Braddish, either his capture or his whereabouts, that she might fly to
him and comfort him, but the rest of her faculties remained in devoted
attendance on my sister and me. Only there showed in them now and then a
kind of tigerish passionateness, as when I fell off the sea-wall among
the boulders and howled so dismally. She leaped down after and caught me
to her in the wildest distress, and even when I stopped howling could
not seem to put me down. Indeed, she held me so tight that if any of my
bones had been cracked by the tumble she must have finished by breaking
them. The pathos of her efforts to romp with us as in happier days was
lost upon me, I am happy to say. Nor did I, recalling to her what
Braddish had said of robbers being inevitably caught, realize that I was
stabbing her most cruelly. For she was, or tried to be, firm in the
belief that Braddish would succeed where all others had failed. She had
asked my father what would happen if Braddish got clean out of the
United States, and he, hoping, I suppose, to be of indirect use to the
young couple for whom he was heartily sorry, made her out a list of
countries, so far as he knew them, wherein there was no extradition. My
father hoped, I fondly believe, that she would get the list to Braddish
for his guidance, conjecturing rightly that if Braddish made his
whereabouts known to anybody it would be to Mary. But as to that, ten
days passed before Mary knew a jot more of it than another. And I must
believe that it came to her then entirely by inspiration.

We were passing the Boole Dogge Farm, my sister and I, intent upon
seeing which of us could take the most hops without putting the held-up
foot to the ground, when suddenly Mary, who had been strolling along
laughing at us, stopped short in her tracks and turned, and stood
looking over the green treetops to where the gaunt, dead limb of the
hollow oak thrust sharply up from among them. But we had hopped on for
quite a piece before we noticed that she no longer went alongside. So we