The men gathered around her, with the exception of the Muggletonian, who, after audibly comparing her to the Witch of Endor, turned on his side and drew his cap over his eyes as if to shut out the hated sight. The convict took up the staff and began to pull from it the strings of ivy.
"Put it down!" she said quickly.
The man continued to strip it of its leafy mantle.
"Put it down, can't you?" said the youth. "She never lets any one touch it. She says an angel gave it to her to help her on her way."
With a snarling laugh the convict threw it from him with all his force. Whirling through the air it struck the water midway from shore to shore. Margery sprang to her feet with a loud cry. The boy rose also.
"D—n you!" he said, wrathfully. "I'd like to break it over your misshapen back! Here, Margery, don't fret. I 'll get it for you."
He ran to the bank, dived into the water, and in three minutes was back with the dripping mass in his arms. He gave it into Margery's hands, saying kindly while he shook himself like a large spaniel; "There! it is n't hurt a mite!"
With a cry of delight Margery seized the "angel's gift" and kissed the hand that restored it. Then she turned upon the convict.
"When I go back to my cabin in the woods," she said, solemnly, and with her finger up, "I shall whistle all the fairy folk into a ring, all the elves and the pixies, and the little brown gnomes who burrow in the leaves and look for all the world like pine cones, and I shall tell them what you did, and to-night they will come to your cabin, and will pinch you black and blue, and stick thorns into you, and rub you with the poison leaf until you are blotched and swelled like the great bull frog that croaks, croaks, in these marshes."
There was an uneasy ring in the convict's laugh, full of bravado as he meant it to be. Margery continued with an ominously extended forefinger. "And then they will fly to the great house where the master lies sleeping, and they will whisper to him that you took away the angel's gift from poor, lost Margery, and he will be angry, for he is good to Margery, and to-morrow he will make Woodson do to you what he did to-day to the Breaking Heart."