ides' doin' her and 'undoin' her (as she calls
it), night and morning, and putting her to bed? Hooray! Poopy, my lovely
black darling; where _have_ you come from? You've frightened Bumpus here
nearly out of his wits. I do believe he'd have bin dead by this time,
but for me!"

So saying, Corrie, in the revulsion of his suddenly relieved feelings,
actually threw his arms round Poopy, and hugged her.

"O Corrie!" exclaimed the girl, submitting to the embrace with as much
indifference as if she had been a lamp-post, "w'at troble you hab give
me! Why you run so? sure you know me voice."

"Know it, my sweet lump of charcoal; I'd know it among a thousand, if
ye'd only use it in its own pretty natural tones; but if you _will_ go
and screech like a bottle-imp, you know," said Corrie, remonstratively,
"how can you expect a stupid feller like me to recognize it?"

"There ain't no sich things as bottle-imps, no more nor ghosts,"
observed Bumpus; "but hold your noise, you chatterbox, and let's hear
wot the gal's got to say. Mayhap she knows summat about Alice?"

At this, Poopy manufactured an expression on her sable countenance which
was meant to be intensely knowing and suggestive.

"Don't I? Yes, me do," said she.

"Out with it, then, at once, you pot of shoe-blacking," cried the
impatient Corrie.

The girl immediately related all that she knew regarding the fugitives,
stammering very much from sheer anxiety to get it all out as fast as she
could, and delaying her communication very much in consequence, besides
rendering her meaning rather obscure--sometimes unintelligible. Indeed,
the worthy seaman could scarcely understand a word she said. He sat
staring at the whites of her eyes, which, with her teeth, were the only
visible parts of her countenance at that moment, and swayed his body to
and fro, as if endeavoring by a mechanical effort to arrive at a
philosophical conception of something exceedingly abstruse. But at the
end of each period he turned to Corrie for a translation.

At length both man and boy became aware of the state of things, and
Corrie started up crying:

"Let's go into the cave at once."

"Hold on, boy," cried Bumpus! "not quite so fast (as the monkey said to
the barrel-organ w'en it took to playin' Scotch reels). We must have a
council of war; d'ye see? The black monster Keona may have gone right
through the cave and comed out at t'other end of it, in w'ich case it's
all up with our chance o' find