unker doesn't come after us, maybe it will tear the house down."

"It can't," declared Russ.

"How do you know it can't?"

"Why, cats--even big ones--don't tear houses to pieces, Rose. You know
they don't! We'll be safe as long as we stay in this place."

"But how long shall we have to stay here?"

"Until that thing goes away," said Russ confidently.

"And maybe it won't go away at all. We'll have to stay here till the
folks come to find us, Russ. I--I want--my mo-mother!"

"Now, Rose Bunker, don't be a baby!" said her brother. "That thing can't
get at us in here----"

Just then something thumped heavily on the roof of the hut. Russ could
not say another word. They heard the great claws of the big cat
scratching at the roof boards.

Rose screamed again and this time her brother's voice joined with hers
in a hopeless cry for help.

CHAPTER XXIV

AN EXCITING TIME

Russ and Rose Bunker had slipped out of the house on the hill without
saying a word to anybody as to where they were going. Since coming to
the Meiggs Plantation there had been a certain amount of laxness in
regard to what the children did. They had a freedom that Mother Bunker
never allowed when they were at home.

Because the Armatage children went and came as they wished, the little
Bunkers began to do likewise. The house was so big, too, that the
children might be playing a long way from the room in which their mother
and father and Mr. Frane Armatage and his wife sat.

The servants who were supposed to keep some watch upon the children were
now all in the quarters. Servants in the South seldom sleep in "the big
house." And perhaps Mother Bunker forgot this fact.

At any rate, when she came to look for her brood late in the evening she
found the four little ones fast asleep in their beds, as she had
expected them to be. But Rose was not with Phillis and Alice Armatage,
and Russ's bed was likewise empty.

"Where are those children?" Mother Bunker demanded of Daddy, when she
had run downstairs again. "Do you know? They should be in bed."

"They were in the library earlier in the evening," Mrs. Armatage said.
"I think they were writing again."

"Writing?" repeated Mother Bunker. "Making more of those signs to set up
at the burned house?"

Mr. Armatage chuckled. "Those won't do much good. Sneezer never could
read writing."

"Let us ask Mammy. Rose and Russ may be with her," suggested Mrs.
Armatage.

Upstairs went the two ladie