"Is it--can it be I've--found--it--IT! Oh!--"

An unfamiliar voice suddenly interrupted her task, demanding:

"Girl! Why are you despoiling my property, trampling my choicest
ferns, trespassing upon my private park?"

The paperknife went one way, Dorothy's red Tam another, as she sprang
up to confront the most masterful looking woman she had ever seen.
Tall as an Amazon, yet handsome as she was forbidding, she towered
above the astonished child as if she would annihilate her.

"I--I couldn't do very much--with a paperknife, could I? I didn't
know--I'm sorry, I'll plant them right back--I only did what the
others said--Nobody warned me--us--"

"_Us?_ Are there others then? Where? This is outrageous! Can't you
read? Didn't you see the signs 'No Trespassing' everywhere? Where are
the rest? This must be put a stop to--I wouldn't have had it happen
for anything. My park--Eunice's precious playground, where she is safe
and--Oh! I am so sorry, so sorry."

The lady was in riding habit. A little way off stood a horse and
beside it a tiny pony with a child upon its back. A groom was at the
pony's side, apparently holding its small rider safe. The child's face
peered out from a mass of waving hair, frail and very lovely, though
now frightened by her own mother's loud tones.

These tones had roused others also. Wheeling about the lady faced
Corny and the Colonel, slowly rising from the log where they had been
resting. A moment she stared as if doubting the evidence of her own
eyes, then her whole expression changed and springing forward she
threw her strong arms about the trembling Colonel and drew his tired
face to her shoulder.

"Oh! Daddy, Daddy! You have come home--you have come home at last. And
on my wedding day! To make it a glorious day, indeed! Ten years since
I have had a chance to kiss your dear old face, ten years lost out of
a lifetime just because I married--_Jabb_!"

But now her strong, yet cultured voice, rang out in mirth, and Dorothy
looked at her in amazement, almost believing she had found a crazy
woman in these woods. Then Mr. Corny, as she called him, came to where
she stood, observing, and gently pushed her back again upon the heap
of ferns.

"Best not to notice. Best keep right on diggin'. That's Josie--I mean
Josephine--Dillingham--Jabb! Her father intended her to marry into one
of our oldest Maryland 'families' and she rebelled. Took up with Jabb,
a son of the poorest white trash in the coun