The proposal, however, alarmed them, for they had expected something very different. To stuff the keyhole, run away and hide, or at least to barricade the fence was what he ought to have advised. Instead of this they heard the very opposite. The excitement became intense. For them a tramp meant danger, robbery with violence, intoxication, awful dirt, and an under-the-bed-at-midnight kind of terror. It was so long since they had seen the tramp—their own tramp—that they had forgotten his existence.
"They'll kill us at once," said Maria, using the plural with the comprehensive and anticipatory vision of the child.
"They're harmless as white mice," said her Uncle quickly, "once you know how to treat them, and full of adventures too. I do," he added with decision, referring to the treatment. And he stepped down to unbar the gate.
The children, breathless with interest, watched him go. On the trunk, of course, they felt comparatively safe, for it was "home"; but none the less the "girls" drew up their skirts a little, and Tim felt premonitory thrills run up his spidery legs into his spine. The wallflowers shook their tawny heads as a sudden breath of wind swept past them across the End of the World. It seemed an age before the audacious thing was accomplished and the door swung wide into the road outside. Uncle Felix might so easily have been stabbed or poisoned or suffocated—but instead they saw a shabby, tangled figure come shuffling through that open gate upon a cloud of dust.
"Quick! he's a perjured man!" cried Judy, remembering a newspaper article. "Shut the gate!" She sprang down to help. "He'll be arrested for a highway violence and be incarc-"
There was confusion in her mind. She felt pity for this woebegone shadow of a human being, and terror lest the Policeman, who lived on the white, summery high road, would catch him and send him to the gallows before he was safe inside. Her love was ever with the under dog.
There was a rush and a scramble, the gate was shut, and the Tramp stood gasping before them in the enchanted sanctuary of the End of the World.
"He's ours!" exclaimed Judy. "It's our old tramp!"
"Be very polite to him," Uncle Felix had time to whisper hurriedly, seeing that all three stood behind him. "He's a great Adventurer and a Wanderer too."