The Corner House Girls on a Tour / Where they went, what they saw, and what they found

“Mr. Owl,” said Tess, promptly. “You know you’ve heard about owls, Dot Kenway!”

“But—but I didn’t know they could talk,” breathed the smallest Corner House girl, with a sigh. “Tessie, I can’t walk any farther,” she suddenly announced. “It isn’t only that funny bone in my back; but my ankles are breaking right off—so now!”

“But—but there isn’t any good place for us to stop till our automobile comes along,” hesitated Tess.

“I don’t care, Tess Kenway! I’ve got to stop!”

That settled it. At the edge of the dark wood the two little girls crept up on a grassy bank, between two roots of a great tree, sheltered at the back by a thick brush clump, and there they sat, clinging to each other’s hand.

They were too frightened to talk. Too alarmed even to weep any more.

Around them, when they were still, scurried the little creatures of the night—the field mice, and the moles, perhaps, and the baby rabbits, and other small animals who shiver—as Dot did—when the great owl swoops low, crying his eternal question:

“Who? Who-o? Who-o-o shall I take for supper?”

The small fry of the fields and woods tremble at that cry more than did the two lost Corner House girls.

There may have been other enemies of the helpless, furry little animals lurking near, too—the weasel, the polecat, the ferret; even a red fox might have wandered that way and joined the bright-eyed company that kept watch and ward over two sleepy, sobbing children.

But nothing harmful was near them and, finally, Tess and Dot Kenway slept as sweetly and as soundly as though they were in their own beds in the old Corner House in Milton.

CHAPTER XIII—THE GREEN AND ORANGE PETTICOAT

The dog whined and lay down, panting. Indeed, it did seem as though there was nothing more to do here. The children, whether they had wandered away or had been carried off, certainly were not in the vicinity.

“Two hours have been wasted,” said Mrs. Heard; “although we did not know we were wasting them, of course. We had to do what we could toward finding the children near by. But now we must waste no more hours. We must get help.”

“Oh! what help?” cried Agnes.

“We must run to the next town—Frog Hollow,” said Neale, in an undertone“—and get the constable or sheriff or somebody. We must start a crowd with lanterns to beat the woods. Maybe somebody has seen the children. They may be safe already in somebody’s house.”

“Or in the police station,” put in Sammy Pinkney. “I got lost once and that’s where they found me. Of course, I was a kid then. The cops was real good to me. One of ’em bought me ten cents worth of butter-scotch—you know, that awful, sticky, pully candy, Neale. And when my father come I couldn’t holler to him ’cause my teeth was all stuck up.”

“I bet that cop gave you the candy on purpose to shut your mouth,” growled Neale. “You were talking them to death, it is probable.”

“Oh, dear, me!” cried Agnes, “don’t let us just talk; let’s do something.”

“Mrs. Heard is quite right, I can see,” Ruth observed, recovered now in a measure from her first panic. “We must ask the authorities to help us. I should have been more careful.”

“Why, Ruth,” said the chaperone, “don’t blame yourself. How could you have foreseen this?”

“I should not have allowed them out of my sight without Tom Jonah with them,” the oldest Corner House girl declared. “Nor will I again on this trip, you may be sure.”

“Come on, now,” growled Neale, who felt very much disturbed about the loss of the little girls but who, boy like, did not wish to show his feelings. “Come on, now; we’ve talked enough. Let’s do something. Get in here, Tom Jonah—you useless old thing! You’re not half a dog or you’d have been able to follow ’em.”

The big Newfoundland, with drooping flag and sheepish look, scrambled into the front of the car. So did Sammy. The automobile started and they sped away toward Frog Hollow, or Arbutusville, each revolution of the wheels taking them farther and farther from the lost children, sleeping under the great tree at the edge of the distant wood lot.

The automobile party were to spend a very anxious night—much more so than Tess and Dot Kenway, who had sobbed themselves to sleep among the huge tree-roots. Their sylvan couch was soft; the night was warm; and not a thing disturbed them after their eyes were shut.

A fretful bird, crying in the dusk of early dawn, aroused Dot for a moment; but she found Tess beside her, so went off to sleep again without realizing that she was not in her own bed at home.

Dawn soon smeared her pink finger-prints along the gray horizon. Other birds sleepily awoke. The morning breeze rustled the leaves, which took up their eternal gossip again just where it had ceased when the night wind died.

One morning call after another resounded through the forest patch. The light grew stronger and the tiny, furry things crept away to bed. The owl had long since ceased his querulous call. A feathered martinet that had at intervals, all the night long, declared for the castigation of “poor Will,” pitched for a last time upon a dead limb at the edge of the wood and shouted forty-three times in succession: “Whip-poor-will!” without awakening Tess and Dot Kenway.

They slept on as day broke and the World yawned and threw off the coverlet of night to hop out of bed. The first red ray of the sun finally slanted over the tree-tops and struck right into the face and eyes of the smallest Corner House girl.

“Oh, my! I don’t like that sun,” complained Dot. “Mo—move over, Tess Kenway.”

Tess’ eyes popped open and she was immediately wide awake, while Dot was still snuggling down and trying to go to sleep again.

“Well, Dot Kenway!” exclaimed the older girl, “do you know what we’ve done?”

“No-o,” mumbled Dot.

“Why! we’ve slept all through the night.”

“Aw—ri’,” Dot said, with very little interest.

“And do you know where we are?” pursued the lively Tess.

“I—I——Oh! is it time to get up?” yawned Dot.

Then she opened her eyes, too, and saw what Tess saw—the curve of the shaded road stretching away into the wood. The two little girls had been well sheltered under the thick umbrella of the tree; but in the open the grass blades sparkled with dew.

Birds hopped about, hunting their breakfasts—big, fat robins in their red vests; a chattering jay that flirted his topknot knowingly as he peered at the two Corner House girls; a clape, running spirals around a neighboring tree trunk like a little striped mouse, and looking at the children with interest. Across a broken wall a red squirrel ran—that pirate of his tribe. A rabbit started suddenly from his form in the grass, and, with a resounding thump or two, shot off across the field as though hearing a sudden call to breakfast at his house. The stirring of the little girls stirred everything else here to sudden activity.

