She approached the charger ridden by the bandit chief. (See page 242.) _Frontispiece_ =FACING PAGE= "What do you mean? Has anything happened to daddy?" 92 "Marty Day!" repeated the girl. "How did you come here?" 164 A rising murmur went through the crowd; then they cheered 306 THE MISSION OF JANICE DAY CHAPTER I SOMETHING TROUBLES UNCLE JASON "He don't look right and he don't sleep right," complained Aunt Almira Day, swinging to and fro ponderously in one of the porch rockers and fanning herself vigorously with a folded copy of the _Fireside Favorite_. "If it wasn't for his puttin' away jest as many victuals as usual I'd sartain sure think he was sickenin' for something." "Oh! I hope Uncle Jason isn't going to be ill," Janice said sympathetically. "He has always seemed so rugged." "He's rugged enough," Aunt 'Mira continued. "Don't I tell ye he's eatin' full and plenty? But there's something on his mind--an' he won't tell me what 'tis." "Maybe you imagine it," her niece said, pinning on her hat preparatory to leaving the old Day house on Hillside Avenue, overlooking Polktown. "Imagine nothin'!" ejaculated Aunt 'Mira with more vigor than elegance. She was not usually snappish in her conversation. She was a fleshy, lymphatic woman, particularly moist on this unseasonably warm October day, addicted to gay colors in dress and the latest fashions as depicted in the pages of the _Fireside Favorite_, and usually not prone to worries of any kind. "Imagine nothin'!" she repeated. "I've summered and wintered Jase Day for more'n twenty years; I'd ought to know him and all his ways from A to Izzard. When anything is goin' wrong with him he's allus as close-mouthed as a hard-shell clam with the lockjaw. I vum! I don't know what to make of him now." "I haven't noticed much out of the way with Uncle Jason," Janice said reflectively. "Aren't you----" "No, I ain't!" interrupted Aunt 'Mira. "I tell ye he don't sleep right. Lays and grunts and thrashes all night long--mutterin' in his sleep and actin' right foolish. I never see the beat. I must say 't in all the years I've slept beside Jase Day he ain't been like he is now." "Why don't you ask him what the trouble is?" "Ask him!" said Aunt 'Mira. "Might as well ask the stone Spink they set up as a god or something down there in Egypt. Ye'd get jest as quick an answer from it as ye would from Jase Day when he wants to keep dumb. Dumb! when he wants to say _nothin'_ he says it like a whole deef and dumb asylum." Janice laughed. She had noticed nothing very strange about her uncle's recent manner, and believed Aunt 'Mira, little as she was given to that failing, was borrowing trouble.