. _Peter has found my Dinkie!_

I was called to the telephone, a little after eleven, but couldn't
hear well on the up-stairs extension, so I went to the instrument
down-stairs, where the operator told me it was long-distance, from
Buckhorn. So I listened, with my heart in my mouth. But all I could
get was a buzz and crackle and an occasional ghostly word. It was the
storm, I suppose. Then I heard Peter's voice, thin and faint and far
away, but most unmistakably Peter's voice.

"Can you hear me now?" he said, like a man speaking from the bottom of
the sea.

"Yes," I called back. "What is it?"

"Get ready for good news," said that thin but valorous voice that
seemed to be speaking from the tip-top mountains of Mars. But the
crackling and burring cut us off again. Then something must have
happened to the line, or we must have been switched to a better
circuit. For, the next moment, Peter's voice seemed almost in the next
room. It seemed to come closer at a bound, like a shore-line when you
look at it through a telescope.

"Is that any better?" he asked through his miles and miles of
rain-swept blackness.

"Yes, I can hear you plainly now," I told him.

"Ah, yes, that _is_ better," he acknowledged. "And everything else is,
too, my dear. For I've found your Dinkie and----"

"You've found Dinkie?" I gasped.

"I have, thank God. And he's safe and sound!"

"Where?" I demanded.

"Fast asleep at Alabama Ranch."

"Is he all right?"

"As fit as a fiddle--all he wants is sleep."

"_Oh, Peter!_" It was foolish. But it was all I could say for a full
minute. For my boy was alive, and safe. My laddie had been found by
Peter--by good old Peter, who never, in the time of need, was known to
fail me.

"Where are you now?" I asked, when reason was once more on her
throne.

"At Buckhorn," answered Peter.

"And you went all that way through the mud and rain, just to tell me?"
I said.

"I had to, or I'd blow up!" acknowledged Peter. "And now I'd like to
know what you want me to do."

"I want you to come and get me, Peter," I said slowly and distinctly
over the wire.

There was a silence of several seconds.

"Do you understand what that means?" he finally demanded. His voice, I
noticed, had become suddenly solemn.

"Yes, Peter, I understand," I told him. "Please come and get me!" And
again the silence was so prolonged that I had to cut in and ask: "Are
you there?"

And Peter's voice answered "Yes."

"Then you