Tom came forward. "No, you won't stay," he said. "We are going to take the old man, too. Where is he?"
"In there by the fire. Oh, Cousin Tom, who says he is to go, and where are you going to take him? What's become of Daniella, and has anything happened to her mother?"
"One question at a time, please. It is all right about the old gentleman, so don't you bother. The first thing to do is to get him ready, and then there'll be time to answer your questions on the way home. I've brought an old army overcoat to wrap him up in, for I didn't suppose we should find much here, from what Polly said."
The bewildered old man was soon bundled into the carriage. He whimpered like a child at being taken from the cabin, and kept saying over and over, "I'm innercent, I'm innercent. I never took no hand in the business."
"He probably imagines we are sheriffs after him for a moonshiner," said Tom. "Poor old chap!" He tried to reassure the old man but found it was no use, and after a while he lapsed into silence, seeming to find comfort alone in the supposed fact that his granddaughter was with him.
On the way down the mountain, Nan learned of all that had happened since morning, and kept up such a running fire of questions and comments as made Tom declare she must have been all day thinking them up.
She felt that she had been away for weeks when at last they stopped before her own door. Was it only that morning that they had started out to take the red jacket to Daniella?
Mary Lee and the twins rushed out to meet her, full of the day's happenings. "Daniella's here," cried Mary Lee.
"Yes, and she's been to see her mother at the hospital," said Jack.
"And her mother is crite ill," put in Jean. "Cousin Polly says she can't take any food except licrids because she has such a fever. She was hurt awfully, but she told Cousin Polly they couldn't have done more for her if she had been a creen."