th a child. Then, as on the first
night at the deserted mill near Hudsondale, he sat down at the foot of
the haystack, on guard.

It was well for them, however, that the haying was done in that
particular field, and no farmer appeared from the big white house just
over the hill, for in spite of his most valiant efforts Jim, too,
slumbered, and it was broad day when he awoke.

Lou had vanished from the haystack, but he found her at a little spring
in a strip of woodland on the other side of the road, and they
breakfasted hastily, conserving the last fragments of food for their
midday meal, and started off.

They had left the last chimney of Parksville well behind them when Jim
suddenly observed:

"You're limping, Lou. Let me see your shoes."

She drew away from him.

"It's nothin'," she denied. "My shoes are all right. I--I must've slept
too long last night an' got sort of stiffened up."

The freckles were swamped in a deep flood of color, but Jim repeated
insistently: "Hold up your foot, Lou."

Reluctantly she obeyed, disclosing a battered sole through the worn
places of which something green showed.

"I--I stuffed it with leaves," she confessed, defensively. "They're real
comfortable, honestly. I'm just stiff----"

Jim groaned.

"I suppose they will have to do until we reach the next town, but you
should have told me."

"I kin take care of myself," Lou asserted. "I've walked in pretty near
as bad as these in the institootion. We'd better get along to where
there's some houses 'cause it looks to me like a storm was comin' up."

The sun was still blazing down upon them, but it was through a murky
haze, and the air seemed lifeless and heavy. Great, white-crested
thunder heads were mounting in the sky, and behind them a dense
blackness spread.

"You're right; I never noticed----" Jim paused guiltily. After leaving
the vicinity of Parksville he had purposely led her on a detour back
into the farming country to avoid the main highway, for along the river
front were the estates of some people he knew and he shrank from meeting
them in his tramplike condition if they should motor past. There was
Lou, too, to be considered. He might have offered some possible
explanation for his own appearance, but no interpretation could be
placed upon her presence at his side save that which he must prevent at
all costs.

Rolling fields and woodland stretched away illimitably on both sides of
the road, and not even a cow