"I say," cried Tim suddenly, "they're covering him up. They're hiding him better so that we shan't find him. We've got too warm."
How long they had been in that ditch when the boy exclaimed no one could tell; perhaps a lifetime, or perhaps an age only. It was long enough, at any rate, for the Tramp to have changed visibly in appearance—he looked younger, thinner, sprightlier, more shining. He seemed to have shed a number of outward things that made him bulky—bits of beard and clothing, several extra waistcoats, and every scrap of straw and stuff from the hedges that he wore at first. More and more he looked as Judy had seen him, ages and ages ago, emerging from the tarpaulin on the rubbish-heap at the End of the World.
He sprang alertly to his feet at the sound of Tim's exclamation. The sunlit morning seemed to spring up with him.
"We have been very warm indeed," he sang, "but we shall get warmer still before we find him. Besides, those things aren't hiding him—they're looking. Everything and everybody in the whole wide world is looking, but the signs are different for everybody, don't you see? Each knows and follows their own particular sign. Come on!" he cried, "come on and look! We shall find him in the end."
COME-BACK STUMPER'S SIGN
VI
The steep bank was easily managed. They were up it in a twinkling, a line of dancing figures, all holding hands.
First went the Tramp, shining and glowing like a mirror in the sunshine—fire surely in him; next Judy, almost flying with the joy and lightness in her—as of air; Tim barely able to keep tight hold of her hand, so busily did his feet love the roots and rabbit-holes of—earth; and finally, Uncle Felix, rolling to and fro, now sideways, now toppling headlong, roaring as he followed like a heavy wave. Fire, air, earth, and water—they summarised existence; owned and possessed the endless day; lived it, were one with it. Their leader, who apparently had swallowed the sun, fused and unified them in this amazing way with—fire.
And hardly had they passed the line of shy forget-me-nots on the top of the bank, than they ran against a curious looking object that at first appeared to be an animated bundle of some kind, but on closer inspection proved to be a human figure stooping. It was somebody very busy about the edges of a great clump of bramble bushes. At the sound of their impetuous approach it straightened up. It had the face of a man—yellowish, patched with red, breathless and very hot. It was Come-back Stumper.
He glared at them, furious at being disturbed, yet with an uneasy air, half comical, half ashamed, as of being—caught. He took on a truculent, aggressive attitude, as though he knew he would have to explain himself and did not want to do so. He turned and faced them.