"Oh, father!" he gasped. "Don't, don't be angry with me!"
"I am not angry, Theodore," Mr. Barton said, pressing a kiss on the boy's hot brow, and taking his uninjured hand. "Try not to excite yourself. Don't think of what you've gone through more than you can possibly help, for it's all over now."
"But Jack!" Theodore cried wildly. "Oh, father, he is lost on the moor."
"No, dear Theodore, he is not," was the reassuring answer. "He is at Blackburn Farm, and in bed and asleep by this time, I do not doubt. You need not trouble about Jack."
An expression of intense relief crossed Theodore's face. "I don't understand," he said feebly. "I thought—I feel so queer—I suppose it must have been a dream, but I thought Jack had fallen into a bog."
"No, no; you managed to get caught in a fox-gin though, and hurt your poor hand. See, it is bandaged. But Jack is perfectly safe and sound."
"Really and truly?" Theodore asked, wistfully.
"Really and truly," his father answered, earnestly. "I don't believe I ought to let you talk. Are you comfortable? I think you'll have to spend the night here—if you will be so good as to let him remain," Mr. Barton added, turning to Miriam, who was standing by.
"The little gentleman is welcome," she replied with that simple courtesy which is so often an attribute of the gipsy race.
"She has been very kind," Theodore told his father. "I think she is a very grand person although she is a gipsy. She says her great-great-grandfather was a king."