tired. It's awful cold. My feet hurt awfully. Carl dear,
oh, pleassssse take me home now. I want my mamma. Maybe she won't whip
me now. It's so dark and--ohhhhhh----" She muttered, incoherently:
"There! By the road! He's waiting for us!" She sank down, her arm over
her face, groaning, "Don't hurt me!"

Carl straddled before her, on guard. There was a distorted mass
crouched by the road just ahead. He tingled with the chill of fear,
down through his thighs. He had lost his stick-saber, but he bent,
felt for, and found another stick, and piped to the shadowy watcher:

"I ain't af-f-fraid of you! You gwan away from here!"

The watcher did not answer.

"I know who you are!" Bellowing with fear, Carl ran forward, furiously
waving his stick and clamoring: "You better not touch me!" The stick
came down with a silly, flat clack upon the watcher--a roadside
boulder. "It's just a rock, Gertie! Jiminy, I'm glad! It's just a
rock!... Aw, I knew it was a rock all the time! Ben Rusk gets scared
every time he sees a stump in the woods, and he always thinks it's a
robber."

Chattily, Carl went back, lifted her again, endured her kissing his
cheek, and they started on.

"I'm so cold," Gertie moaned from time to time, till he offered:

"I'll try and build a fire. Maybe we better camp. I got a match what I
swiped from the kitchen. Maybe I can make a fire, so we better camp."

"I don't want to camp. I want to go home."

"I don't know where we are, I told you."

"Can you make a regular camp-fire? Like Indians?"

"Um-huh."

"Let's.... But I rather go home."

"_You_ ain't scared now. _Are_ you, Gertie? Gee! you're a' awful brave
girl!"

"No, but I'm cold and I wisht we had some tea-biscuits----"

Ever too complacent was Miss Gertrude Cowles, the Good Girl in
whatever group she joined; but she seemed to trust in Carl's heroism,
and as she murmured of a certain chilliness she seemed to take it for
granted that he would immediately bring her some warmth. Carl had
never heard of the romantic males who, in fiction, so frequently offer
their coats to ladies fair but chill; yet he stripped off his jacket
and wrapped it about her, while his gingham-clad shoulders twitched
with cold.

"I can hear a crick, 'way, 'way over there. Le's camp by it," he
decided.

They scrambled through the brush, Carl leading her and feeling the
way. He found a patch of long grass beside the creek; with only his
tremulous hands for eyes he gathered l