"It looks like a room I saw at the movies last spring," Frank had said to Skeeter, as they waited for the girls to finish dolling up. "That one had a stone fireplace and furniture that looked just like this, great big tables and chairs that must have been made out of solid oak or walnut or something. The hero had fashioned them himself with a jack-knife, I believe. The mantelpiece was high just like this one, but there were skins spread on the floor instead of these rag rugs." "It is a bully room, and, gee, what a good smell of eats." The supper was a simple one, consisting of corn pone and buttermilk, bacon and scrambled eggs. "I am giving you exactly what Tom Tit and I were to have. I only tripled the quantity," said their host, as they drew up the chairs to the great table. "Then we aren't so very much trouble?" asked Lil. "Trouble! Why, my dear young lady, Tom Tit and I would not live on this thoroughfare if we did not love visitors." "Thoroughfare!" gasped Lucy. Maybe the old gentleman was daffy. "Why, certainly! You don't know how many things happen in the mountains. Someone is always turning up. Eh, Tom Tit?" "Yes, indeed! We uns finds something every day. One time it was a baby fox and one time it was a man in ugly striped pants." "He means our convict. It was a poor fellow who had escaped from a road gang and took refuge in the mountains and Tom Tit found him almost starved to death. We fed him up until he could go back to work." "You didn't give him up!" asked Frank, his eyes flashing. "Oh, no; he gave himself up. I got him to tell me just exactly why he was put in the penitentiary, and since his crime surely warranted some punishment, I made him understand that the best thing for him to do was go back to his road making and expiate his crime. That was much better than being hounded for the rest of his time. What do you think about it?" "Y-e-s, you are right, but I'm glad you didn't give him up." "Tom Tit and I go see him every now and then. Tom Tit feels sorry for him because his trousers are so ugly. He likes to work and wouldn't mind road-building a bit." "When we uns digs, we uns finds so many things, but we uns couldn't wear such ugly pants. Sometime we uns is a-goin' to make the poor sick man some pretty pink ones like these," and he stood up to show his bright pink trousers. They were strangely fashioned, looking rather like Turkish trousers. "Was the man sick?" asked Lucy, devoutly praying that a fit of the giggles would not choke her. "You see, Tom Tit and I think that when persons are what the world and the law calls bad, they are really sick. Sometimes they are too sick to be cured, but not often. It is the fault of the doctors and the system and not theirs when they are not cured." "Do you live here all the time?" asked Lil. She was dying of curiosity about the strange pair who were so ill assorted and still so intimate.