g.

"Tramp," suggested Baumberger, in a tone of soothing finality, as when
one hushes the fear of a child. "Sick the dogs on him. He'll go--never
saw the hobo yet that wouldn't run from a dog." He smiled leeringly up
at her, and reached for a second helping of honey.

Good Indian pulled his glance from Evadna, and tried to bore through
the beefy mask which was Baumberger's face, but all he found there was
a gross interest in his breakfast and a certain indulgent sympathy for
Evadna's fear, and he frowned in a baffled way.

"Who ever heard of a tramp camped in our orchard!" flouted Phoebe. "They
don't get down here once a year, and then they always come to the house.
You couldn't know there WAS any strawberry patch behind that thick row
of trees--or a garden, or anything else."

"He's got a row of stakes running clear across the patch," Evadna
recalled suddenly. "Just like they do for a new street, or a railroad,
or something. And--"

Good Indian pushed back his chair with a harsh, scraping noise,
and rose. He was staring hard at Baumberger, and his whole face had
sharpened till it had the cold, unyielding look of an Indian. And
suddenly Baumberger raised his head and met full that look. For two
breaths their eyes held each other, and then Baumberger glanced casually
at Peaceful.

"Sounds queer--must be some mistake, though. You must have seen
something, girl, that reminded you of stakes. The stub off a
sagebrush maybe?" He ogled her quite frankly. "When a little girl gets
scared--Sick the dogs on him," he advised the family collectively,
his manner changing to a blustering anxiety that her fright should be
avenged.

Evadna seemed to take his tone as a direct challenge. "I was scared, but
I know quite well what I saw. He wasn't a tramp. He had a regular camp,
with a coffee-pot and frying-pan and blankets. And there a line of
stakes across the strawberry patch."

Before, the breakfast had continued to seem an important incident
temporarily suspended. Now Peaceful Hart laid hand to his beard, eyed
his wife questioningly, let his glance flicker over the faces of his
sons, and straightened his shoulders unconsciously. Good Indian was at
the door, his mouth set in a thin, straight, fighting line. Wally and
Jack were sliding their chairs back from the table preparing to follow
him.

"I guess it ain't anything much," Peaceful opined optimistically. "They
can't do anything but steal berries, and they're most gone, an