Caspar laid Kitty gently down on the straw and covered her with his jacket. Then he climbed a tall tree—the only one of any size near—and looked all about him. Far away on the other side of the river he could see a smoke, but on this side all was as lonely as if no man had ever set foot on the soil. "What a long way the child must have wandered!" he thought. "But then lost children do travel to an immense distance sometimes." He descended, and sat down on a log at the door to consider the situation. He was very tired himself; and horribly sleepy, having been up all the night before. There was no appearance of their being near any house. Some round headed clouds were rising in the west, betokening a thunder-shower by and by. If they went on, darkness and the storm would probably overtake them in the woods, and the child might perish before morning. Here they at least had shelter and the means of making a fire. Caspar searched his pockets again, and discovered another bit of biscuit. He also examined and reprimed his pistols. As he did so, a mellow whistle made him look up to see a pair of quails running along under the edge of a tumble-down bit of fence. Caspar was a capital marksman, and the birds were within easy shot. He took a careful aim, and to his great delight succeeded in killing one of them. "Good!" said he. "Things might be worse, a great deal." He picked up his prize, and turned to where Kitty, awakened by the shot, was sitting up and rubbing her eyes. "What was that?" she asked, apparently a little bewildered. "I have killed a bird for our supper," said Caspar, "and now I am going to make a fire and cook it." "But I always have bread and milk for supper," said Kitty, "and I want to go home and get some. I don't want to stay out another night." "Nor I," answered Caspar, "but we cannot choose very well.—There! Don't cry," he added, as Kitty put up a grieved lip. "Listen, and I will tell you all about it." Kitty listened while Caspar, in the plainest English he could muster, explained the plan he had decided upon and his reasons for it. The comment she made was an unexpected one: "I like you, Mr. Hessian, because you talk sense and tell the reasons of things. When I ask Recompense Joake the reason, he says, 'Oh, don't thee bother! Little girls can't understand.' He did the other day when I asked him what was the reason the shad come in the spring, and not in the fall; and I don't believe he knew himself. Do you?" "I dare say not," said Caspar much amused, but wondering who or what Recompense Joake could be. "Then you will try to be content?" "I will try to be good," said Kitty, piteously, "but I do want to go home so much you don't know. And we always have warm gingerbread Friday night; and oh, just suppose my father should come home and find me gone!" The thought was too much for Kitty's philosophy. She burst into tears and cried bitterly.