Rudolph walking and pulling he began to walk and pull too.

Meantime, while Patrick and his wife were thinking that the children had had
plenty of time to reach home before the storm, there was great anxiety in the
two homes where those three dear children lived. Patrick the coachman and
Philip the groom had been sent with the wagonette by the main road to Patrick
Kirk's--Patrick to bring the children and Philip to take charge of Barney, but
as the children were coming home, or rather trying to come home, by the ford,
of course they missed them.

All the while the storm was growing in violence, and suddenly for about five
minutes great hailstones came beating down till the lawn was fairly white with
them, and the panes of glass in the green-house roof at Oakdene cracked and
broke beneath them. "And those three blessed children are probably out in it
all," thought Tattine's Mother, standing pale and trembling at her window, and
watching the road which the wagonette would have to come. And then what did
she see but Barney, trotting bravely up the hill, with the geese still craning
their necks through the laths of the cage, but the reins dragging through the
mud of the roadway, and with no children in the little cart. Close behind him
came the wagonette, which Barney was cleverly managing to keep well ahead of,
but Mrs. Gerald soon discovered that neither were the children in that either.
In an instant she was down the stairs and out on the porch to meet Patrick at
the door.

"It isn't possible you have no word of the children?" she cried excitedly.

"Patrick Kirk says they started home by the ford in time to reach here an hour
before the storm," gasped Patrick, "but we came back by the ford ourselves and
not a sign have we seen of them, till Barney ran out of the woods ahead of us
five minutes ago."