“Neighbor, I’m getting up a posse to hunt a little girl that’s been lost. It’s mighty important that we get under way inside of an hour at the farthest. Will you join us?”
“Now you just make up your mind I will, man. But first I want to know why she’s lost, and who wants her, and what’s to be done with her after she’s found. I’ve known of cases where it was better to be lost than found. What say?”
“I say what you say is true, sir! It would be a heap better for that there little girl to die on the mountains alone than to be picked up by the folks she’s run away from. But I don’t want them to get her, and I don’t want her to die on the mountain side, for there’s happiness a-coming to her if only I can put my hands on her and take her back to them that’s waiting for her.”
Mr. Summers was at last untangled from the table and he came forward holding out that great hearty hand which had put faith and hope into many weary hearts.
“Now, neighbor, you do me the honor to enter and be seated, if you please. I want to get the rights of this story before I do anything. And don’t think you’re wasting time, for I give you my word that you’re saving it, and that as soon as I find this is a thing we all ought to enlist in, I’ll have the whole town about us—baying at our heels, sir—and it will be view and halloo with us.”
Haystack Thompson shifted his violin to his other arm, and ran a long tongue over his lips. Then he looked over his man.
“You the preacher?” he asked.
“Right you are.”
He came in then, and at Mrs. Summer’s invitation to draw his chair up to the breakfast table, did so, and ate while he told his story. From time to time the Rev. Absalom consulted his wife Barbara. He had a way of lifting an eyebrow or half closing an eye, that was a code of signals in itself; and she had her own swift ways of answering. So that by the time Haystack was through with his story, both Mr. and Mrs. Summers had decided what to do.
“You show him,” said Mr. Summers. So Mrs. Barbara arose and beckoned their visitor.