“Papa!—bad man!—Immy!”
“What? where? when?”
“Just now—me and Immy play in the Tarn—big man comes—says to Immy—‘Hello, little girl!’ She don’t say anything. He comes up closeter. He reaches out. She cries—runs—he runs—grabs Immy. I run and pound him with my fists and he won’t let go. He kicked me into the Tarn. Yes, he did so! Then he runs away with Immy.
“Who was it, do you know?”
“Jud Lasher.”
RoBards gave his horse a swift long slash with the whip and the carry-all went into the yard on two wheels. He flung the lines on the horses’ backs and, leaping across the wheel, ran madly past the house and up the shaggy hillside toward the place that he and Patty called “the Mystic Tarn.”
The boy followed, stumbling, holding his hand to his side where the little heart thumped. His young eyes were aghast with the awe of a terror beyond his ken.
CHAPTER XIX
Back of the house and above it on a hilltop too rocky for clearing, too rough for pasture even, was a little pool ringed around with huge boulders. No one could explain them, though the Indians had believed that they had been hurled in a battle of giants.
Tall trees stood up among them and canopied the pool with such shadow that on the hottest days there was a chill there.