"Ay!" assented Bambo, earnestly, solemnly. It was not of the tea he was thinking, however, but of the deep satisfaction and gratitude with which he would hand over his charges to their proper guardians. "And now you must try and sleep a while, sonny, like missy here. See, lie down on this nice dry place, and you can lean your head on Bambo's knee."
"You must rest too," coaxed Darby sweetly. "You are so good to us, yet you never think of yourself. Wait, see if we won't take care of you when we go to Firgrove! Aunt Catharine will soon cure your cough. She's fine for doctoring, though she is so—so—"
"Don't fret about me, sonny; I'll rest plenty by-and-by, never you fear," and with that strange smile lighting up his pale, plain face, a smile which to look upon—only now it was too dark—made Darby feel as if he were in church or had newly finished saying his prayers, the dwarf watched until the little lad's heavy eyelids drooped over his tired eyes.
Soon he would have been, like Joan, fast asleep. Bambo also was hovering on the undefined borderland, when the sound of footsteps from the field above the kiln caught his quick ear, and with a sudden jerk of his great head he sat up to listen. At the same time a flare of light from a lantern streamed over the top of the kiln, and loud, angry voices rose upon the still night air in quarrelsome tones.
"I ain't goin' prowlin' about here no longer, Joe Harris, I tell ee," said Moll shrilly. "I've tramped at yer heel for the last twelve hours a'most, till I'm ready to drop, an' now you'd keep folks from their proper sleep all for nought!"
"Stow yer cheek, I say, or it'll be the worse for you," growled Mr. Harris savagely. "I'm goin' to fin' them kids an' that rascally imp o' a dwarf wherever they are, an' you're goin' to help me. They come this way, right enough—there's no mistake about that—an' where else would they be but here? There's not another spot they could shelter for miles an' miles."
"Fin' 'em, then, if you can!" snapped Moll sharply. "Anyhow, I'm goin' away to my bed like a decent Christ'an woman. Come along, Joe, do," she urged, with a swift change of tone. "You can have another look roun' in the mornin' if you must. But if you'd take my biddin'—only that's what you never do—you'd let 'em go back where they come from."
"Shut up!" commanded Joe, in the same savage tone as before. "Haven't I told you agin an' agin that I'll never let 'em escape—not if we were to swing for't!" he added grandly. Then he went on in a wheedling sort of way. "Here, old girl, take the lantern an' look down below there; you've sharper sight nor me. Pullen, he says as there's a tumble-down lime-kiln in that hollow. Bambo ud hardly hit on't; but it's best to make sure."
Moll snatched the lantern from her lord's hand with an extremely bad grace, and an exclamation which sounded very like "Bad luck to Pullen an' the Traveller's Delight!" For she heartily disliked the mission upon which they were bound—the recovery of the captives. Having had frequent experience of her husband's furious temper and the weight of his fists, she dared not directly refuse to aid him; but from the bottom of her heart she hoped the two sweet innocents would never fall into his clutches again.
"Better for them to be dead!" muttered Moll passionately, as, lantern in hand, she nimbly slid down the shiny wet slope to the lime-kiln. "The little lass, leastways," she added in a softer voice. And as the memory of Joan's freely-bestowed kiss fell upon the woman's half-awakened heart like the touch of an angel's finger, a tear trembled on her long black lashes, and a wordless prayer winged its way through the inky darkness of the murky sky—a prayer which in heaven was understood to indicate a struggling soul's yearning after better things.