responsibility had added years to my age and inches to
my stature. I was no longer a shivering, frightened boy clinging to
her hand, and, though I was not the master of the mule, while we stayed
on his back I was Penelope's master, and that was what I had determined
to be.

"Don't be afraid, little 'un," I returned boldly, when I had recovered
my breath and balance. "I can handle him all right."

To make good my boast, I even dared to kick Nathan, fearing lest a
pause in our journey might allow her to slip from his back.

"I want to find father--to go with him," she pleaded. It was the
hundredth time she had told me that.

"He said you were to come with me, Penelope," I argued. "And he told
me particular that he wouldn't be home till a week from Monday."

This last was a little fiction of mine, which seemed warranted by the
circumstances, and had Penelope pressed me and asked me when her father
had made such a definite statement I was ready to go to any extent with
like imaginings if only I could keep her with me. She did not, and her
cheerier tone quieted my conscience.

"Is he?" she cried. "Do you really think he will come home, Davy?"

"Didn't he tell me so?" I returned haughtily. "And besides, what would
he stay away any longer for?"

Still Penelope was inclined to doubt. She knew that the morning's
strange events had brought her father into great trouble, and she could
not believe that a vain search for him would satisfy his enemies. Two
weeks, she thought, would suffice to wear them out, but two weeks in
her small mind was an eternity when it was to be faced without him.

"Oh, Davy, I wish he hadn't done it," she cried. "If he hadn't shot
Mr. Lukens, then he wouldn't have to run away, would he?"

"That was just a mistake," I replied, as though shooting constables
were quite a favorite sport where I lived. "He told me particular he
didn't mean it, but having done it, and they not understanding that he
didn't mean it, he kind of had to get out till things blowed over."

"Didn't he do wrong to shoot Mr. Lukens?"

"Wrong?" My tone expressed the greatest astonishment at such an idea.
"Why, Penelope, if I was him I'd have done exactly the same
thing--exactly."

My approval of her father's act was a great consolation to her. The
pressure of her encircling arms made me gasp, and there was a note of
gratitude in her voice. "Oh, Davy, I know you would; you are so brave."

"And I'll take care o