CHAPTER XVIII

THE VOICE OF THE TAIL-LIGHT

One night after dark, Pepsy and Pee-Wee were sitting in their
little roadside pavilion because they preferred it to the lamp-lighted
kitchen smelling of kerosene where Uncle Ebenezer read the American
Farm Journal, his arms spread on the red covered table.

A cheery little cricket chirped somewhere in this scene of impending
failure; nearby a katydid was grinding out her old familiar song as if
it were the latest popular air. In the barn across the yard the
discordant sound of the horses kicking the echoing boards sounded clear
in the still night and seemed a part of the homely music of the
countryside.

Suddenly a speeding auto, containing perhaps its load of merry,
heedless joy riders, went rattling over the old bridge along the
highway and the loose planks called out across the interval of
woodland to the little red-headed girl in this remote shack along the
obscure by-road.

"You have to go back,
You have to go back,
You have to go back."

Little did those speeding riders know of the voice they had called
up to terrify this unknown child. The rattling, warning voice ceased as
suddenly as it had begun as the unseen car rolled noiselessly along the