r
cabin there came from among the bundled wraps a still, small voice.

"Jim," said his wife, "I said Alfred would catch cold."

"Bosh! Lizzie, don't you fret. He's a little more than a yearlin', and
of course he'll snuffle." And young James took a kiss from his love.

"Well, how you can speak of Alfred that way, calling him a yearling, as
if he was a calf, and he just as much your child as mine, I don't see,
James Westfall!"

"Why, what under the sun do you mean?"

"There he goes again! Do hurry up home, Jim. He's got a real strange
cough."

So they hurried home. Soon the nine miles were finished, and good
James was unhitching by his stable lantern, while his wife in the house
hastened to commit their offspring to bed. The traces had dropped, and
each horse marched forward for further unbuckling, when James heard
himself called. Indeed, there was that in his wife's voice which made
him jerk out his pistol as he ran. But it was no bear or Indian--only
two strange children on the bed. His wife was glaring at them.

He sighed with relief and laid down the pistol.

"Put that on again, James Westfall. You'll need it. Look here!"

"Well, they won't bite. Whose are they? Where have you stowed ourn?"

"Where have I--" Utterance forsook this mother for a moment. "And you
ask me!" she continued. "Ask Lin McLean. Ask him that sets bulls on
folks and steals slippers, what he's done with our innocent lambs,
mixing them up with other people's coughing, unhealthy brats. That's
Charlie Taylor in Alfred's clothes, and I know Alfred didn't cough like
that, and I said to you it was strange; and the other one that's been
put in Christopher's new quilts is not even a bub--bub--boy!"

As this crime against society loomed clear to James Westfall's
understanding, he sat down on the nearest piece of furniture, and
heedless of his wife's tears and his exchanged children, broke into
unregenerate laughter. Doubtless after his sharp alarm about the bear,
he was unstrung. His lady, however, promptly restrung him; and by the
time they had repacked the now clamorous changelings, and were rattling
on their way to the Taylors', he began to share her outraged feelings
properly, as a husband and a father should; but when he reached the
Taylors' and learned from Miss Wood that at this house a child had
been unwrapped whom nobody could at all identify, and that Mr. and Mrs.
Taylor were already far on the road to the Swintons', James Westfall
wh