“Why, dear me, Tess Kenway,” gasped Dot, “we—we didn’t get home, did we?”

“I guess we didn’t,” cried Tess, getting up quickly.

“Oh! nor we didn’t find the automobile,” added Dot, the memory of what had happened returning quickly. “Why, Tess! we’re lost.”

“Well, I guess we are,” admitted her sister. “I thought Ruth and Agnes and the others were lost; but I guess it’s us, after all, who don’t know where we are.”

“Wha—what’ll we do?” asked Dot, yawning again, and scarcely alert enough yet to appreciate the serious side of the situation.

“Well! we needn’t be afraid of anything now that it’s daylight. Come along, Dot—let’s find a brook,” said the practical Tess. “I want to wash my face.”

“We haven’t any towels,” objected Dot, trotting along the road beside her sister. “Nor any soap, Tess.”

“Why! what do you suppose the squirrels and the rabbits and all the other woodsy things do for towels and soap?” demanded Tess, briskly. “I guess water’s clean; it’ll wash you.”

“And our teeth-brushes, Tess?”

Tess overcame even that seemingly insurmountable difficulty. After they had found the brook—a quiet brown pool beside the road—and had bathed their faces and hands, Tess broke a twig and chewed the end to a brush-like swab, and so brushed her teeth thoroughly. Dot followed her example, and laughed.

“We are two wild girls,” she declared. “We haven’t any home—nor anything. That is, for a little while,” she added, rather doubtful as to how this new game would “pan out.”

“Why, when our clothes wear out we’ll have to make new ones. And for Alice, too.”

“How?” asked Tess, in turn curious. “What out of?”

“Oh, we’ll weave new dresses out of grass and leaves, and trim them with flowers,” declared the smallest girl, gaily.

“Well, so we could,” agreed Tess, catching fire from her sister’s enthusiasm.

“Of course. And shoes——”

“Oh, I know!” Tess cried. “We’d find rushes beside the pond and weave basket-work sandals to wear ‘stead of shoes. And we might weave hats—like the Chinese do. And we’d build ourselves a house, and thatch it all over to keep the rain out—”

Dot had suddenly grown silent and allowed Tess to do all the talking. Tess looked at the smallest Corner House girl quickly. Dot’s lips were puckered into a pout and her dark eyes were filling rapidly.

“What is the matter now, dear?” Tess asked, tenderly.

“Do—don’t let’s talk about it any more,” choked Dot. “Besides, I’m hungry.”

Tragedy stalked into the situation right then and there. They had no more imagination to waste upon the supposed life of a “wild girl.” The principal question was: How were two little girls, fast becoming “wild,” to eat?

They were walking along the road again when Tess suddenly spied something which brought a cry of delight from her lips.

“Look! Look, Dot!” she said. “What’s on those bushes?”

The bushes in question overhung the bank above their heads.

“Oh, Dot! aren’t those blueberries?” the older girl added.

“Of course they are, Tess Kenway,” agreed her sister. “My, I could eat just bushels of ’em.”

They scrambled up the bank and climbed the wall. Not only was there this clump of berry bushes which they had first sighted; but back of the wall was a great field, rocky and barren otherwise, but a fine berry pasture.

Farther out where the sun shone, the berries were larger and more had ripened. The little girls went on and on, picking the berries in handfuls and actually cramming them into their mouths. They were very hungry.

Their fingers and lips became stained; and if the truth were told some of the crushed berries left stains upon their mussed frocks as well as upon their faces. They reached the farther end of the field before they realized that they were so far from the road.

Tess was about to suggest that they go back. Somebody might come by on the lonely road they had been following. And then she saw the orange and green petticoat fluttering in the bushes.

“Oh, Dot! what’s that, do you suppose?” Tess whispered, seizing her sister quickly by the hand.

“Oh-ee! A bear?” returned Dot, without even seeing the gay garment beyond the brush clump.

“Goodness! A bear that color?” demanded Tess, with some exasperation.

Suddenly the wearer of the gay garment stood up. She was a very brown woman, with great hoops of gold in her ears, and she wore other gay garments besides the green and orange petticoat.

“Oh!” murmured Tess, again, “I—I believe she must be a Gypsy woman, Dot Kenway.”

Had the two little Corner House girls not been so much excited at just this minute they must have heard the passing of an automobile on the road, now out of their sight. Or, if Neale O’Neil had chanced to blow the horn just then Tess and Dot would surely have been attracted by the sound.

To the older Corner House girls and to Mrs. Heard that night had certainly been one of extreme anxiety. Neale had found lodgings for them in the squalid little village which the post-office authorities recognized as “Arbutusville,” but which was still “Frog Holler” in the minds of the older inhabitants.

Neale found, too, a number of kind-hearted persons who were easily interested in the fate of Tess and Dot Kenway. There was a constable, and with that official at their head a dozen men started abroad at nine o’clock, with lanterns and a pack of “’coon dogs,” to beat up the woods all about the place where the automobilists had camped.

Neale went with them; but despite Agnes’ determination to attend she was refused the privilege. And Sammy, of course, remained with the women—they needing the protection of some manly spirit—and fell asleep in two minutes.

Neale O’Neil dragged back about dawn. The search had been resultless—save that the dogs had started a raccoon—and the party had swept woods, fields, and swamps for miles as well as it could be done at night. They had shouted. They had roused every householder. Nobody had heard of the lost children or seen them.

But Neale had heard one thing that greatly troubled him; and yet which offered a possible clue to the little girls’ disappearance.

On the way back to the village somebody in the crowd of searchers had told him that one of the aroused householders had mentioned the fact that there was a Gypsy encampment not many miles away.

The boy was instantly excited. He learned from his informant just where the camp was, and immediately put the idea before the constable.

“Why, that’s too fur away, bub,” said Constable Munro. “It’s five mile beyond where you an’ your folks stopped to eat—and on another road.”

“The children might not have walked all that way,” said Neale O’Neil. “They might have been carried there.”

“Uh-huh? Against their will?”

“Well, why not?” returned Neale. “We hear all kind of stories about Gypsies. I’ve seen some bad ones myself.”

“Aw, they’re petty thieves, and bad horse traders sometimes. But to steal a couple of kids—I dunno ’bout that. Still—if you air bound to go there——”

“I am,” Neale declared. “I’ll have the machine ready as soon as I get a bite of breakfast.”

He was sorry to have no good report to make to the girls and Mrs. Heard, and could only tell them, while he ate his hasty breakfast, where he was going and what he hoped to accomplish.

“I’m going with you,” announced Agnes and Sammy in a breath.

“No,” he said to the girl. “You can’t go. The constable won’t like it.”

“Well, I don’t see——”

“I am sure you would not like to go with a party of rough men,” said Mrs. Heard, with such finality that Agnes became quiet.

But that did not stop Sammy’s teasing. “Say, us men ought to go, anyway,” he said. “Come on! Lemme go, Neale. I won’t be in the way. Tom Jonah’s going.”

So in the car that had passed so near the two little lost girls as they picked berries, were Neale and Sammy, as well as Tom Jonah and the constable, Mr. Munro. Tess and Dot were too greatly interested just then, however, in that vivid petticoat and in the strange looking woman who wore it to think about anything else.

CHAPTER XIV—WITH THE ROMANY FOLK

“We—we got lost from our folks,” Tess said, at last.

“You leeve near here, eh?”

“Oh, no,” said Tess, now more communicative, “We live in Milton. We were riding in an automobile——”

“No, we weren’t!” interposed Dot, rather impolite in her eagerness to get the story perfectly straight. “We were stopping for lunch. Right beside the road. And Tess and I came to pick flowers.”

“So you wandered from your friends?” asked the Gypsy. “I see. I see.”

“And,” added Dot, confidently, “we’re hungry.”

“Oh, Dot!” exclaimed the scandalized Tess. “Not now! Not after eating all these berries!”

“Huh! what’s berries?” demanded the smallest Corner House girl. “I want an egg—and milk—and hot muffins—and——”

The Gypsy woman laughed merrily. Although she did not speak English quite like other people, she seemed to understand the language well enough.

“You leetle ‘Merican girls come wit’ me,” she said. “I will find you food. Then we will find your friends.”

Tess was a little doubtful of their new acquaintance. She had some fear of Gypsies as a tribe. This one seemed kind enough, and looked kind enough. Nevertheless, Tess felt that they should be careful while in her company.

But she could not explain this to Dot, and Dot was a prattler. The smaller girl’s tongue went as fast as a mill-clapper, as Aunt Sarah Maltby often said; and it was particularly energetic this morning as she trotted along beside the Gypsy woman in the green and orange petticoat.

“Ah,” said the woman, at last, “your people are reech, eh? They have one of these motor cars, and you leeve in a fine, big house? They will give reward, then, to get you back, eh?”

Just then, before either Tess or Dot could make a rejoinder, they broke through the bushes and entered a beautiful little park in which was pitched the Gypsy camp.

Of course, the two smallest Corner House girls had often heard of Gypsies. Indeed, they had seen more than a few of them. The women often came into Milton to sell basket-work and to tell fortunes.

Indeed, the summer before, when the Corner House girls and Neale O’Neil were at Pleasant Cove, they had had quite an experience with Gypsies—and not a very pleasant experience at that. Tess remembered this, though Dot did not; therefore the older sister was a little troubled as they approached the Gypsy encampment with the gaily dressed woman.

This opening in the woods, with a grassy road running through its center, which was plainly no main-traveled highway, was a lovely spot. The Gypsies are thorough exponents of the out-of-door life, now so much talked about; and they have, too, some idea of the beautiful and picturesque.

This encampment had been selected because of the pleasant little brook running near, and the real beauty of the spot. There were six big covered wagons, all brightly painted. Besides, four tents were set up, and there were coops of chickens and other signs that the encampment was more or less permanent.

On the appearance of the two strange little girls with the Gypsy woman, there was a rush of dogs, chickens, goats, pigs and children toward the newcomers. Tess and Dot clung together and tried to get behind the green and orange petticoat. The woman shouted something in a strange tongue, and drove the children and dogs back. The other curious riff-raff of the camp had to be actually kicked out of the path.

There were several cooking fires in the camp, a number of men and women in sight, and at least fifty horses grazing at one end of the park, watched by several half-grown youths. Plainly there was a big tribe of the Romany folk encamped in this spot.

The woman with the gay petticoat, having given up her basket of berries to a girl, led the visitors by the hand, one on either side, to the nearest fire, where a big man in brown velveteen garments, including a peaked cap, and wearing gold hoops in his ears and a heavy gold chain around his neck, was sitting in a green-painted easy chair.

This man was a person of much importance, it was evident. Nobody else came near him as the woman approached with the two little Corner House girls.

He was not a bad looking man at all, though his face was deeply graven in lines, and wind and weather had tanned his face and hands like leather. Again in that strange language which Tess and Dot did not know, the woman spoke to this man, who was certainly the leader of the Gypsies.

The man’s eyes twinkled at the children, and he smiled. But he did not win their confidence. However, he shouted for another woman almost at once, and she came from the fire with two plates of steaming hot stew—either of rabbits or squirrels, Tess did not know which. And neither she nor Dot cared.

They were, indeed, very hungry. A diet of blueberries is not a filling one—especially when one has been without anything else to eat for so long as had the little Corner House girls. The woman with whom they had come into the camp sat down with them, having reported to the big man, and ate, too. They sat cross-legged on the grass, and had only spoons to eat with, and thick slices of very good ryebread to sop up the gravy of the stew. The woman said her name was Mira, and the children found her very pleasant and talkative.

“I wish our folks would come along in the automobile,” Tess said, longingly, when their hunger was partly appeased.

“Do you s’pose they will come this way?” asked Dot of Mira.

“We shall see. He will ’tend to that,” said the woman, coolly, nodding towards the big man in the chair.

Tess was very curious. “Who is he?” she asked, in a whisper. “Who is the man in the chair?”

“King David,” said Mira.

“Oh!” gasped Dot. “I’ve heard of him. Didn’t he play on a salt-cellar?”

“Oh, dear me!” cried Tess. “A ‘psalter,’ Dot—a ‘psalter’!”

“Well, what’s the difference?” asked the smallest Corner House girl, pouting.

“A good deal,” declared Tess, although she had no idea herself just what a psaltery was, and was unaware that she had made a mistake quite as inexcusable as Dot’s. “And, anyway,” pursued Tess, whose confidence swamped her ignorance of the subject and duly impressed Dot, “anyway, this can’t be the same King David.”

“No,” said the woman. “He is King David Stanley. We are English Gypsies.”

“But—but you and he didn’t talk English?” Tess suggested, hesitatingly.

“Among ourselves we talk Egyptian,” said the woman, proudly. So she called the language of the Gypsies. “We are all Romany folk.”

Of course, the children did not understand much about this. But Dot was anxious upon one point, and she whispered to Tess:

“How can that big man be a king? He doesn’t wear a crown. Don’t all kings wear ’em? I never saw a picture of a king without one on his head—though I should think ’twould make ’em bald.”

“Sh!” whispered back Tess. “Maybe they aren’t comfortable to wear.”

“Well! where’s his scalper?”

“His what?” gasped Tess.

“His scalper,” declared Dot. “Kings always carry ’em in their hands.”

“Oh, for mercy’s sake!” ejaculated Tess. “A sceptre, you mean.”

“Aren’t they what kings scalp folks with?”

“Dear me, Dot Kenway!” said Tess, in despair. “Kings aren’t like Indians. They don’t scalp folks.”

“But they order their heads cut off if they don’t please ’em,” said Dot, unconvinced, and eyeing King David askance.

The Gypsies were, however, all very kind to the visitors. Mira would not allow the wild and scantily dressed children of the camp to annoy the little Corner House girls. And she always drove the dogs away when they came too near, for Dot was frankly afraid of the hungry looking beasts.

But Mira brought a clothes-basket out of one of the tents, and covered in that were six little blind, black puppies, “too cute for anything,” as Dot admitted. There were kittens, too, and a hutch of little chickens, and some tame rabbits. When the visiting children were shown two little kids—twins—gamboling around the mother goat, their delight knew no bounds.

These interests held their attention for much of the forenoon—especially Dot’s. But Tess began to wonder if something would not soon be done about finding the automobile and their friends. She grew more anxious as noon approached and nothing was said about this mystery.

The King of the Gypsies had disappeared some time before. Mira was busy. And Dot, in spite of a lapful of kittens, began to ask her sister:

“Tess, when are we going to find Ruth and Aggie? I—I don’t want to stay here much longer, do you?”

CHAPTER XV—ANOTHER CLUE

“And if we find them you shall learn of it at once, young sir,” the big Gypsy assured Neale. “I will myself bring you word at the village where you are stopping.”

He spoke very good English, did the king, and seemed to be really sympathetic. But Neale O’Neil turned the automobile about, and with anxious heart drove back to Arbutusville.

They made him go to bed, once he arrived at the lodging where the older girls and Mrs. Heard were staying. Neale was completely worn out, and even Agnes refrained from letting him see how troubled and distraught they all were because of his non-success in finding Tess and Dot. Therefore, Neale was sound asleep when a man wearing brown velveteen and with gold rings in his ears rattled into town in a ramshackle old buggy, but behind a high-stepping horse. It was King David Stanley, and he hunted out Constable Munro at once and told him that the two lost children had been found and had been brought into the Gypsy camp.

Not being entirely sure that Tess and Dot were the two in which the automobile party were interested, the chief of the Romany tribe had judged it better to bring the news rather than the children.

“You know how our people are sometimes looked upon by the Gentiles,” he said gravely. “If I had taken the little girls away from the camp, and their friends had appeared there, asking for them, my act in removing them would look suspicious.”

“You’re an all-right feller, if ye be a Gyp.,” declared Mr. Munro, and he took King David over to the lodging where the automobile party was staying.

By this time the girls and Mrs. Heard were in the lowest depths of despair. Ruth was even seriously discussing sending a telegram to Mr. Howbridge.

“Though what he could do more than we are doing ourselves, I don’t see,” Mrs. Heard sighed.

“We are not doing anything!” cried Agnes, beginning to cry again. “I believe if they’d have let me go with them into the woods last night, I could have found poor, precious little Dot and Tessie. What shall we do——”

“I’ll go with you, too, Aggie,” declared Sammy, having hard work to keep back the tears himself. “I bet you and I can find ’em.”

“It is the easiest thing in the world to be a critic,” Ruth said quietly. “But we should first know how better to do a thing before finding fault with the person who has done it. I think——”

And just then Constable Munro and the big Gypsy appeared in their sitting-room, and immediately their despair was changed to joy. Neale came stumbling out of the bedroom, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, and led the cheering. For a few moments the automobile tourists certainly were quite beside themselves.

Nothing would do but all must run out to the encampment to get the lost little girls. And although King David started before them, the motor car passed him and his swift pacer on the road and arrived at the Gypsy encampment a good fifteen minutes before he appeared.

Tess and Dot, by this time, had become rather lachrymose. They dared not ask Mira again about their lost friends; and even the lapful of kittens palled at last on Dot. With the coming of the automobile, however, all this was changed. At once both Tess and Dot could see nothing but good in their friends, the Gypsies. Ruth and Agnes, with Sammy, had to be led all about the encampment, to see the pets and to learn how the Gypsies lived in their wagons and tents, and otherwise to be shown the wonders of the place. Mrs. Heard and Ruth ransacked their purses for pennies to distribute to the bare-legged children attached to the camp.

“And we were wild girls, too—for a little while,” said Dot. “Weren’t we, Tess?”

“Too bad you were so wild that I didn’t find you when I was over this way early this morning,” grumbled Neale O’Neil. “Anyway, if I hadn’t insisted on coming we wouldn’t have found the kids yet.”

“My! aren’t you smart?” scoffed Agnes, who felt happy enough to bicker with him now. “Well! somebody, I suppose, must blow a horn for you—why not yourself?”

“Oh, I don’t make a practice of parading my virtues,” began Neale, when Agnes stopped him with:

“I should say you didn’t, Neale O’Neil. Let me tell you it takes quite a number to make a parade.”

“Got me there! Got me there!” admitted the boy, grinning. He did not mind the tartness of his girl chum’s tongue, now that the little ones were found. Everybody was joyful over the reunion.

The king of the Gypsies had been examining the automobile most curiously during this time.

“Fine car,” he said to Neale. “I’m thinking some of getting one myself. Only trouble is, sure to frighten the horses, and if we didn’t have horses to trade they wouldn’t believe we were Gypsies,” and he smiled with a wonderful flash of strong, white teeth.

Neale laughed. “I suppose pretty soon all up-to-date Gypsies will go about the country in auto-vans instead of those green and yellow painted wagons,” he suggested.

“Mebbe,” said the man. “We had a couple of men here one night not long ago with a car. They came from Milton. At least, I heard one of them say so.”

Agnes was beside Neale. Suddenly she seized his arm and squeezed it tightly.

“Oh, Neale!” she gasped.

The boy had noted the significance of King David’s speech too. He nodded to the girl and asked the big Gypsy at the same time:

“What sort of car did those fellows have?”

“Oh, it was a small car. A runabout—Maybrouke make. Good car, but not like this.”

“Mr. Collinger’s runabout,” whispered Agnes. “That was his make.”

“When were these fellows here?” asked Neale. Then he explained: “We’re very much interested. One of our friends lost a car like the one you describe. Can you remember just when it was?”

“Oh, yes, young sir. It is fixed in my memory,” and the Gypsy mentioned a date immediately following the day on which the car of the county surveyor had been taken away from the Milton court house.

“It was those men!” cried Agnes decidedly.

King David looked at her curiously. “They tried to sell the car to me,” he said. “I was not sure they came by it honestly. So many people try to foist stolen goods on us because we are Gypsies.”

This was a new light on that subject; yet Neale O’Neil thought it might be quite true. “Give a dog a bad name and hang him” is not only a trite saying, but a true one.

“What did the fellows look like?” he asked the chief, and quickly described in particular the fellow they knew as Saleratus Joe.

“No mistaking him, young sir,” said the chief Gypsy. “He was one. The other was an older man.”

“I don’t know him so well,” admitted Neale. “But I am sure it is lucky you did not buy the car. There would have been trouble. Do you know where they went from here?”

“No. They remained over night with us because a storm came up. I sheltered the car in one of our tents. But about a week ago I saw them and the car again,” he added.

“No!” cried Neale, in surprise.

“Yes. I drove over into what they call the Fixville district—it’s beyond Parmenter Lake—to look at a horse. There is a big farm over there that isn’t being worked this year—owned by a man named Higgins. They’re only getting the hay off it. You see, last winter the house burned to the ground and Mr. Higgins, who is an old man, was badly burned and isn’t able yet to take up his work again. He is with friends somewhere. Well,” went on the Gypsy, “the outbuildings and barns were saved. As I drove by the place I saw this freckled chap and that other backing the car into one of the big hay barns. It was just at nightfall. Of course, I don’t know that they stayed there more than one night.”

Neale and Agnes were greatly excited by this story. It seemed as though it were the clearest clue yet discovered regarding the stealing of Mr. Collinger’s runabout. From the Gypsy Neale obtained a very clear and particular account of the place where the suspected men and car had last been seen, and how to get there.

“We’ll just go around that way after we leave the hotel at Parmenter Lake,” declared Agnes. “Why! maybe we’ll find the car right there.”

“It’s too late for May bees,” grinned Neale. “This is July.”

But he had some little hope of tracing the lost car himself, in spite of his fun. However, as Mrs. Heard declared with decision, first of all the party would run on to the hotel at Parmenter Lake where they had rooms and their trunks awaiting them, and there recuperate.

“So much excitement is not good for me, I declare,” said the lady. “I feel it in my legs.”

That puzzled Dot Kenway immensely. Yet she was too polite to ask Mrs. Heard how it could be. Nevertheless, she whispered to Tess:

“How do you suppose she could feel our being lost in her legs? We did the walking.”

Tess failed to give a satisfactory reply.

They arrived not long after mid-afternoon at the resort on Parmenter Lake, which was, indeed, a very popular inland summer place. Mrs. Heard felt the need of quietness, and Ruth spent most of her time watching the children; but Agnes felt no necessity for “recuperation.”

She had a delightful time the two days and evenings they spent at the hotel. There was a dance each night, and she danced more than she ever had before in her life in forty-eight successive hours.

There were so many young people of about her age at the hotel and in neighboring cottages, that Agnes was sure to have her fill of enjoyment. Neale, meanwhile, overhauled the motor car and made all shipshape for their continued tour.

Tess and Dot lived in a sort of Land of Romance because of their recent adventure. They were much sought after by other little girls because they had been lost, had stayed in the woods all night, and had joined (if for only a brief time) a band of Gypsies.

Master Sammy was tipped out of a boat on the lake and came near drowning. Then he led a newly formed crew of “fresh water pirates” in a raid on an orchard and was caught and well spanked by the owner. He certainly was a trial; but he was growing strong and healthy looking. This outing was doing Sammy Pinkney a world of good, whether the older members of the touring party benefited or not.

When they finally left the Parmenter Lake hotel the motor car was in fine fettle and so were all the young people in it. And Mrs. Heard declared that her nerves had recovered from the shock they had suffered when Tess and Dot were lost.

Agnes and Neale, one may be sure, had not forgotten what King David Stanley had told them about Saleratus Joe and the missing runabout. They had heard nothing further about the stolen car, although both had asked.

Neale had looked up the roads in the guide book and they now sped directly over the nearest route for the abandoned farm where Joe and the car had last been observed by the Gypsy chief.

Mrs. Heard was quite as eager as Agnes and Neale to learn if trace of her nephew’s car could be found in this neighborhood. She had written one letter to Mr. Collinger regarding their suspicions of Joe Dawson and his appearance with a runabout in this part of the State.

They ran on beyond the end of the lake and thence into a much more scantily populated country than that through which they had previously traveled.

They struck into the road at last on which King David had said the site of the burned farmhouse was. Not another dwelling was on this cross highway, and the road map gave its length as twelve miles.

Save for the cleared acres of the Higgins farm, on both sides thick woods bordered the road. Of course, they could not mistake the farm itself when they came to it. The fire had left nothing of the great house but the cellar walls.

However, there were several good outbuildings, especially the hay barns. The Gypsy had told Neale clearly into which of the two barns he had seen the men running the automobile.

“I’m going to have a squint, anyway,” said Neale, stopping the car and promptly getting out.

“Be careful,” urged Mrs. Heard. “Don’t get into trouble,” though how he could do that in this forsaken place it was not easy to guess.

There was not a soul around the place as far as the touring party could see.

CHAPTER XVI—SEARCHING THE BARN

“You see,” he said, still in a low voice, “I want it to appear that something has happened to our car. Now I’m going to hunt in the tool kit——”

“Whuffor?” demanded Sammy. “I’ll find it for you.”

“You’ll sit where you are,” declared Neale O’Neil sternly. “I’m supposed to be hunting for something I can’t find. Then I’ll go up to that old barn and try to find it. It won’t look right if everybody gets out of the car and goes snooping around.”

“I admire your language, Neale O’Neil,” sighed Ruth.

“Do go ahead and see what you can find, boy,” urged Mrs. Heard, very much excited now.

“Goodness!” murmured Agnes. “He acts as though he expected to find that barn full of robbers.”

“Nothin’ but rats in it, I bet,” grumbled Sammy, feeling much abused.

“Oh, there! You don’t catch me going near it, then!” cried Agnes.

Neale, undisturbed by either Ruth’s criticism or Agnes’ fun-making, proceeded to act as though the motor car had really met with an accident. Finally he started for the barn, which stood some distance back from the road.

“Look out for the rats—oh, do look out for the rats, Neale!” Tess called after him.

“He can’t whisper to the rats, anyway,” remarked Dot. “I guess Neale O’Neil, even if he did come from a circus, can’t tame all animals.”

The approach to the barn was by a broad, well graveled drive which sloped smoothly upward to the wide barn door. Almost at once Neale O’Neil saw that there had been an automobile on this piece of gravel. He could see where the wheels had skidded and disturbed much of the surface of the drive—whether when the car entered the barn or when it came out, he could not say.

He looked sharply around on all sides, but saw nobody. By the strands of twisted hay hanging from the closed loft door he presumed the upper part of the barn was filled with the only crop being harvested on the Higgins farm this year. On trying the main door, Neale found it barred; but there was a small door beside the great one, and this opened at his touch upon the latch.

The great barn was filled with a brown dusk in which Neale O’Neil could see nothing at first. But by stepping within and leaving the door open, he was able to obtain some idea of what was on the barn floor. On either side were the mows, the hay stacked in them down to the ground. The loosely boarded loft over the runway of the barn had also been filled, he supposed. The sweet, dusty odor of the cured grasses was almost overpowering at first. Dim outlines of a few old agricultural tools were to be seen in the gloom. These were shoved back out of the way so as to clear the middle of the course.

Neale, still curious, fumbled at the bar which held closed the two-leaved door, and finally opened this. The door swung open slowly and the strong July sunlight rushed in. Millions of motes danced in the sunshine that spread across the barn floor. Now all was revealed.

“Can you find it?” cried Agnes from the seat of the automobile.

Neale had to wag his head in negation. There was nothing here that looked like a motor car. Back, at the rear of the barn floor, the hay had overflowed the mows and loft, and was heaped in a fragrant pile on the barn floor to the height of the floor of the loft.

“One sure thing, they’ve got an abundant hay crop stored away,” thought Neale O’Neil. “Uncle Bill Sorber’s elephants would find plenty of fodder here.”

He laughed, barring the big doors again securely. As he came out of the barn he glanced sharply around, but saw nobody save his own friends in the motor car.

Naturally his examination of the other farm buildings was hasty; but he neglected to look into no shed large enough to have housed the runabout of which he was so eagerly in search. He came back to the Corner House automobile with the assurance that there was no car but their own at the Higgins farm, and made the statement boldly.

“Well, but,” pouted Agnes, shaking her head at him, “I’d feel much more satisfied if you had let me look.”

“Me, too,” grumbled Sammy. “I bet I could see into smaller places than you could, Neale O’Neil.”

Neale just grinned at them. “This isn’t a flivver we are looking for, I’d have you know. The Maybrouke is some car, believe me! You folks talk like the funny-man who went into the flivver factory to look around; and when he came out he kept scratching himself—said he was sure he had got one of the things on him!”

There was no use of waiting around on this lonely road any longer, so Neale got in and started the car again. As they had got off their original route some distance in coming to this farm, it would be impossible to make a good hotel that night.

“But,” as Mrs. Heard said, “we have nothing to fear after that lodging in Frog Hollow——”

“Arbutusville, Mrs. Heard—do!” laughed Agnes, in correction.

“Well. That woman had the hardest beds I ever saw. If the street pavements had been as hard they would certainly have had good roads in that town.”

They stopped at a countryside store for lunch and bought crackers and cheese and milk, and feasted while sitting in the automobile under the shade of a great elm.

“We’re almost like Gypsies ourselves,” said Tess, ruminating as she crunched the crackers and cheese. “Aren’t we, Dot?”

“No. We’re cleaner,” said the smallest Corner House girl; “and we haven’t any little goaties—and pigs! But this is lots of fun, just the same; and I wish we could sleep out again all night—just for once—all of us, of course.”

