CHAPTER XXVII. A NIGHT PICTURE OF HOME.
Here at last was the robber. After you have given over expecting a robber, and even feel that you can do without him, to find him stealing up in the night when you are camped in a lonely place and not near enough either tent or wagon to wake the other sleepers for reinforcements, is trying to the nerves.
Bobaday sat up in the carriage, bracing his courage for the emergency. He could take a cushion, jump out and attack the man with that. It was not a deadly weapon, and would require considerable force back of it to do damage. The whip might be better. He reached for the whip and turned the handle uppermost. There was no cave at hand to trap this robber in, but a toll-woman should not show more spirit than Robert Day Padgett in the moment of peril.
Though the robber advanced cautiously, he struck his foot against a root or two, and stumbled, making the horse take irregular steps also, for he was leading his horse with the bridle over his arm.
And he came directly up to the carriage. Robert grasped the whip around the middle with both hands, but some familiar attitude in the stranger's dim outline made him lower it.
“Bobby,” said the robber, speaking guardedly, “are you in here?”
“Pa Padgett,” exclaimed Robert Day, “is that you?”
“Hush! Yes. It's me, of course. Don't wake your grandma. Old folks are always light sleepers.”
Pa Padgett reached into the carriage, shook hands with his boy, and kissed him. How good the bushy beard felt against Bobaday's face.