“Keep your eye on the place, you fellows. About here, wasn’t it?”
He stopped the car, and they jumped out. Henry carried a bunghole light and they penetrated the woods, single file, shouting as they went. No answer came, but they kept on. Before they had gone very far, a pony whinnied.
“Hear that? We’re coming to something.”
They heard motors on the road behind, and shouts in answer to their shouts. Other fathers rushed in presently and joined them. Henry stopped and halted the entire line.
“Well, I’ll be blowed,” he said.
He swept the cleared place with his light, and they all crowded up behind him. A bed of ashes smouldered, and around it, in deep oblivion of well-earned sleep, lay thirteen blanketed braves, a trusty weapon—tomahawk or sword—at hand beside each sleeper.
The fathers descended upon them, and with difficulty aroused them to the capture. They were led, carried, or dragged to motors, and carted home. Isabelle borne between Henry and Matthews scarcely woke at all. In fact, when she woke in the morning to Miss Watts’s grieved expression, all memory of the transfer was gone.
“Oh, Isabelle,” said she, “how could you?”
The child struggled with her memories.
“Who found me?”