"What are _you_ two doing here?"
Maury laughed.
"Damned if I know. We followed you, and had the deuce of a time doing
it. I heard you out on the porch yelling for Gloria, so I woke up the
Caramel here and got it through his head, with some difficulty, that if
there was a search-party we'd better be on it. He slowed me up by
sitting down in the road at intervals and asking me what it was all
about. We tracked you by the pleasant scent of Canadian Club."
There was a rattle of nervous laughter under the low train-shed.
"How did you track us, really?"
"Well, we followed along down the road and then we suddenly lost you.
Seems you turned off at a wagontrail. After a while somebody hailed us
and asked us if we were looking for a young girl. Well, we came up and
found it was a little shivering old man, sitting on a fallen tree like
somebody in a fairy tale. 'She turned down here,' he said, 'and most
steppud on me, goin' somewhere in an awful hustle, and then a fella in
short golfin' pants come runnin' along and went after her. He throwed me
this.' The old fellow had a dollar bill he was waving around--"
"Oh, the poor old man!" ejaculated Gloria, moved.
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