This program had been carried out rapidly—more rapidly, in fact, than was at first intended. Azalea was compelled to go in the old covered wagon and to lie down there under a pile of odds and ends. Betty sat beside her son Rafe and directed their course. They had struck an old wood-road, and wound along through the heart of a silent forest, meeting no one. So much more solitary was the road than they had supposed it would be that Betty urged her son to press on. The horses were young and strong—a new team which Azalea had not before seen—and the result was that by twelve o’clock that night they had camped in an out-of-the-way grove across the line dividing the two Carolinas. The mountains were left behind, and an almost level plain stretched around them. But the underbrush in this grove of poor trees was thick, and as Betty intended to do her cooking at night and to show no smoke from her camp fire to curious strangers during the day, they felt that there was little danger of their being found. The rain that had drenched the valley of Lee had thrown out no more than a light shower over the spot where the Bowens kept Azalea prisoner, and while the girl lay on her rickety bed wondering what had happened back at home, she did not dream of the wild experiences through which her friends Jim and Hi had been passing. It was not of them that she thought chiefly—though she knew how they would be fuming about her and putting plans on foot for her recovery—but of Ma McBirney and her anxiety. “I’m so used to having bad times,” thought the little girl wrapping her arms tight about her body as if for company, “that I can stand them. But Ma McBirney isn’t used to them. She’ll just fret herself crazy.” She had perfect confidence in the ability of her friends to find her. She had thought all that out in that strange, dangerous drive at night through the old wood-road. People like Pa McBirney and Mr. Carson weren’t the kind to give up hunting for her. “I’ve just got to lie low,” thought this child who had seen too much of the ways of a prowling company of folk, “and take care of myself the best way I can, and I’ll be found. I’ll be back in Ma McBirney’s house all right and tight in a little while. I’m going to believe that and say it over and over. I’m not going to be scared, nor sorry, nor anything. Jim and Hi will think I’m a silly thing to let myself be picked up and carried away like that, anyway. They’ll think I haven’t a bit of grit. But I’ll show them I’m not such a stupid goose after all.”