aunt's wrist to pinch her silent, but his efforts were too zealous
and turned her fright to indignation.

"I don't want my hand pinched off, Bobaday Padgett!" whispered aunt
Corinne, jerking away and thus breaking the circuit of comfort and
protection which was supposed to flow from his jacket.

"But listen," hissed Robert.

"I don't want to listen," whispered aunt Corinne; "I want to go back
to our camp-fire."

"Nobody can hurt us," whispered her nephew, gathering boldness. "You
stay here and let me creep through the bushes to that wagon. I want
to see what it was."

"If you stay a minute I'll go and leave you," remonstrated aunt
Corinne. "Ma Padgett don't want us off here by ourselves."

But Robert's hearing was concentrated upon the object toward which
he moved. He used Indian-like caution. The balls of his large eyes
became so prominent that they shone with some of the lustre of a
cat's in the dark.

Corinne took hold of the bushes in his absence.

The wind was breathing sadly through the trees far off. What if some
poor little child, lost in the woods, should come patting to her,
with all the wildness of its experience hanging around it? Oh, the
woods was a good play-house, on sunshiny days, but not the best of