Again the stranger demanded:
"Who is that girl? Where did you get her? Is she deaf and dumb—or just a plain everyday fool?"
"Dunno, stranger. Give it up," said Jim, at the same time managing to nudge Dorothy unperceived, by way of hint that that suggested deaf-and-dumbness might serve them well.
The man who was quizzing them so sharply had been riding a spirited horse, which now began to prance about the lane in a dangerous way, and for the moment distracted his attention from the children. Indeed, in order to quiet the animal he had to mount and race it up and down for a time, though he by no means intended to leave that place until he had satisfied himself whether this were or were not the missing little girl, of whose disappearance all the papers were now so full. If it were and five hundred dollars depended on her rescue from that country bumpkin—he was the man for the rescue! Being none other than a suburban "constable" with a small salary, as well as a local horse jockey, exercising a rich gentleman's new hunter—also for hire.
As he galloped past them, to and fro, Dorothy grew more and more frightened and ill. Her long sleep in her water-soaked clothing, added to the pain in her foot and her lack of food, affected her seriously; and a bed with warm blankets and hot drinks was what she needed just then. Finally, when to the thud of the racer's feet there also sounded the rumble of approaching wheels, she felt that her doom was sealed and let her tears stream freely over her wan, dirt-streaked cheeks.
Jim, also, felt a shiver of fear steal through his long limbs, and instinctively drew his young charge closer to him, resolved to protect her to the last. But, as the wheels drew nearer, there was mingled with their rumble the notes of a good old hymn, and presently both wheels and music came to an abrupt halt before the hedge and the forlorn pair half-hidden in it.
"Why, bless my heart! Younkers, where'd you hail from? and why should a pretty little girl be crying on the first Sunday morning in June? When everything else in God's dear world is fairly laughing with joy! Why, honey, little one—what—what—what!"
It was a tiny, very rickety gig from which the singer had leaped with the agility of youth, though his head was almost white, and green goggles covered his faded old eyes; and he had not finished speaking before he had climbed upon the bank to the hedge and had put his fatherly arms around the sobbing Dorothy.
She opened her own eyes long enough to see that benignant, grizzled countenance close to her, and—in an instant her arms had clasped about the stranger's neck! With the unerring instinct of childhood she knew a friend at first glance, and she clung to this man as if she would never let him go, while the astonished Jim looked on, fairly gasping for the breath that he at last emitted in the one word: "P-s-h-a-w!!" Here was another phase of that changeable creature—girl! To cry her eyes out at sight of one stranger and to fling herself headlong into the arms of another—not half so good looking!
Leaning back among the vines and coolly folding his arms, the farm-boy resigned himself to whatever might come next. He had most carefully planned all their trip "home" and not a single detail of it had followed his plan. "Give it up!" he remarked for the second time, and was immediately answered by the old man: