Ruth and Agnes Kenway were in tears. Once before--when the Corner House
girls were at Pleasant Cove--the two smaller sisters had been lost, and
on that occasion circumstances seemed to blame Agnes.
Now neither of the older girls was to blame for the absence of Tess and
Dot. Mrs. Heard said so. But both Ruth and Agnes felt condemned.
After searching the pasture and the patch of woodland beyond it, clear
to the back road, Neale, disappointed, was inclined to scold Tom Jonah
for not picking up the trail of the lost children.
Tom Jonah, however, was not a hunting dog; his nose was not as keen as
some breeds possess--especially now that he was old. But he showed almost
as much anxiety as his human friends on this occasion.
"Don't scold him, Neale," begged Agnes, sobbing. "He'd find Tess and Dot
if he could--poor old fellow. See! he knows what I am saying."
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.