Jim didn’t answer. He sat close beside his father for a while, listening to the gentle sounds of the forest and the falling water. And then the two got up and went on. At length, amid a fine grove of chestnuts, Jim beheld the same pile of rocks that had loomed up before the tired eyes of Azalea the night before, and he followed his father around into a cranny of them and saw the same doorway she had seen. “Mary,” called pa softly. “Mary! Be you there!” For a moment there was no answer, and then, as he called again, a frightened voice replied: “Is it you, Tom? Have you got a light? My, it’s dark here, and we’ve been sleeping till now.” Jim could hardly keep from whooping with delight, and the next moment he and his father had crept through the first half-open chamber, into the dark inner one, where ma and Azalea sat up on the big coat, rubbing their eyes and blinking at the light from the lantern which ma had blown out as they lay down to rest the night before, and which pa had just relighted. Jim never forgot the strange look of everything—of the cave with its rough walls, of the bats and spiders and beetles, of his mother, sitting there on the ground, all bewildered and strange-looking, and of the girl who clung to her and shuddered. “Get out of here! Get out of here!” called Pa McBirney cheerily. “It’s a fine day outside.” And he helped his wife and Azalea to their feet and led them outside. “Best not build a fire,” he said. “We’ll have to lie low a day or two till them show folks get out of the way. I cooked the bacon before I come, and I brought the coffee in a pail. It was hot when I started, but I reckon it’s cold enough now. But here’s plenty of biscuit, and a jar of gooseberry jam, and some of them star cookies and some hard-boiled eggs and a few radishes and some cold potatoes—” “My goodness, Thomas!” cried his wife. “Did you think we had turned into wolves because we was living in a den?” “Well you see, Mary, this here will have to last you all of to-day and perhaps a part of to-morrow. There’s no telling just what will happen. I might be penned up down there, with men watching me, and then you’d want a little stock of stuff laid by.” Jim had moved over toward Azalea, and now the two stood side by side staring at the older people. Pa might be penned up, and ma, who was hiding in a den, might go hungry! Did such things really happen? Jim turned and gazed at the girl, and he couldn’t help thinking how pretty she was, with her oval face and her great gray eyes and her long braids of brown hair. She looked as if she could run as well as a boy and ride a horse as well, or maybe better. Suddenly an idea came to him. “Say!” he burst out. “You’re glad you’re with us, ain’t you? You don’t wish you’d gone on with them other folks?”