The tea was delicious and every one enjoyed it heartily. Anne was standing by the door with a second “jamwich,” as she always called the combination, in her hand when wheels came up the lane, a horse stopped suddenly, and a figure sprang from the runabout, vaulted over the rickety gate that the rain had made still more difficult to open, and strode up the walk. It was Mr. Hugh, and he wore what Anne had always called his “would-like-to-break-something” expression. It flashed through her brain that he was either vexed at finding the Herb Witch still in the house, or that he blamed her in some way for their detention. She never knew exactly why she did it, but the moment he reached the door and opened his lips to speak she thrust the bit of bread and jam between his lips, calling gaily: “You are just in time, it’s perfectly delicious, and the very last piece, too. Please, Mrs. Carr, do you think that you could coax one more cup of tea from that duck of a pot? It’s Mr. Hugh, you know, and he’s come to look for us.” Astonished as he was and gagged with bread and jam, Mr. Hugh’s anxiety and anger disappeared at the same moment, for both he and Miss Jule, who had driven completely around the circuit without finding the party, feared they might have tried to cross the river at the disabled bridge which had disappeared altogether at the rush of the suddenly swollen stream, and his turning into the lane at all had been quite an accident. Instantly there was a confusion of tongues, and poor Mr. Hugh’s brain whirled as he heard the words: “punctured tire,” “across the fields,” “horrid barbed wire fence,” “dead tree that kept moving,” “Laddie in trap,” “license money stolen,” “dear old china,” “such delicious tea,” “saved Jill Waddles from starving to death,” “thunder and lightning,” “chestnut tree,” etc., each sentence coming from a different person. Nor was his bewilderment lessened by the sight of the Witch herself, leaning on her crutch by the chimney closet, dignified and silent, the very reverse of the whining beggar, half lunatic, half tramp, that she had been represented. His first idea was to relieve Miss Jule’s mind and get the girls safely home, his second was to apologize to Mrs. Carr for his evident misunderstanding and abrupt entrance. “You can tell me all about it on the way home,” he said to the group at large. “Elsa, your mother is nearly frantic about you all; fortunately Miss Jule expected to keep Anne at the Hill Farm all night, so her mother knows nothing about the matter. [Illustration: _The Herb Witch._] “The wheels are up under that chestnut? Very well, we will ask Mrs. Carr to keep the lame one until it can be called for to-morrow; its owner will have to drive with me, and the rest ride, at least, as far as the blacksmith’s on the turnpike, for it will be dark before I can send the horses back here. Whose wheel was disabled?”