and
he gripped Darby's delicate little hand more tightly than before.

"Let me go!" demanded the boy indignantly. "We don't know you, and we
don't want to go with you.--Sure we don't, Joan?"

"No, no!" wailed Joan. "I doesn't want to go nowhere 'cept back. An' I
wants Miss Carolina an' my supper, an' my own dear comfy cwib," she
added, feeling, for once in her life, that it would not be entirely
disagreeable to be put to bed.

"You hear that," pleaded Darby. "Please put her down. She'll only tire
you, because she's very solid for her size; I sometimes carry her
myself. _Please!_ We're not a bit afraid, and we haven't far to go now,"
he added, glancing up toward the brow of the hill, which was now flooded
with moonlight. And as he saw how short was the distance to its
summit--although, alas! the shortness was only seeming--his heart
bounded with gladness and relief; for in spite of his courageous
bearing, poor Darby was dreadfully afraid. All the stray stories and
ridiculous remarks--many of them never meant for his ears--that he had
ever heard concerning highwaymen, robbers, tramps, poachers, foreigners,
and wicked people generally, came crowding to his memory thick and fast,
and for the first time since they had fled from Firgrove he began to
wish himself safely back there once more.

Moll made no answer. She glanced around to make sure that no straggler
was near who could by any chance have heard Joan's cries. Then she
swathed the child's head in her shawl again, and, with Joe striding in
front and Darby dragging at his heel, the party set off at a rapid rate,
which sorely tried Darby's short, tired legs, sturdy though they were.
But notwithstanding the smartness of their pace, they did not seem to
come much nearer to the top of the hill.

The winding road upon which the travellers had set their faces, after
turning their backs on Engleton, had by this time dwindled into a narrow
bridle-path. And as they proceeded, it too gradually disappeared until
it was completely lost in the wide stretch of hilly land, half heather,
half scrubby grass, that spread all around them as far as Darby could
see.

All at once Joe stopped, and looked anxiously away in front, round the
base of the hill.

"They were to halt hereabouts," he muttered to his wife, "but I don't
see a sign o' them. Do you, Moll? you've allus had sharp sight."

Moll swept the landscape with a glance quick and keen as a hawk's. Then,
without speaking, sh