“I am giving you exactly what Tom Tit and I were to have. I only tripled the quantity,” said their host, as they drew up the chairs to the great table.
“Then we aren’t so very much trouble?” asked Lil.
“Trouble! Why, my dear young lady, Tom Tit and I would not live on this thoroughfare if we did not love visitors.”
“Thoroughfare!” gasped Lucy. Maybe the old gentleman was daffy.
“Why, certainly! You don’t know how many things happen in the mountains. Someone is always turning up. Eh, Tom Tit?”
“Yes, indeed! We uns finds something every day. One time it was a baby fox and one time it was a man in ugly striped pants.”
“He means our convict. It was a poor fellow who had escaped from a road gang and took refuge in the mountains and Tom Tit found him almost starved to death. We fed him up until he could go back to work.”
“You didn’t give him up!” asked Frank, his eyes flashing.
“Oh, no; he gave himself up. I got him to tell me just exactly why he was put in the penitentiary, and since his crime surely warranted some punishment, I made him understand that the best thing for him to do was go back to his road making and expiate his crime. That was much better than being hounded for the rest of his time. What do you think about it?”