[#] Hungry.
"Us had better get home and tell about her."
They pushed on for a quarter of a mile, and then Samson had another idea.
"We'm nearer 'Meavy Cot' than anywheers," he said. "Us had better go and tell David. 'Tis his job to look after Madge, I should think--him being her husband."
"'I'm cruel tired," answered Richard; "and as 'tis we shall catch it pretty hot for being such a deuce of a time."
"'We'll leave the basket here, and just run down and then come back for it. And as to catching it, we shall catch it worse if we don't tell David, and he comes to hear about it after Madge has sloped off."
"You go, and I'll bide here and keep guard over the basket," suggested Dick; but Samson would not have this.
"No," he answered firmly, "I'm not going without you. You know very well us can't do nought apart."
They left the basket on the top of a wall and turned back and reached 'Meavy Cot.' Then they told David that Madge was by Crazywell, and much to their disappointment, he seized his hat and rushed from the house before they had time to give any description of their remarkable conversation with her. Rhoda was not in, and finding themselves alone, the boys sought the larder and ventured to eat heartily. Then they went on their way, cheered at consciousness of well-doing and the reward of well-doing.
All that David had heard was how his brothers had met with Madge by Crazywell. More he did not stop to learn; and when some time afterwards he stood by the pool, tramped its shores and shouted Margaret's name until the hollowed cup of the little tarn echoed, he judged that the children had been mistaken in the darkness and imagined that some other was Madge. Because he saw no sign of her and heard no answer to his cries. For a time he wandered through the night and splashed along the fringes of the pool; then he abandoned the search, groped his way upwards, and returned home.