None of the men was to be seen to-day; though the mother of the family, as always, hung over the washtub, bobbing up and down like a Judy on a string. She alone toiled, while the good-for-naught men dawdled and leered. They were as vicious as the filthy dogs that ran from the yard now and hurled themselves yelping at RoBards’ horses, trying to nip them while dodging their hooves. RoBards drove them off with whip and yell and the horses bolted. As he approached his own house at length, still fuming with anger at the Lashers and their dogs, he saw his boy running toward him along the road. He was shrieking: “Papa! papa! papa!” When Keith came up alongside the carry-all, he was gulping for breath, in such pain of fear and suffocation that he had to lean against the wheel a moment before he could speak. But his trembling hands pointed and his eyes were wild with fear as he gasped: “Papa!—bad man!—Immy!” “What? where? when?” “Just now—me and Immy play in the Tarn—big man comes—says to Immy—‘Hello, little girl!’ She don’t say anything. He comes up closeter. He reaches out. She cries—runs—he runs—grabs Immy. I run and pound him with my fists and he won’t let go. He kicked me into the Tarn. Yes, he did so! Then he runs away with Immy. “Who was it, do you know?” “Jud Lasher.” RoBards gave his horse a swift long slash with the whip and the carry-all went into the yard on two wheels. He flung the lines on the horses’ backs and, leaping across the wheel, ran madly past the house and up the shaggy hillside toward the place that he and Patty called “the Mystic Tarn.” The boy followed, stumbling, holding his hand to his side where the little heart thumped. His young eyes were aghast with the awe of a terror beyond his ken. CHAPTER XIX Back of the house and above it on a hilltop too rocky for clearing, too rough for pasture even, was a little pool ringed around with huge boulders. No one could explain them, though the Indians had believed that they had been hurled in a battle of giants. Tall trees stood up among them and canopied the pool with such shadow that on the hottest days there was a chill there. RoBards had brought Patty hither on their first visit to Tuliptree Farm as bride and groom fugitive from the cholera plague. She had cried out in delight at the spookiness of the place and he had called it the Tarn of Mystery. He was not quite sure what a tarn might be but the word had a somber color that he liked. And Patty had shuddered deliciously, rounding her eyes and her lips with a murmurous “ooh!” like a girl hearing a ghost story late at night.