“Father, there’s Flossie coming to open the gate; poor little girl, how lame she is!” Gertrude said, five minutes later, as the horses trotted swiftly down the last stretch of cleared cornland toward the house, which stood with its back to a forest-clad hill. Her eyes had caught sight of a diminutive figure coming, with a series of bobbing jerks, over the ground to open the field gate.
“She is lame, but she is uncommon useful, poor little maid, and has taken baby off your mother’s hands entirely, ever since the boys got sick,” Abe answered, with a sigh.
Flossie was nine, and suffered from some kind of hip trouble, which prevented her from going to school, or sharing the sports and pleasures of the other children, yet she was a very happy little maiden usually, despite these drawbacks, and home owed more of its brightness to her than any one would have suspected. But Flossie was under a shadow this morning, and, seeing the mute distress on the little sister’s face, Gertrude braced herself to a great effort of self-forgetfulness, and determined to be as brave as she could, for the sake of the others.
CHAPTER VI
A Strange Welcome
NELL was very tired. Since early morning she had tramped steadily, pursuing that apparently unending trail. Sometimes the way had been up steep ascents, over high ridges, where big boulders stuck up among the trees; then it would drop to lower ground, and skirt wide swamps, in one of which Dick Bronson’s horse had come to its untimely end.
But from the open ground of the last ridge she had crossed, Nell had caught sight of what looked like a cultivated field right ahead, and she was walking on with more hope now that she might reach a house of some kind before night fell, and so be saved the weird experience of spending a night alone in the open.
Several times she had walked to Button End and back again to the Lone House in a day, which was a distance of twenty miles, so her long journey on this occasion had not been so tiring to her as it would have been to any one less accustomed to very long tramps.
It was thirty miles from Blue Bird Ridge to the nearest settlement on the long trail, Doss Umpey used to say; and Nell was beginning to wonder how near she was to that settlement, when she came to a broader cross trail, which showed recent wheel marks.
A few minutes she stood hesitating which way to take, then her quick eye caught sight of a handful of straws caught on a bush.