But Bobby and Maggie had disappeared. The children had found the jar in the cupboard and, with their hands and their mouths filled with cookies, were gazing at each other in unbelieving wonder when the sound of a step on the bare floor of the kitchen startled them. One look through the open doorway and they fled with headlong haste back to the porch, where they unhesitatingly sought refuge behind their friend ha the wheel chair. The object of their fears appeared a short moment behind them. "Oh," said the Interpreter, reaching out to draw little Maggie within the protecting circle of his arm, "it is Billy Rand. You don't need to fear Billy." The man who stood looking kindly down upon them was fully as tall and heavy as the Interpreter had been in those years before the accident that condemned him to his chair. But Billy Rand lacked the commanding presence that had once so distinguished his older friend and guardian. His age was somewhere between twenty and thirty; but his face was still the face of an overgrown and rather slow-witted child. Raising his hands, Billy Rand talked to the Interpreter in the sign language of the deaf and dumb. The Interpreter replied in the same manner and, with a smiling nod to the children, Billy returned to the garden in the rear of the house. Tiny Maggie's eyes were big with wonder. "Gee!" breathed Bobby. "He sure enough can't talk, can he?" "No," returned the Interpreter. "Poor Billy has never spoken a word." "Gee!" said Bobby again. "An' can't he hear nothin,' neither?" "No, Bobby, he has never heard a sound." Too awe-stricken even to repeat his favorite exclamation, the boy munched his cooky in silence, while Maggie, enjoying her share of the old basket maker's hospitality, snuggled a little closer to the wheel of the big chair. "Billy Rand, you see," explained the Interpreter, "is my legs." Bobby laughed. "Funny legs, I'd say." "Yes," agreed the Interpreter, "but very good legs just the same. Billy runs all sorts of errands for me--goes to town to sell our baskets and to bring home our groceries, helps about the house and does many things that I can't do. He is hoeing the garden this afternoon. He comes in every once in a while to ask if I want anything. He sleeps in a little room next to mine and sometimes in the night, when I am not resting well, I hear him come to my bedside to see if I am all right." "An' yer keep him an' take care of him?" asked Bobby. "Yes," returned the Interpreter, "I take care of Billy and Billy takes care of me. He has fine legs but not much of a--but cannot speak or hear. I can talk and hear and think but have no legs. So with my reasonably good head and his very good legs we make a fairly good man, you see." Bobby laughed aloud and even wee Maggie chuckled at the Interpreter's quaint explanation of himself and Billy Rand. "Funny kind of a man," said Bobby.