"If she'd kept up with me, she needn't have been afraid. Nothing would scare her if I—— Oh—oo—oo!"
With a frightened yell, he tripped over what appeared to be a long bundle, which, however, proved to be the legs of a sleeping tramp.
"Ye little varmint! Walkin' all over a man! I'd serve ye right if I tied yer arms an' legs tergether, and pitched yer down inter the valley beyant there!" howled the angry man, as he turned over for another nap.
Max, believing that the man was chasing him, raced down the steep hillside, stumbling over roots, and twigs that lay in his way, sliding on rolling stones, and catching at low hanging branches to save himself, he at last, from weariness, stumbled, and fell sprawling over a stump that the darkness had hidden.
It happened that Gwen, becoming a bit timid because of the shadows of twilight, had risen stiffly from her seat on a low rock, and was hastening after Max, when she heard the boy's shout, and then the angry words of the tramp, and quickly as she had come, she ran back to her perch upon the rock.
"Now, indeed, she was afraid."
Now, indeed, she was afraid. Alone on a wooded hilltop! Would she have to stay there all night? Would some one come for her? How would they know where she was?
She tried to think that Max, on reaching the house would tell of her plight, and urge someone to come for her, but she knew that Max was a coward, and that he never liked to tell anything that might cause others to blame him.
Meanwhile the tramp slept soundly. No thought of the frightened boy troubled his dreams, and of the little girl who had drawn back into the shadow of the trees, he knew nothing.