Upon hearing Darn's words Jerry stretched out at full length in the road
and his voice rose in a quavering wail of anguish. Celia Jane emitted a
thinner, shriller wail. Nora came back to comfort them and was caught by
the contagion so that she too plumped down in the road and wept.

Danny and Chris, being boys, were ashamed to give vent to their emotions
in a similar way and stood looking down at the huddled forms in the
road. Chris, after a time, found himself weeping in sympathy and openly
rubbed away the tears with his shirt sleeve. Even Danny swallowed hard
and dabbed at his eyes.

"Well, I'll be horn-swoggled!" exclaimed a startled, mystified voice
back of the children.

Jerry opened his eyes on a blurred picture of Danny and Chris turning
suddenly about and of Nora springing to her feet. A man was just getting
out of a two-seated buggy. All sound of his approach had been drowned
out by the vociferous lamentations of Jerry and Celia Jane, which still
continued.

"What's the trouble here?" asked the man in a deep, pleasant voice that
carried even through the clamor into Jerry's consciousness. He raised
his head and looked up through swollen and tear-drenched eyes at the
man.

"They're g-goin' to take Jerry Elbow to the p-p-poor farm Wednesday
morning," Danny stutteringly explained.

"Then you must be the Mullarkey children," observed the man, speaking to
the group.