“How do you manage in the nights?” inquired her guest.
“That's bad about fair-times, when the wild young men get to racin' late along. The pole's been cut when I tied it down, and sometimes they've tried to jump it. But generally the travellers are peaceable enough. I've got a box in the front door like a letter-box, with a slit outside for them to drop change into, and the pole rope pulls down through the window-frame. There ain't so much travel by night as there used to be, and a body learns to be wakeful anyhow if they've ever had the care of sick old people.”
“You didn't say how you got scared,” remarked aunt Corinne, sitting straight in one of the yellow chairs to impress upon her mind the image of this heroine of the road.
“Well, it was robbers,” confessed the toll-woman, “breakin' into the house, that scared me.”
Robbers! Aunt Corinne's nephew mentally saw a cavern in one of the neighboring hills, and men in scarlet cloaks and feathers lurking among the bushes. If there is any word sweeter to the young male ear than Indian or Tagger, it is robbers.
“Are there many robbers around here?” he inquired, fixing intent eyes on the toll-woman.
“There used to be plenty of horse-thieves, and is, yet,” she replied. “They've come huntin' them from away over in Illinois. I remember that year the milk-sick was so bad there was more horse-thieves than we've ever heard of since.”
“But they ain't true robbers, are they?” said aunt Corinne's nephew in some disgust, his scarlet bandits paling.
“Not the kind that come tryin' the house when I got scared,” admitted the toll-woman.
“And did they get in?” exclaimed Robert Day's aunt.