"Didn't you see a child, a little girl, ahead of us on the road?"

"I noticed one a minute ago, but she's not there now," answered Briscoe.

"There was a child walking along the road just ahead, but she turned and
saw us coming, and she disappeared in the most curious way; she seemed to
melt into the weeds at the roadside, across from the elder-bush yonder."

The judge pulled in the horses by the elder-bush. "No child here, now," he
said, "but you're right; there certainly was one, just before you spoke."
The young corn was low in the fields, and there was no hiding-place in
sight.

"I'm very superstitious; I am sure it was an imp," Miss Sherwood said. "An
imp or a very large chameleon; she was exactly the color of the road."

"A Cross-Roads imp," said the judge, lifting the reins, "and in that case
we might as well give up. I never set up to be a match for those people,
and the children are as mean as their fathers, and smarter."

When the buckboard had rattled on a hundred yards or so, a little figure
clad in a tattered cotton gown rose up from the weeds, not ten feet from
where the judge had drawn rein, and continued its march down the road
toward Plattville, capering in the dust and pursuing the buckboard with
malignant gestures till the clatter of the horses was out of hearing, the
vehicle out of sight.



Something over two hours later, as Mr. Martin was putting things to rights