he bushes
waitin' for us," Cliantha opined pessimistically. But there was nothing
to be done about it, and they set out, to be intercepted in just such
manner as she foretold.

"I vow, I ain't so mighty sorry Speaker's along of us," Pendrilla said
after they had vainly browbeaten, threatened, and stoned the hound to
drive him back through the gate. "He's a mighty heap of company and
protection out thisaway in the night."

"Girls," said Judith, suddenly halting them all in the little byroad
which they were travelling, "don't you think we'd better cut across here?
Hit'll be a lot nearer."

"Grandpap's jest ploughed that thar field to put in his winter wheat,"
objected Pendrilla. "Hit'll make mighty bad walkin'."

"But we'll get there quicker," urged Judith feverishly, and that closed
the argument. Between them the Lusk girls had succeeded in lighting the
old lantern; by its illumination the party climbed the rail fence, and
struggled for some distance across the loose hillocks of ploughed
ground.

"Hit wouldn't make such awful walkin' if it had been drug," Cliantha
murmured. In the mountains they hitch a horse to a log or a large piece
of brush and, dragging this over the ploughed ground, make shift to
smooth it without a harrow.

They had hobbled about one third of the toilsome way when there came a
rush of galloping hoofs, the girls had barely time to crouch and cry out,
Speaker barked loud, and suddenly half a dozen young calves ran almost
into them.

"Oh landy!" cried Pendrilla. "Ef them thar calves ain't broke the fence
again! Grandpap will be so mad--and we don't darst to tell him that we
know of it."

"Come on," urged Judith. "We've got to get over there."

But it was found when they would have moved forward that they could not
shake off their unwelcome escort. The calves had been tended occasionally
in the dusk by a man with a lantern, and they hailed this one as a beacon
of hope. Finally even Judith, desperately impatient to be gone, agreed
that they would have to turn back and put the meddlesome creatures into
their pasture and lay up the fence before they could make any progress.

"Hit'll save time," she commented briefly, as though time were the only
thing worth considering now.

At last, one after the other, they climbed the fence at the side of the
Bonbright place. The air was soft, heavy with coming rain. Up through the
weed-grown yard they went, greeted and beckoned by the odours of Mary
Bon