"Well, I don't mean to say I'll camp down in the road. But you fellers listen to me. If the detectives are out after us, an' I s'pose, of course, they are, we sha'n't be any safer twenty miles away than in this very spot. We've got to stop sometime, an' it may as well be now. I promised to go back to see the princess in two days, an' I'll keep my word."
"But where'll you stay all that time?" Dan asked, as if believing this was a question which could not be satisfactorily answered.
"I don't know yet; but I'm thinkin' of goin' up to that house," and Joe pointed to a tiny cottage, which in the gloom could be but dimly seen amid a clump of trees. "There's a light in the window, so of course the folks are awake. I'll ask 'em if they haven't got work enough about the place sich as I could do to pay my board over one day, an' if they say no, I'll try at the next house."
"You might as well go right into jail as do a thing like that," Dan said, angrily.
"I ain't so sure but it would have been a good deal better if I had, for by this time the princess would be with her folks, where she belongs."
"It seems to me you're terribly stuck on that kid."
"Well, what if I am!" and Joe spoke so sharply that Master Fernald did not think it wise to make any reply.
During fully a moment the three stood silently in the road looking at each other, and then Joe asked of Master Plummer:
"Will you come with me?"
The possibility of resting his tired limbs in a regular bed appealed strongly to the fat boy, and, understanding that he was about to agree to Joe's proposition, Dan said, gloomily: