recommended a speedy march toward the promised food and shelter. Mrs.
Moss took the hint, and bade the boy follow her at once and bring his
"things" with him.

"I ain't got any. Some big fellers took away my bundle, else I wouldn't
look so bad. There's only this. I'm sorry Sanch took it, and I'd like to
give it back if I knew whose it was," said Ben, bringing the new
dinner-pail out from the depths of the coach where he had gone to
housekeeping.

"That's soon done; it's mine, and you're welcome to the bits your queer
dog ran off with. Come along, I must lock up," and Mrs. Moss clanked her
keys suggestively.

Ben limped out, leaning on a broken hoe-handle, for he was stiff after
two days in such damp lodgings, as well as worn out with a fortnight's
wandering through sun and rain. Sancho was in great spirits, evidently
feeling that their woes were over and his foraging expeditions at an
end, for he frisked about his master with yelps of pleasure, or made
playful darts at the ankles of his benefactress, which caused her to
cry, "Whish!" and "Scat!" and shake her skirts at him as if he were a
cat or hen.

A hot fire was roaring in the stove under the broth-skillet and
tea-kettle, and Betty was poking in more wood, with a great smirch of
black on her chubby cheek, while Bab was cutting away at the loaf as if
bent on slicing her own fingers off. Before Ben knew what he was about,
he found himself in the old rocking-chair devouring bread and butter as
only a hungry boy can, with Sancho close by gnawing a mutton-bone like a
ravenous wolf in sheep's clothing.