"'How do you know?' I asks him.
"'Well,' he says, 'they's a gang of over two hundred of these I-talian Blackhanders working right now on a sewer job something about two miles up the road. That's how I know,' he says. 'That's plain enough, ain't it? It's as plain as the back of my hand. What chance would them two defenceless little children have with a gang of two hundred Blackhanders?'
"But that looked foolish, even to me. 'Shucks!' I says. 'That don't stand to reason.' But then I got another scare. 'How about water?' I says. 'Any places round here they could fall into and get drownded?'
"He'd looked glum again when I said two hundred Blackhanders didn't sound reasonable; but he cheers up at this and says: 'Oh, yes; lots of places they could drownd—cricks and rivers and lakes and ponds and tanks—any number of places they could fall into and never come up again.' Say, he made that whole neighbourhood sound like Venice, Italy. You wondered how folks ever got round without gondolas or something. 'One of Dr. George F. Maybury's two kids was nearly drownded last Tuesday—only the older one saved him; a wonder it was they didn't have to drag the river and find 'em on the bottom locked in each other's arms! And a boy by the name of Clifford Something, only the other day, playing down by the railroad tracks—'
"I shut him off, you bet! I told him to get out quick and go to his home if he had one.
"'I certainly hope I won't have to read anything horrible in to-morrow's paper!' he says as he goes down the back stoop. 'Only last week they was a nigger caught—'
"I shut the door on him. Rattled good and plenty I was by then. Back comes this silly old gardener—he'd gone with his hoe and was still gripping it. The neighbours down that way hadn't seen the kids. Back comes Tillie. One neighbour where she'd been had seen 'em climb on to a street car—only it wasn't going downtown but into the country; and this neighbour had said to herself that the boy would be likely to let some one have it in the eye with his gun, the careless way he was lugging it.
"Thank the Lord, that was a trace! I telephoned to the police and told 'em all about it. And I telephoned for a motor car for me and got into some clothes. Good and scared—yes! I caught sight of my face in the looking-glass, and, my! but it was pasty—it looked like one of these cheap apple pies you see in the window of a two-bit lunch place! And while I'm waiting for this motor car, what should come but a telegram from Mr. W.B. himself saying that the aunt was worse and he would go to New Jersey himself for the night! Some said this aunt was worth a good deal more than she was supposed to be. And I not knowing the name of this town in Jersey where they would all be!—it was East Something or West Something, and hard to remember, and I'd forgot it.
"I called the police again and they said descriptions was being sent out, and that probably I'd better not worry, because they often had cases like this. And I offered to bet them they hadn't a case since Yonkers was first thought of that had meant so much spot cash to 'em as this one would mean the minute I got a good grip on them kids. So this cop said mebbe they had better worry a little, after all, and they'd send out two cars of their own and scour the country, and try to find the conductor of this street car that the neighbour woman had seen the kids get on to.
"I r'ared round that house till the auto come that I'd ordered. It was late coming, naturally, and nearly dark when it got there; but we covered a lot of miles while the daylight lasted, with the man looking sharp out along the road, too, because he had three kids of his own that would do any living thing sometimes, though safe at home and asleep at that minute, thank God!