They ran about like a bevy of frightened jack-rabbits and finally brought up on the edge of the bog. There was light now, light enough to see clearly. And what they saw was so incredible that for a moment they thought their eyes were deceiving them. Children--a swaying, floundering string of them, like the tail of a kite, with the largest, Mollie, in the lead, clear out in the bog, beyond the reach of any plank on the premises--and nobody would have ventured to cross on a plank had one been available. Grimes stared, rubbed his eyes and stared again. "Plumb idjits!" he ejaculated. "Th' dum fools! I'll git 'em off en thar mighty quick." He tore indoors and returned on the jump, his shirt flying like a sail in the morning breeze, and carrying a shot-gun. He paused, raised the gun to his shoulder and took aim. From her precarious position on the limb of a tree, her feet barely out of the mud, Mollie watched him. "He ain't a-goin' ter hit none on us," she told the children with a calmness of tone and a sense of conviction that was nothing short of inspired. "Th' Good Shepherd's a-watchin'. He'll put up His hand, er sumpin'. They was scarred hands. Mebbe thet's how hit happened. He was a helpin' little chil'en." But the hand that reached forth and touched the ogre's arm was the hand of a poor, ignorant, half-witted woman, the victim of circumstances, the creature of her environment--Maria. "I wouldn't shoot 'em," she said, and who knows but that she, too, was inspired, "th' police might be aroun' an' hear yo'. Leave 'em an' they'll die in th' mire, anyhow." Peter lowered the gun. Several sparrows twittered and went flying over his head in the direction of the children. Neither the children nor the sparrows fell. Maria's hand had performed the most noble deed of her life. "Thet's right," remarked Peter, for once not berating her for interference. Then he commenced to laugh. The laugh was a cross between that of a fiend and a hyena. And when he laughed, Ambrose, his son, laughed. It was a good joke on Mollie! But Maria did not laugh. Then Peter remembered his unclad extremities and the run-a-way horse and the missing key. He gritted his teeth and shook his fist futilely toward the children before turning and making his way back to the house. "Now, didn't I tell yo-all?" said Mollie, smiling upon the children. "I'm jist es happy es this hyar Honey-baby on my back. An' I hain't a-feared o' nawthin'. Come on, we-uns has got our breff now. Kin yo' git out on thet limb, Willie, ter fling th' rope?" Willie was already climbing like a monkey out on the limb from which he was to cast the rope to the next tree, further on in the depths of the swamp. The trees were closer together now, the ground seemed to be firmer and the mud less tenacious than in that one awful hole so close to the farm outbuildings.