no matter how much they go against the
grain."

She stopped in the road and tried to read my face even in the dark. "Do
you really mean that?" and then, without waiting for an answer, she
turned and ran, and I followed the best I could.

X

It soon dawned on me that this surprising young woman was as nimble
with her feet as a schoolboy. She scampered away from me in a way to
put me on my mettle, and she must have run nearly half a mile before I
could come up with her. I touched her on the shoulder lightly, crying
"Caught!"

"There is no getting rid of you," she answered.

"Oh, but there is, as you will discover," I said. "Once with your
kin-people, you will see no more of me." I was vexed, but my ill-humor
seemed to add to her high spirits, and she talked away quite blithely.
When we came to the door it was open, and the mother, who had been kind
to me, stood there waiting. She was crying and wringing her hands, and,
for a moment, I thought she had been maltreated by those whose duty it
was to raid the house. But her trouble was of quite another kind.

"What have you done with her?" she asked.

"She is here with me," I replied. But when I turned to confirm my
words, Jane Ryder had disappeared. I could only stare at the woman
blankly and protest that she had been at my side a moment ago before.
"I knew it!" wailed the woman. "First comes you to wheedle her away,
and then come your companions to search the house for her. I knew how
it would be. I never knew but one man you could trust with a woman, and
he was so palsied that a child could push him over. And the little fool
was fond of you, too." And with that she wailed louder than ever.

"But, my good woman----" I began.

"Don't good woman me!" she cried. "You don't look like that kind of a
man, but I knew it; I knew how it would be!"

"Fiddlesticks and frog's eggs!" I cried. "Stop your crying. She is here
somewhere. You know well enough that I wouldn't have returned without
her. She came to the door with me. I'd have you to know, madam, that
I'm not the man you take me for. Do you think I'd injure a hair of her
head? It is you that have injured her by allowing her to masquerade as
a man--a little thing like that, with nobody to advise her. You are her
mother and pretend to be fond of her; why didn't you advise her against
all this? Why didn't you take a hickory to her and compel her to
remember her sex? You are the cause of it all--yes, you!"

I s