ded, with a look round the
company, as if challenging confirmation of his words.

"Ay, they was drownded, sure enough," spoke a woman's shrill voice, high
above the cackle of the hens and the quack-quack of the ducks--"drownded
dead, an' more's the pity; an' their ma dead, too, an' their pa in
Africa, an' their aunties takin' on terrible 'bout them."

"We isn't dwowned," called out Joan in her clear, sweet voice, shaking
back her yellow mane and surveying the faces about her with merry eyes.
"We was lost--quite lost--and now we's founded and goin' home again."

"Don't you see that we're not drowned?" said Darby seriously, turning
round and round before the amused onlookers. "We wouldn't be here if we
were _drownded_, would we? I'm really and truly Darby Dene--I mean Guy
Dene, for that's my proper name; and this is my sister Joan--Doris, I
should say--with kind Mr. Bambo, who has helped us to run away from some
wicked people who wanted to keep us always. Now, please, won't you let
us on board the barge? We'll go below into the little house where we hid
before, and not disturb you a bit. You see, we came with you, and you
ought to take us back again," added the boy, with a sudden gleam of
amusement in his big gray eyes.

Here the dwarf came slowly forward, painfully conscious that all eyes
were fixed upon him. Yet he did not flinch. He beckoned the bargeman
aside, and in a few broken, gasping sentences told him the main facts of
the children's story.

The instant the young fellow clearly grasped the situation and
understood his own share in the adventure, he generously cast all fear
of consequences to the winds, and there and then agreed to take the
travellers with him to Firdale as fast as his boat could bear them.

And as the old brown horse pulled slowly off, dragging the big red
barge-boat away behind him, a hearty cheer broke from the watchers on
the wharf, and "A safe journey!" was flung from every lip after the
_Smiling Jane_ and the little voyagers whom she bore on board.

It was a mild, mellow day, such as not infrequently comes towards the
end of October--a day whose brightness almost deludes one into thinking
that summer is not entirely gone, yet with a hint of change in the
still, waiting earth, the silently-falling leaves; a touch of crispness
in the air which foretells winter, and at the same time indicates that
winter is not really a bad time after all.

On the deck of the barge Joan made herself qu