"Don't ask me," urged Zene; "I'd like to forget it. There was
vittles, but they tasted so funny. And they kept inquirin' where I's
goin' and who was with me. They was the uneasiest people you ever
see. And nothing would do but I must sleep in the house. There was
two rooms. I didn't see till I was in bed, that the only door I could
get out of let into the room where the man and woman stayed."

Robert Day began to consider the part of Ohio through which his
caravan was passing, a weird and unwholesome region, full of
shivering delights. While the landscape lay warm, glowing and natural
around him, it was luxury to turn cold at Zene's night-peril.

"I couldn't go to sleep," continued Zene, "and I kind of kept my eye
on the only window there was."

Robert drew a sigh of relief as he reflected that an enemy watching
at the window would be sure Zene was looking just in the opposite
direction.

"And the man and woman they whispered."

"What did they whisper about?"

"How do I know?" said Zene mysteriously. "Whisper--whisper--whisper--z-z!
That's the way they kept on. Sometimes I thought he's threatenin' her,
and sometimes I thought she's threatenin' him. But along in the middle
of the night they hushed up whisperin'. And then I heard somebody open
the outside door and go out. I s'ze to myself, 'Nows the time to be up
and ready.' So I was puttin' on the clothes I'd took off, and right