“Dogs were barking at something down in the orchard,” Wally volunteered, passing over Baumberger's monologue. “I was going down there, but it was so dark--and I thought maybe it was Gene's ghost. That was before the moon came up. Got any more biscuits, mum?” “My trap wasn't sprung behind the chicken-house,” said Donny. “I looked, first thing.” “Dogs,” drawled Baumberger, his enunciation muffled by the food in his mouth, “always bark. And cats fight on shed-roofs. Next door to where I board there's a dog that goes on shift as regular as a policeman. Every night at--” “Oh, Aunt Phoebe!” Evadna, crisp and cool in a summery dress of some light-colored stuff, and looking more than ever like a Christmas angel set a-flutter upon the top of a holiday fir in a sudden gust of wind, threw open the door, rushed halfway into the room, and stopped beside the chair of her aunt. Her hands dropped to the plump shoulder of the sitter. “Aunt Phoebe, there's a man down at the farther end of the strawberry patch! He's got a gun, Aunt Phoebe, and he's camped there, and when he heard me he jumped up and pointed the gun straight at me!” “Why, honey, that can't be--you must have seen an Indian prowling after windfalls off the apricot trees there. He wouldn't hurt you.” Phoebe reached up, and caught the hands in a reassuring clasp. Evadna's eyes strayed from one face to another around the table till they rested upon Good Indian, as having found sanctuary there. “But, Aunt Phoebe, he was WASN'T. He was a white man. And he has a camp there, right by that tree the lightning peeled the bark off. I was close before I saw him, for he was sitting down and the currant bushes were between. But I went through to get round where Uncle Hart has been irrigating and it's all mud, and he jumped up and pointed the gun AT me. Just as if he was going to shoot me. And I turned and ran.” Her fingers closed upon the hand of her aunt, but her eyes clung to Good Indian, as though it was to him she was speaking. “Tramp,” suggested Baumberger, in a tone of soothing finality, as when one hushes the fear of a child. “Sick the dogs on him. He'll go--never saw the hobo yet that wouldn't run from a dog.” He smiled leeringly up at her, and reached for a second helping of honey. Good Indian pulled his glance from Evadna, and tried to bore through the beefy mask which was Baumberger's face, but all he found there was a gross interest in his breakfast and a certain indulgent sympathy for Evadna's fear, and he frowned in a baffled way. “Who ever heard of a tramp camped in our orchard!” flouted Phoebe. “They don't get down here once a year, and then they always come to the house. You couldn't know there WAS any strawberry patch behind that thick row of trees--or a garden, or anything else.” “He's got a row of stakes running clear across the patch,” Evadna recalled suddenly. “Just like they do for a new street, or a railroad, or something. And--”