"He's too big and too strong," said the boy protector, sorrowfully. "That's why I came along with him in the first place. I almost knew it was a mistake, but there wasn't anything I could do. I think, when they find out about the mistake, the lady I lived with will send someone to find me. I hadn't lived with her very long but she liked me and I was going to be her real little boy, if she hadn't been hurt. But she said I could go on to school and the papers could be signed any time. I reckon if they had been signed this mistake wouldn't have happened." He sighed wistfully. "But if we ran away, and there was anybody coming to fetch you, maybe we'd meet them on the way," argued Mollie, reluctant to abandon the thought of escape. Stephen's blue eyes thoughtfully contemplated the forbidding landscape about them. He was considering, as well as he could, every detail and every possibility. A sudden twinge in one of his ankles decided him. With it came surging over him a mental repetition of the agony through which he had passed such a short time before. Anything--anything but that, he thought. Aloud he said to Mollie that if they did try to escape and lost their way and walked into such mud as seemed all about the farm they would die just as the little pig died. Mollie stared at him, aghast. She had not thought of that. She was thinking only of the ogre. She wanted to get away from him. "I don't guess he'll hurt us," Stephen remarked, after more reflection, "so long as we keep quiet and do what he and she tell us. We'll have to get dirty and spoil our clothes and I don't guess we'll get anything good to eat, but after while somebody is sure to come and take us away. I heard that man in the buggy with you tell him that he was to keep you well, and not let you get sick, because if you died the money would stop coming." But of himself little Stephen was not so sure. "I reckon I'll have to work awful hard to please him," he continued, after a moment. "There can't any money come to him for me, because nobody knows I'm here." It was then Mollie had her inspiration. "I know what," she exclaimed, with a lightning-like change of mood. "If he's going to get money for me and mustn't hurt me, then he won't dare hurt you very much because he'll be afraid of me, for I'd tell, the first chance I got. And I wouldn't stay here alone without you, and if I went off to find my way home he'd be afraid I'd drown in the mud, and so he'll not kill you because he'll want me to live." She paused for breath. No lawyer could have reasoned the matter out any better or more accurately. So quickly do common danger and necessity sharpen the wits of children whose intelligence has not already been dulled by brutal treatment. In her enthusiasm Mollie almost forgot her woes. Not so, Stephen. "We'll have to be careful," he warned. "We mustn't make them mad. I reckon we'd better go into the house. They'll be looking for us."