And presently, as the whispered song repeated itself, the words began to bring a wonderful sense of peace and security. She did not realize what it was that was speaking to her through them. It was the faith which had lived so long in these lowly little rooms. It was the faith which had upborne Uncle Darcy year after year, helping him to steer onward in the confidence that the Hand he trusted would fulfil all its promises. She felt the subtle influence that goes out from such lives, without knowing what it was that touched her. She was conscious of it only as she was conscious of the nearness of mignonette when its fragrance stole in from the flower-bed under the window. They were both unseen but the mignonette's fragrance was wonderfully sweet, and the feeling of confidence, breathing through the words of the old psalm was wonderfully strong. Some day she, too, would be brought, and Barby would be brought into "their desired haven."

Georgina was tired. It had been a full day, beginning with that digging in the dunes. Presently she began to nod. Then the rocking chair ceased to sway. When the clock struck again she did not hear it. She was sound asleep with her hand still clasped in Aunt Elspeth's.

CHAPTER XXI

ON THE TRAIL OF THE WILD-CAT WOMAN

MEANWHILE, the pursuing party had made the trip to Brewster and were on their way home. At the various small towns where they stopped to ask questions, they found that the patent-medicine vendors had invariably followed one course. They had taken supper at the hotel, but after each evening's performance had driven into the country a little way to camp for the night in the open. At Orleans an acquaintance of Mr. Milford's in a feed store had much to say about them.

"I don't know whether they camp out of consideration for the wild-cat, or whether it's because they're attached to that rovin', gypsy life.

They're good spenders, and from the way they sold their liniment here last night, you'd think they could afford to put up at a hotel all the time and take a room for the cat in the bargain. You needn't tell me that beast ever saw the banks of the Brazos. I'll bet they caught it up in the Maine woods some'rs. But they seem such honest, straightforward sort of folks, somehow you have to believe 'em. They're a friendly pair, too, specially the old lady. Seems funny to hear you speak of her as the wild-cat woman. That name is sure a misfit for her."

Mr. Milford thought so himself, when a little later he came across her, a mile out of Brewster. She was sitting in the wooden rocking chair in one end of the wagon, placidly darning a pair of socks, while she waited for her husband to bring the horses from some place up in the woods where he had taken them for water. They had been staked by the roadside all night to graze. The wild-cat was blinking drowsily in its cage, having just been fed.

Some charred sticks and a little pile of ashes by the roadside, showed where she had cooked dinner over a camp-fire, but the embers were carefully extinguished and the frying pan and dishes were stowed out of sight in some mysterious compartment under the wagon bed, as compactly as if they had been parts of a Chinese puzzle. Long experience on the road had taught her how to pack with ease and dexterity.

She looked up with interest as the automobile drew out of the road, and stopped alongside the wagon. She was used to purchasers following them out of town for the liniment after a successful show like last night's performance.

Despite the feedman's description of her, Mr. Milford had expected to see some sort of an adventuress such as one naturally a.s.sociates with such a business, and when he saw the placid old lady with the smooth, gray hair, and met the gaze of the motherly eyes peering over her spectacles at him, he scarcely knew how to begin. Uncle Darcy, growing impatient at the time consumed in politely leading up to the object of their coming, fidgetted in his seat. At last he could wait no longer for remarks about weather and wild-cats. Such conversational paths led nowhere. He interrupted abruptly.

"I'm the Towncrier from Provincetown, ma'am. Did you lose anything while you were there?"

"Well, now," she began slowly. "I can't say where I lost it. I didn't think it was in Provincetown though. I made sure it was some place between Harwichport and Orleans, and I had my man post notices in both those places."

"And what was it you lost?" inquired Mr. Milford politely. He had cautioned his old friend on the way down at intervals of every few miles, not to build his hopes up too much on finding that this woman was the owner of the pouch.

"You may have to follow a hundred different clues before you get hold of the right one," he warned him. "We're taking this trip on the mere chance that we'll find the owner, just because two children a.s.sociated the pouch in their memory with the odor of liniment. It is more than likely they're mistaken and that this is all a wild-goose chase."

But Uncle Darcy _had_ built his hopes on it, had set his heart on finding this was the right clue, and his beaming face said, "I told you so," when she answered:

"It was a little tobacco pouch, and I'm dreadfully put out over losing it, because aside from the valuables and keep-sakes in it there was a letter that's been following me all over the country. It didn't reach me till just before I got to Provincetown. It's from some heathen country with such an outlandish name I couldn't remember it while I was reading it, scarcely, and now I'll never think of it again while the world wags, and there's no way for me to answer it unless I do."

"Oh, don't say that!" exclaimed Uncle Darcy. "You _must_ think of it.

And I _must_ know. How did this come into your hands?"

He held out the little watch-fob charm, the compa.s.s set in a nut and she seized it eagerly.

"Well, you did find my pouch, didn't you?" she exclaimed. "I made sure that was what you were aiming to tell me. That's a good-luck charm. It was given to me as much as eight years ago, by a young fellow who was taken sick on our ranch down in Texas. He'd been working around the docks in Galveston, but came on inland because somebody roped him in to believe he could make a fortune in cattle in a few months. He was riding fences for Henry, and he came down with a fever and Henry and me nursed him through."

Always talkative, she poured out her information now in a stream, drawn on by the compelling eagerness of the old man's gaze.

"He was a nice boy and the most grateful soul you ever saw. But he didn't take to the cattle business, and he soon pushed on. He was all broke up when it came to saying good-bye. You could see that, although he's one of your quiet kind, hiding his real feelings like an Indian. He gave me this good-luck charm when he left, because he didn't have anything else to give, to show he appreciated our nursing him and doing for him, and he said that he'd _make_ it bring us good luck or die a-trying and we'd hear from him some of these days."

