Tess. “You know we haven’t got to
catch a train. And _do_ go away, Tom Jonah! You’re all wet. When you
shake yourself I’d just as lief be walking close behind a
sprinkling-cart.”

Both the boy and the dog laughed at her; but Dot, realizing that Alice’s
best gown might be ruined, almost fell off her stepping-stone as Tom
Jonah deliberately shook himself again and she tried to shield her
doll’s finery.

“Oh, bully!” shouted Sammy, suddenly. “There’s blackberries.”

The bushes were overhanging the steep wall of the ravine on one side.
Tess looked doubtfully up the rocky slope.

“They’re mostly red, Sammy,” she objected. “Or green.”

“Some of ’em’s black enough,” declared the boy. “Come on! Let’s get
some.”

Sammy scrambled up the rough side of the gully. Tom Jonah bounded after
him and then looked back at his little mistresses to see if they were
coming too.

“Well! I won’t be beaten by a boy,” said Tess, with sudden decision.
“Let’s go too, Dot.”

It was a rather hard pull for the little girls; and Dot got her knees
“scrubby,” although she saved the Alice-doll’s dress. They came to the
top of the height all but breathless and with flushed faces.

Sammy was coolly picking the best berries and cramming them into a mouth
which betrayed to all who might behold his greediness. “You better hurry
up,” he advised, with a lofty detachment from all chivalry, “or there
won’t be any left. There _ain’t_ many ripe ones, after all.”

“Well, I do declare!” exclaimed Tess. “You aren’t very polite, Sammy
Pinkney.”

“You—you might have saved us _some_!” protested Dot.

The little girls looked all about. They did not see any other blackberry
bushes in the vicinity. But Tess sighted something else.

“Oh, Dot! Roses! Lovely, pink, wild, roses! Did you ever see so many?”

There was a veritable hedge of the pretty, fragrant, delicate flowers at
the far side of this little field. The two girls raced over to them at
once, forgetting both Sammy’s greediness and the berries. Tom Jonah
bounded after them, and rushed through a gap in the rose hedge.
Instantly there was excitement on the far side of the hedge, just out of
sight.

An angry and excited voice rose in a familiar: “Bla-a-a-t! bla-a-a-t!”

“Oh, my! what’s that?” asked Dot, startled.

“It sounds just like Billy Bumps,” said Tess.

Again it sounded: “Ba-a-a! bla-a-a-t!” Tom Jonah barked. Sammy came
running over to them.

“Hear that old Billy goat?” he shouted. “I bet Tom Jonah’s treed him!”

He dived through the break in the hedge and perforce, because of their
curiosity, the little Corner House girls were drawn after him. There
they found both Tom Jonah and the boy dancing about a rather
savage-looking black-faced ram that had been tied to a stump and that
was now so wound up in his rope that he could do little but stamp his
hoofs and shake his horns at his tormentors.

“Oh, Sammy! don’t worry the poor goat,” begged Dot.

“Come here, Tom Jonah!” commanded Tess sternly, and the dog obeyed if
the boy did not.

“Aw, what’s the odds? He can’t get at us,” said Sammy, careless of both
his grammar and the ethics of the case. “And he’s only an old goat.”

“That is just horrid of you, Sammy Pinkney!” declared Tess. “Suppose it
was our own poor Billy Bumps?”

The girls, no more than the boy, did not recognize the difference
between the goat they knew well and the ram that they had never seen
before. The black-faced rogue had been tied because it was not safe to
let him run loose with the herd.

“We _must_ help him,” declared Tess, having made Tom Jonah go to the
rear. “We can’t leave him tied here to suffer—and all wound up in that
rope. If Neale were only here——”

“Oh, yes!” agreed Dot. “Neale would fix it all right.”

“Say,” declared Sammy, spurred to the quick, “_I_ ain’t afraid. If Neale
could do it, I guess I can. But just the same, I bet if we let him loose
he’ll chase us.”

“Oh, no! he wouldn’t do that, would he?” cried Dot.

“He wouldn’t be so ungrateful,” said Tess severely.

“Poor, poor old Billy,” cooed Dot, putting out her hand to the ram.

“He—he doesn’t look just like our goat; but I know he’s suffering,” Tess
declared.

The noise the ram made would naturally lead one to think that he was
suffering. If not urged on by this appearance, Sammy desired to make a
certain impression upon his companions. He walked boldly up to the stump
to which the ram was tethered. Things began to happen immediately! That
black-faced ram had no more idea of gratitude than a rattlesnake.