She came near having her wish that very night, or so it seemed when sunset came. In some way they got off the marked route they had been following, and, on stopping at a crossroads to ask a blacksmith who was just closing his shop, they found that they were far away from the beaten track of automobile tourists.

“We might have known that,” grumbled Ruth, “from the state of the roads.”

“The worst of it is,” said Mrs. Heard, a little worried, “it is going to be hard on the children. They are tired out now. And it is a dark night.”

“No moon till late—that’s a fac’, ma’am,” said the blacksmith, leaning on the mud-guard while Neale lit the lamps.

“And have we got to go back over that rocky piece of road to get to the Tailtown Pike?” asked Agnes, trying to study out the lost route in the guide book.

“It’s forty-five miles to Tailtown, where we were going to stop. And over the meanest roads in the State, I bet,” growled Neale.

“Dear me!” sighed Ruth.

“There are some objections to touring the country roads in an automobile,” admitted Mrs. Heard. “And things seemed to be going so smoothly!”

“I dunno what you’ll do,” drawled the blacksmith. “’Nless you talk to mother.”

“To whom?” chorused the older girls and the chaperone.

“Mother. Mebbe she kin advise ye,” drawled the man. “We live down the road jest a piece. I dunno what she’d say——”

“Does she know the roads better than you do?” asked Neale bluntly.

The blacksmith laughed mellowly. “I don’t reckon she does—’cept the road to Heaven, son,” he said. “She sure knows all about that. But she might be helpful. I’ve been takin’ her advice, off and on, for forty years, and whenever I’ve took it I’ve not been sorry.”

“Come!” exclaimed Ruth suddenly, “let us drive on to this gentleman’s house.”

“Where is it?” asked Neale, getting in behind the steering wheel again.

“You can see our kitchen lamp twinkling in the window yonder,” said the blacksmith, stepping upon the running-board as Neale started the car.

They jolted down the rough road, and quickly came to the house in question. As far as they could see, it was rather a large country house with a terraced lawn before it and a driveway running up beside the dwelling to the rear premises.

“Drive her right up to the door, young man,” advised the blacksmith.

“Room to turn around up there?” asked Neale, the careful.

“Plenty,” agreed the man. “Don’t have no fear about that.”

Neale immediately turned the car up the little incline and the blacksmith leaped to the ground as it stopped.

“Now,” he said jovially, “one of you young misses just go up there on the porch and tell mother how you’re fixed. You can git out, ma’am, I’m sure,” he added, to Mrs. Heard, as Ruth jumped from the car. “Get out your baggage too—this here little shaver can help at that,” and he rumpled Sammy’s hair with his big hand.

“But—but——Do you mean we can stay here?” gasped Mrs. Heard.

Ruth had scarcely reached the door when it was opened from within. A comfortable figure of a woman, with spectacles and gray hair, faced the oldest Corner House girl.

“Well, well!” said “Mother,” in just the hearty tone of voice a mother should possess. “An automobile party? Well, well! how many of you air there, my dear?”

“But, my goodness me!” gasped Ruth. “You’re not going to take us in ‘sight unseen,’ in this way, are you?”

The woman laughed. “Why not?” she asked. “If you are going to do anything for anybody, it ain’t perlite to hem and haw about it, I’m sure. Leastways, that’s the way I was brought up, my dear. And there’s little children with you, too! Of course you shall stay.”

Ruth and the others were speechless. Such hospitality—and evidently this was not a house of public entertainment—was quite unexpected.

“That you, Buckley?” she called to her husband. “You see to putting up the car. How many did you say there was? I want to know how much ham to slice,” and she chuckled unctuously again.

“There’s seven of ’em, Mother,” called the blacksmith’s mellow voice from the dark, “and a dog. B’sides, mebbe you’d better take notice that two of ’em’s boys, and like enough they’ve got their appetites with ’em,” and he broke into another mellow guffaw.

“Well,” Agnes later whispered to Ruth, “this is certainly the unexpected end of a perfect day! Goodness! what should we have done if these good people hadn’t taken us in? The blacksmith says they are rebuilding the bridge over Mason’s Creek and we couldn’t have got across.”

“Oh!”

“And that would have made us go around so far that the run to Tailtown would have been nearer sixty miles than forty-five.”

They were all glad; and such a supper of ham and eggs as they ate! The accommodations the blacksmith’s wife put at the party’s disposal were ample too.

“Just the same,” yawned Neale, before retiring, “this has sure been an empty day. There hasn’t been much doing.”

“Well, what do you expect to happen in these perfectly civilized places?” responded Agnes.

“And we have surely had enough excitement to last us for a while—the children getting lost, and all,” Ruth said.

“And you hunted for that car of Mr. Collinger’s,” said Agnes, slyly. “That was exciting, I’m sure.”

“Oh—ouch!” yawned Neale. “Don’t knock, Aggie. We may find that car—and Saleratus Joe—yet.”

“Your desire for low company shocks me, Neale,” giggled Agnes. “Saleratus Joe, indeed!”

“Don’t say a word,” the boy retorted. “You and Ruth met the gentleman first—don’t forget that,” and they separated for the night with laughter.

CHAPTER XVII—ONE THING AFTER ANOTHER

Neale O’Neil came out, yawning as he had gone to bed, and opened the door of the shed in which the automobile had been lodged in lieu of a proper garage. Neale always looked over the car before they started the day’s run, as all careful chauffeurs should.

The children ran for the automobile, of course, before Neale could back it out of the shed; and as Tess and Dot and Sammy jumped on the steps to ride out, a white hen flew from the tonneau with a wild squawk.

“Oh, for goodness’ sake!” cried Tess. “What do you s’pose that hen was doing there?”

The hen had flown to the top rail of the calf pen, and there proceeded to “cut, cut, cu-da-cut!” just as loud as she could.

“Aw, what are you squalling about?” Sammy demanded. “Nobody hurt you.”

“Maybe she wants to go to ride with us in our automobile,” said Dot demurely.

When the automobile was backed out upon the gravel it was Tess who looked into the tonneau and spied the reason for Mrs. White Hen’s loud remarks. There it lay, white and warm, upon the rear seat.

