ped in her companions.

She soon learned that the girl was in reality a matron of seventeen, and
the actual proprietor of the baby, whom, nevertheless, she appeared to
regard as a mysterious phenomenon attached to the elder woman, whom she
addressed as "Mam." In this view the grandmother seemed to coincide, and
remarked, naively,--

"Why, lor, Ma'am, she and her husband a'n't nothing but two babies
theirselves. She ha'n't never been away from her folks, nor he from
hisn, till t'other day he got bit with the ile-fever, and nothing would
do but to tote down here to the Crik and make his fortin. They was chirk
enough when they started; but about a week ago he come home, and I tell
you he sung a little smaller than when he was there last. He was clean
discouraged; there wa'n't no ile to be had, 'thout you'd got money
enough to live on, to start with; and victuals and everything else was
so awful dear, a poor man would get run out 'fore he'd realized the fust
thing; wust of all was, Clementiny was so homesick she couldn't neither
sleep nor eat; and the amount was, he'd stop 'long with father in the
shop, and I should go and fetch home the two babies. So here I be, and a
time I've had gittin' 'em along, I tell _you_."

"It's hard travelling down Oil Creek, then?" asked Miselle, with a
personal interest in the question.

"Hard! Reckon you'll say that, arter you've tried it. How fur be you
going?"

"To Tarr Farm."

"Lor, yes. Well now how d'y' allow to git there?"

"I am hoping to meet a friend here who will know all about the way; but
if he fails me, I shall ask the people at the railway station."

"No need to go so fur. I kin tell ye the hull story, for it's from Tarr
Farm I fetched the gal and young 'un this very morning."

"Indeed? What is the best route, then?"

"Well, you'll take the railroad down to Schaeffer's, and from there you
start down the Crik either in a stage or a boat. But I wouldn't
recommend the stage nohow. You don't look so very rugged, and if you
wa'n't killed, you'd be scared to death. So you'll hev to look up a
boat."

"What sort of boat?" asked Miselle, faintly.

"Oh, a flatboat. They come up loaded with ile, and going back they like
fust rate to catch a passenger. But don't you give 'em too much. They'd
cheat you out of your eye-teeth, but I'll bet you they found I was too
many for 'em. Don't you give more than a dollar, nohow; and I made 'em
take the two of us for a dollar 'n' 'alf."