Olive, grievously disappointed, stood on the steps, watching her big sister set off up the road. She saw Dorcas take the righthand turn at the fork. The baby's face cleared. Now she knew in which direction Dorcas was going. That fork led to the Glen. And the Glen was a favorite Sunday afternoon ramble for Link and Chum. Olive knew that, because she and Dorcas more than once had walked thither to meet them.
Olive was pleasantly forgetful of her parents' positive command that she refrain from walking alone on the motor-infested Sunday roads. She set off at a fast jog trot over the nearby hill, on whose other side ran the Glen road.
Link Ferris, with Chum at his heels, was tramping moodily toward the Glen. As he turned into the road he paused in his sullen walk. There, strolling unconcernedly, some yards in front of him, was a tall girl in white. Her back was toward him. Yet he would have recognized her at a hundred times the distance. Chum knew her, too, for he wagged his tail and started at a faster trot to overtake her.
"Back!" called Link.
Purposely he spoke as low as possible. But the dog heard and obeyed. The girl, too, started a little, and made as if to turn. Just then ensued a wild crackling in the thick roadside bushes which lined the hillside from highway to crest. And a white-clad little bunch of humanity came galloping jubilantly out into the road, midway between Dorcas and Link.
At the road edge Olive's stubby toe caught in a noose of blackberry vine. As the youngster was running full tilt, her own impetus sent her rolling over and over into the center of the dusty turnpike.
Before she could get to her feet or even stop rolling, a touring car came round the bend, ten yards away—a car that was traveling at a speed of something like forty-five miles an hour, and whose four occupants were singing at the top of their lungs.
Link Ferris had scarce time to tense his muscles for a futile spring—Dorcas's scream of helpless terror was still unborn—when the car was upon the prostrate child.
And in the same fraction of a second a furry catapult launched itself across the wide road at a speed that made it look like tawny blur.
Chum's mad leap carried him to the baby just as the car's fender hung above her. A slashing grip of his teeth in the shoulder of her white dress and a lightning heave of his mighty neck and shoulders—and the little form was hurtling through the air and into the weed-filled wayside ditch.