“Goodness! Goodness me!” gasped Tess, with clasped hands. “Isn’t that cunning? She laid an egg right here for us, Dot.”

“My,” Dot observed, “maybe she thought she could pay for a ride with us.”

“I guess she must know something about the way gas has gone up,” chuckled Neale O’Neil, “and she wanted to pay for her share.”

They had to secure that egg at once and run to ask “mother” if they could have it. Though, as Dot Kenway declared:

“It’s the most mysteriousest thing why that blacksmith calls her ‘mother’ when she isn’t, but she’s his wife.”

However, that “mysteriousest thing” was not on the carpet just then. It was the egg found in the automobile that was in question, and the blacksmith’s wife said:

“Yes, of course you shall have it. Them dratted hens lay everywhere. I guess they’d lay in the parson’s hat.”

“Oo-oo! not if he had it on,” murmured Dot.

Then immediately, there was another subject of discussion. What should they do with the fresh-laid egg?

“Eat it, of course,” said Sammy.

“It won’t go far—one egg—among three such savage appetites as you kids possess,” Neale declared.

“Why—no,” murmured Tess. “You couldn’t very well divide an egg in three parts.”

“Not till it’s cooked,” Sammy put in, promptly. “Let’s have it fried.”

“Oh! I like eggs soft-boiled,” Dot exclaimed.

“Why! then we can’t divide it even after it’s cooked,” cried Tess; “for I like my eggs hard-boiled.”

“It can’t be done, then,” said Neale O’Neil, solemnly, but vastly amused. “You can’t first boil an egg hard, and then soft, and then fry it.”

“She—she ought to have laid three eggs,” growled Sammy.

“You should speak to her about that,” Neale returned. Then he added, as a suggestion: “Why don’t you cast lots for it?”

“Cast lots for what, Neale O’Neil!” demanded Dot, wonderingly.

“Is—isn’t that wicked—like gambling?” asked Tess, slowly, “or playing marbles for keeps?”

“No,” Neale told her, “I don’t believe it is. You can take three straws of different lengths. I’ll hold ’em. The one that draws the longest straw takes the egg—and can have it cooked any way she or he pleases.”

“But then the others won’t get any,” wailed Dot, whose appetite was evidently sharpened by the morning air.

“Shucks!” said Neale, washing his hands of the matter. “Give it to Tom Jonah, then. He’ll eat it raw—shell and all.”

“Oh, no,” said Tess, with sudden inspiration. “We must give it to Mrs. Heard for her breakfast. I’ll ask the blacksmith’s wife to cook it.”

That suited everybody and Tess and Dot ran to make the proper culinary arrangements for the wonderful egg laid on the automobile seat.

It was a very hilarious breakfast, indeed; and the older girls and Mrs. Heard thought the “automobile egg” quite wonderful indeed. And such a breakfast as it was—with eggs galore, and fried chicken, and hot bread, and honey from “Mother’s own combs.”

When Dot heard that, she was puzzled a good deal at first, for all the comb she had seen about the blacksmith’s wife was a high-backed, old-fashioned tortoise-shell comb that was prominent in the woman’s “bob” of hair. It had to be explained to the smallest Corner House girl what “honey from the comb” meant. All of that succulent dainty Dot had ever seen before had been strained honey.

The blacksmith’s wife put up a hamper of lunch for the automobile tourists, too, and when they drove away at nine o’clock the Corner House girls and their companions felt as though they were bidding good-bye to two old and valued friends. It did not seem possible that they had never met the jolly blacksmith and his kindly wife before the previous evening; and they promised to stop again, if only to call, on their return journey.

“I’m sure we shall never forget the dears,” Agnes sighed, some hours later, when they had stopped for lunch. “Just look at all this fried chicken!”

“We won’t forget ‘Mother’ while the grub holds out, that’s sure,” grinned Neale O’Neil.

“Horrid boy!” retorted Agnes. “We girls, I should hope, think of something besides our stomachs.”

“Hm—yes. But you weren’t talking about anything else,” rejoined Neale.

The party had another subject of thought the next moment, however. Neale was just setting up the tripod, and Sammy was scurrying about for dry wood for the fire to be built under it, when a tall and roughly dressed man broke through the brush into the open patch of turf on which the party was preparing camp, and at once hailed them:

“Hey, you! what are ye doing here, I’d like to know?”

Neale took it upon himself to reply—and he did not feel very pleasant about it. The man did not speak in a nice way.

“I don’t know that it’s any of your affair,” the boy said quietly; “but we are just preparing lunch.”

“Oh, you be?” snarled the fellow. “Wal, by jinks! ye ben’t neither! We don’t want no ortermobile parties here. Get out!”

“Do you own this land?” asked Neale, his voice shaking.

“Never mind him. Come away—do!” cried Ruth to Neale, while she retreated to the car, dragging the hamper with her.

“I hate to do that,” said the boy, who was very angry. “I don’t believe he has any right to send us away. We’re doing no harm.”

“Ye air trespassin’,” declared the man. “Going to build a fire, too, was ye? That’s against the law, anyway.”

“To build a campfire?” demanded Neale, quickly. “I guess not. And you’ve got to prove trespass.”

“I’ll prove it with the flat o’ my hand on your ears, ye young rascal!” declared the man, hotly. “You ain’t paid anybody for the right to camp here, have you?”

“Paid anybody? Of course not. Who’d we pay?” demanded Neale, still inclined to stand his ground.

“Shows ye don’t know the law in this town,” said the man, with satisfaction. “I’m a consterble—see?” and he threw back his coat and showed a big, shiny star pinned to his “gallus.” “I got the authority.”

“You’ve got the authority to what?” asked Neale, sourly. “Trying to tree us for a collection, are you? I—guess—not!”

“Oh, Neale,” begged Ruth. “Do come away.”

“The boy is right,” said Mrs. Heard, vigorously. “I believe the man is overstepping his rights. But we don’t want to fight him here. Oh! what is that child about?”