"And you did?"

The old man's face was twitching with eagerness as he asked the question.

"Yes, about five years ago he sent us a nice little check at Christmas.

Said he had a good job with a wealthy Englishman who spent his time going around the world discovering queer plants and writing books about them. He was in South America then. We've heard from him several times since. This last letter followed me around from pillar to post, always just missing me and having to have the address scratched out and written over till you could hardly make head or tail of what was on it.

"He asked me to write to the address he gave me, but whether it was in 'Afric's sunny fountain or India's coral strand,' I can't tell now. It was some heathenish 'land in error's chain,' as the missionary hymn says. I was so worried over losing the letter on account of the address, for he did seem so bent on hearing from us, and he's a nice boy. I'd hate to lose track of him. So I'm mighty thankful you found the pouch."

She stopped, expecting them to hand it over. Mr. Milford made the necessary explanation. He told of Captain Kidd finding it and bringing it home, of the two children burying it in play and the storm sweeping away every trace of the markers. While he told the story several automobiles pa.s.sed them and the occupants leaned out to look at the strange group beside the road. It was not every day one could see an old lady seated in a rocking chair in one end of an unattached wagon with a wild-cat in the other. These pa.s.sing tourists would have thought it stranger still, could they have known how fate had been tangling the life threads of these people who were in such earnest conversation, or how it had wound them together into a queer skein of happenings.

"And the only reason this compa.s.s was saved," concluded Mr. Milford, "was because it had the initials 'D. D.' scratched on it, which stands for this little boy's name when he plays pirate--Dare-devil d.i.c.k."

The motherly eyes smiled on Richard. "If you want to know the real name those letters stand for," she said, "it's Dave Daniels. That's the name of the boy who gave it to me."

Richard looked alarmed, and even Mr. Milford turned with a questioning glance towards Uncle Darcy, about to say something, when the old man leaned past him and spoke quickly, almost defiantly, as a child might have done.

"That's all right. I don't care what he told you his name was. He had a good reason for changing it. And I'm going to tell you this much no matter what I promised. _I_ scratched those initials on there my own self, over forty years ago. And the boy who gave it to you _is_ named Daniel, but it's his first name, same as mine. Dan'l Darcy. And the boy's mine, and I've been hunting him for ten long years, and I've faith to believe that the good Lord isn't going to disappoint me now that I'm this near the end of my hunt. He had a good reason for going away from home the way he did. He'd a good reason for changing his name as he did, but the time has come now when it's all right for him to come back and,"

shaking his finger solemnly and impressively at the woman, "_I want you to get that word back to him without fail_."

"But this is only circ.u.mstantial evidence, Uncle Dan'l," said Mr.

Milford, soothingly. "You haven't any real proof that this Dave is your Danny."

"Proof, proof," was the excited answer. "I tell you, man, I've all the proof I need. All I ask for is the address in that letter. I'll find my boy quick enough."

"But I don't know," was all the woman could answer. "The only way in the world to find it is to dig up that pouch."

"But even if you can't remember the new address tell me one of the old ones," he pleaded. "I'll take a chance on writing there and having it forwarded."

But the woman could not recall the name of a single city. South America, Australia, New Zealand, she remembered he had been in those countries, but that was all. Richard, upon being cross-questioned again, "b'leeved"

the stamp was from Siam or China but couldn't be certain which.

"Here comes Henry!" exclaimed the woman in a relieved tone. "Maybe he'll remember."

Henry, a tall, raw-boned man with iron-gray hair under his Texas sombrero, in his shirt sleeves and with his after-dinner pipe still in his mouth, came leisurely out of the woods, leading the horses. They were already harnessed, ready to be hitched to the wagon. He backed them up to the tongue and snapped the chains in place before he paused to give the strangers more than a pa.s.sing nod of greeting. Then he came around to the side of the wagon nearest the machine, and putting one foot up on a spoke of his front wheel, leaned over in a listening att.i.tude, while the whole story was repeated for his benefit.

"So you're his father," he said musingly, looking at Uncle Darcy with shrewd eyes that were used to appraising strangers.

"Who ever would a thought of coming across Dave Daniels' tracks up here on old Cape Cod? You look like him though. I bet at his age you were as much alike as two peas in a pod. I never did know where he hailed from.

He was a close-mouthed chap. But I somehow got the idea he must have been brought up near salt water. He talked so much sailor lingo."

"Put on your thinking-cap, Henry," demanded his wife. "The gentlemen wants to know where that last letter was written from, what the postmark was, or the address inside, or what country the stamp belonged to. And if you don't know that, what are some of the other places he wrote to us from?"

"You're barking up the wrong tree when you ask _me_ any such questions,"

was the only answer he could give. "I didn't pay any attention to anything but the reading matter."

Questions, surmises, suggestions, everything that could be brought up as aids to memory were of no avail. Henry's memory was a blank in that one important particular. Finally, Mr. Milford took two five-dollar gold pieces out of his pocket and a handful of small change which he dropped into the woman's lap despite her protests.

"We'll square up the damage the children did as far as possible," he said with a laugh. "But we can't get the letter back until the wind is ready to turn the dunes topsy-turvy again. That may be in years and it may be never. Let me have your address and if ever it is found it shall be sent directly back to you, and the children can inherit the money if I'm not here to claim it."

The man made a wry face at mention of his address. "We sort of belong to what they call the floating population now. Home with us means any old place where Mother happens to set her rocking chair. We've turned the ranch over to my daughter and her husband while we see something of the world, and as long as things go as smoothly as they do, we're in no great shakes of a hurry to get back."