room and I'll bring you something
to eat as soon as I can. Run now! Tabitha will be expecting me."

"But Glory, doesn't _anyone_ know I--" began bewildered Billiard, much
taken back at his reception.

"Ran away?" finished Gloriana. "No one but Toady and myself. He won't
tell. I made him promise. Of course we'd have had to, if you hadn't
come back, but I knew--I thought you would--" How could she tell him
that she knew he was too much of a coward to persist in running away?
"Scramble into your room as quietly as possible," she continued, "so as
not to disturb the others, and I will bring you some supper in a minute
or so."

"You're--you're awfully good to a feller," mumbled the abashed boy,
wondering how he ever could have disliked the red-haired Glory.
"I--I'll not forget it." And as the girl hurried up the path to the
kitchen door, he skirted the house till he reached the window of his
room, through which he wriggled cautiously and disappeared in the
friendly darkness within, thankful that he was home again.

CHAPTER IX

BILLIARD SURRENDERS

Toady kept his promise not to mention Billiard's runaway expedition to
anyone else save Gloriana; but being human, he could not keep from
twitting his brother occasionally, and the days which followed that
memorable night were full of misery for the unhappy boy. His cousins
avoided him, Tabitha ignored him, Toady tormented him, and even
Gloriana seemed indifferent to his plight. In his fright at
discovering himself lost on the desert at night, he had resolved to
follow Toady's example and turn over a new leaf. He could not quite
make up his mind to confess his sins to eagle-eyed Tabitha, but was
really sincere in his desire to do better; and was as surprised as he
was disappointed to find that no one paid any attention to the sudden
change in his deportment.

"Might as well have kept on being bad," he growled with an injured air
one afternoon when a fortnight had passed without any noticeable change
in the atmosphere. "Wish I hadn't come back that night. Guess they'd
have sung a different tune then! Maybe a coyote would have got me, or
I'd have stepped into a rattlesnake's nest and been stung to death.
Bet they'd have felt sorry when they found me--," he hesitated. His
picture was too vivid, and he shuddered as he thought what a fate would
have been his had a rattlesnake bitten him as he tramped across the
pathless waste in his flight. "Pretty near de