be responsible for the girl, and Pepsy had spent a year of joyous
freedom at the farm marred only by the threat hanging over her that
she would be restored to the authorities upon the least suspicion of
misconduct.

She had done her work faithfully and become a help and a comfort to her
benefactors. She had a snappy temper and a sharp tongue and was, indeed,
something of a tomboy. But Aunt Jamsiah, though often annoyed and
sometimes chagrined, took a charitable view of these shortcomings
and her generous heart was not likely to confound them with genuine
misdoing.

So the stern condition of Pepsy's freedom had become something of a
dead letter, except in her own fearful fancy, and particularly when that
discordant voice of the bridge spoke ominously of her peril.

Pepsy had been trusted and had proven worthy of the trust. She had never
known any mother or father, nor any home save the institution from
which Aunt Jamsiah had rescued her, and she had grown to love her
kindly guardians and the old farm where she had much work but also much
freedom. "Chores will keep her out of mischief," Aunt Jamsiah had said.

Wiggle's ancestry and social standing were quite as much a mystery
as Pepsy's; he was not an aristocrat, that is certain, and having
no particular chores to do was free to devote his undivided time
to mischief; he concentrated on it, as the saying is, and thereby
accomplished wonders. He was Pepsy's steady comrade and the partner of
all her adventurous escapades.

Pepsy was not romantic and imaginative, her freckled face and tightly
braided red hair and thin legs with wrinkled cotton stockings, protested
against that. She had a simple mind with a touch of superstition. It
was a kind of morbid dread of the institution she had left which had
conjured that ramshackle old bridge up on the highway into an ominous
voice of warning, She hated the bridge and dreaded it as a thing
haunted.

Pee-wee soon became close friends with these two, and from a rather
cautious and defensive beginning Pepsy soon fell victim to the spell of
the little scout, as indeed everyone else did. Pepsy did not surrender
without a struggle. She showed Pee-wee the woodchuck hole and Pee-wee,
after a minute's skillful search, showed her the other hole, or back
entrance, under a stone wall.

"There are always two," he told her, "and one of them is usually under a
stone wall. They're smart, woodchucks are."

"Are they as smart as you?" she w