inly was one, just before
you spoke." The young corn was low in the fields, and there was no
hiding-place in sight.

"I'm very superstitious; I am sure it was an imp," Miss Sherwood said.
"An imp or a very large chameleon; she was exactly the color of the
road."

"A Cross-Roads imp," said the judge, lifting the reins, "and in that
case we might as well give up. I never set up to be a match for those
people, and the children are as mean as their fathers, and smarter."

When the buckboard had rattled on a hundred yards or so, a little figure
clad in a tattered cotton gown rose up from the weeds, not ten feet from
where the judge had drawn rein, and continued its march down the road
toward Plattville, capering in the dust and pursuing the buckboard with
malignant gestures till the clatter of the horses was out of hearing,
the vehicle out of sight.

Something over two hours later, as Mr. Martin was putting things to
rights in his domain, the Dry-Goods Emporium, previous to his departure
for the evening's gossip and checkers at the drug-store, he stumbled
over something soft, lying on the floor behind a counter. The thing
rose, and would have evaded him, but he put out his hands and pinioned
it and dragged it to the show-window where the light of the fading
day defined his capture. The capture shrieked and squirmed and fought
earnestly. Grasped by the shoulder he held a lean, fierce-eyed,
undersized girl of fourteen, clad in one ragged cotton garment, unless
the coat of dust she wore over all may be esteemed another. Her cheeks
were sallow, and her brow was already shrewdly lined, and her eyes were
as hypocritical as they were savage. She was very thin and little, but
old Tom's brown face grew a shade nearer white when the light fell upon
her.

"You're no Plattville girl," he said sharply.

"You lie!" cried the child. "You lie! I am! You leave me go, will you?
I'm lookin' fer pap and you're a liar!"

"You crawled in here to sleep, after your seven-mile walk, didn't you?"
Martin went on.

"You're a liar," she screamed again.

"Look here," said Martin, slowly, "you go back to Six-Cross-Roads and
tell your folks that if anything happens to a hair of Mr. Harkless's
head every shanty in your town will burn, and your grandfather and
your father and your uncles and your brothers and your cousins and your
second-cousins and your third-cousins will never have the good luck to
see the penitentiary. Reckon you can remem