Sammy got two loops of the rope off the stump, and another off the ram’s
hind leg. The beast immediately put down its head and bumped Sammy just
as hard as he possibly could.

“Ow! Ouch!” yelled Sammy. “Get out, you mean thing!”

“Bla-a-at!” said the ram, and tried to charge again. Sammy attempted to
scramble out of the way; the little girls screamed; Tom Jonah began to
bark and to jump about the excited party.

The ram ran several times around the stump in the right direction to
unwind his rope; but in so doing he got Sammy and the rope entangled. In
a moment more the modern pirate was lashed to the post, yelling
vigorously, while the ram was brought to a stop again on too short a
rope to do the boy any damage with his ugly horns, although he
threatened Sammy continuously.

The screams of the three children and the barking of Tom Jonah was bound
to raise the neighborhood. A shout soon replied, and the screaming of
other youthful voices. Into the field at its far end came a man,
running, and close upon his heels several ragged and bare-legged
children, both boys and girls.

“What are ye doin’ there, ye little imps?” roared the man, bearing down
on the little Corner House girls and their unfortunate champion in a
very ugly way.

“Oh, _do_ help Sammy!” begged Tess, with clasped hands, of the ugly man.

[Illustration: “Oh, do help Sammy!” begged Tess, with clasped hands.]

Dot, hugging the Alice-doll closely, stared wonderingly at the horde of
little ragamuffins that came dancing and screeching to the scene of
Sammy’s disaster.

“Take him off, mister, an’ lemme get away,” cried Sammy. “I won’t never
do it again.”

It was so natural for Sammy Pinkney to be blamed in whatever situation
he found himself, that he offered his apologies at once. The ugly man
scowled down at him.

“I’d oughter let old Dewey lam’ you good,” he growled.

“Cut the rope and let old Dewey go for ’em, Uncle Jim!” yelled one of
the young savages.

At that both Tess and Dot burst into despairing wails. At the same
moment Neale O’Neil and Agnes burst through the bushes, having been
drawn to the spot by the uproar.

“Oh, Aggie!” shrieked Tess.

“Oh, Neale!” cried Dot.

Sammy pluckily held his tongue; but the way he looked at the bigger boy
belonging to the automobile party would have touched a much stonier
heart than that of Neale O’Neil.

“Keep away from here,” commanded the ugly man, to Neale.

“I guess not,” responded the boy sharply. “_You_ don’t seem to be doing
anything to help him.”

“What did he want to get tangled up with the ram for, then?” demanded
the fellow.

“He was trying to help the poor Billy goat,” Tess sobbed, from the
shelter of Agnes’ arms.

“You city folks are too fresh, anyhow,” cried one of the ragged
children. “We ought to stone you kids. Hadn’t we, Uncle Jim?”

But the man was busy with Neale. “Let that rope alone!” he commanded, as
the boy approached the entangled Sammy.

“Stand out of my way,” said Neale, taking out his pocketknife and
opening the big blade. “And run your old sheep out of here when I cut
him free.”

“Don’t you do that!” cried the man.

But with one stroke of the sharp blade Neale freed both the ram and
Sammy.

“Ba-a-a! Bla-a-a-t!” uttered the ram, and shook his horns threateningly
at Neale.

“Butt him, Dewey!” yelled the ragamuffins.

But Neale delivered a hearty kick that resounded upon the ram’s ribs.
With another blat the beast switched around, lowered his head, and
charged directly at the ugly man.

“Git out, ye derned nuisance!” yelled the fellow, and only by leaping
high and spreading wide his legs did he escape the ram’s furious charge.

Missing his object, the ram kept on across the field and, whooping, the
rag-and-bobtail crew strung along after him. The man remained to bluster
and threaten Neale for a while; but the boy from Milton paid very little
attention to him.

“Let’s go! Let’s go!” Agnes kept saying, and the little girls,
thoroughly frightened, kept urging the same thing.

But when they got down into the ravine again, and the ugly man was out
of sight, Agnes sent the trio of little folks ahead, and said to Neale:

“Do you know, Neale, who that horrid man was?”

“Huh?” grunted Neale, puzzled.

“Didn’t you see who he was when he stood right there before you?”

“Er—‘Hawkshaw, the detective’!” scoffed Neale, grinning widely.

“Don’t try to be funny,” implored Agnes. “Where were your eyes? _That_
was the man we saw the last time with Saleratus Joe, when they passed us
in that strange automobile,” declared the girl earnestly.

“No?” gasped Neale.