"Where? Where is it?" cried Kent, springing to his feet.

"Put--it--o-ut," mumbled Old Tilly.

It was only a nightmare, but the boys could not doze again after it.

It was just as the sun was rising clear and beautiful that the boys came out from the barn, and as they caught sight of each other's blackened faces in the dazzling light, they each gave way to a roar of laughter.

"Well, we all seem to be in the same boat," said Kent, making for the pump and filling the pails one after the other. "Here's a pail apiece; that ought to do it for us." Then he went to one of the wheel baskets and brought back a crash towel and a generous piece of soap. "Now lay to on yourselves, boys, and then we will see what we can scare up for breakfast. I suppose there's no getting into the house, so we'll have to depend on ourselves." But here Kent noticed how particularly quiet Old Tilly was.

"What's up, lad?" he said, as he plunged his face down into one of the dripping pails, and then after scrubbing and sputtering for a while he reached out blindly for a, towel, which one of the others tossed into his hands. When his eyes were free, he drew a long breath, saying, "Water fixes a fellow all right." But as he did this he noticed something that made him exclaim sharply. It was the sight of Old Tilly washing himself with one hand, while around the wrist of the other a grimy handkerchief was bound. "Why didn't you say you were hurt?" he said, coming over to Old Tilly's side. "What is it, anyway?"

"Oh, it's nothing," said Old Tilly, with an impatient nod of his head.

"Maybe it's where the lightning ran down," he said, with a laugh.

"Lightning!--not much! Come, out with it. What is it?"

"Oh, it's just a tear on an old nail. One of those steers got a little ugly, and I jumped back too suddenly. It's nothing."

"We'll have to take your word for it," said Kent. But he very soberly turned to the lunch baskets. It was just as they had packed up everything neatly and were mounting their wheels to ride away, that a wagon came rumbling down the gra.s.sy road and turned in to the farmyard.

A young man with a limp felt hat was on the seat with a woman wearing a brown straw hat, while a tiny girl in a pink sunbonnet was nestled down between them.

"Halloo!" said the man, as he saw the boys. "Just leavin'?"

"Yes, sir," said Old Tilly, respectfully. "We took the liberty of sleeping in your barn last night. You see the storm kept us there all night."

"Well, the storm kept us, too," said the young farmer, reaching for the little child and setting her down by the pump, and then helping the woman to alight.

The young woman gave a relieved look around, first at the barn and then at the house, and said delightedly:

"Oh, Jim, how good it does seem to see everything safe! I can't believe my eyes hardly." And she added, turning to the boys with a slightly embarra.s.sed laugh, "I never was very good to stay away from home nights, and we didn't mean to stay last night, but the rain kept us. It just seemed to me that with every clap of thunder we'd find everything burned to ashes, and the whole place gone."

Tears came into her eyes, as she turned and gave her hand to the little child. "Well, I'm going in to get breakfast," she said, a glad, tremulous light showing across her face. "You better bring these boys in to breakfast, Jim. If they've just slept in the barn they must be hungry." Then turning back again with a heartier laugh, "I feel that glad to see everything, even to the chickens, just as we left them, that I wouldn't object to asking the President of the United States to breakfast. You ain't from around here, are you?" she asked, looking at the boys. "I thought not. And you're hungry, I'll wager," she said, as she bustled away with the little girl tugging at her skirts, not waiting for the boys to disaffirm, as they most a.s.suredly would have done had a chance been given them, for they were not in the least hungry. But then, what was a cold luncheon taken from a bicycle basket compared with a warm breakfast that might include ham and eggs?

"She's awfully nervous, Nancy is," said the young farmer, a trifle apologetically; "she would have it at brother Ed's that she was being burned out of house and home. We oughtn't to have stayed, but brother Ed urged us to go home with him. She's always that way when she's away.

We've ridden nineteen miles since daybreak, and she believed every mile that we were going to see a burned-down house at the end."

"Well," said Old Tilly in a quiet way, so as not to alarm the young farmer, "I guess she was about right this time. If we hadn't happened here--" Then he slipped back into the barn, and the young farmer followed after, and Old Tilly pointed to the blackened corner, while the other two drew near interestedly.

"You see how it struck," Old Tilly said quietly, "but we put it out after a while. It is well we happened to be right here."

The young farmer was gazing at the burned place, with his jaw dropped and a look of terror coming into his blue eyes.

"It did strike! I should say it did!" he cried excitedly. "What will Nancy say?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I should say it did strike!" he cried, excitedly.]

Then as a realization came to him that it was owing to the boys that they had a roof over their heads, he turned first to one lad and then to the other, and shook their hands heartily. There were tears in his eyes, but he did not seem conscious of them. "I don't know what Nancy 'll say," he reiterated, as he shook one hand after the other up and down like a pump handle. "We'll have to be everlastingly obliged to you for the rest of our days," he said, trying to laugh a little. But his voice choked, and he turned away to hide his emotion. Then he dropped down upon a corn-cutter and insisted on hearing the story from beginning to end, although Old Tilly declared time and again, with the other two joining in, that "It was nothing."

"You call it nothing? Well, you wait until you've worked half a lifetime, as Nancy and me have done, to get a place, and then see what you think about it. I guess Nancy 'll believe it's something."

Then he stopped as a clear call, "Breakfast! Breakfast!" came ringing out to them from the open door beyond the pump. "Perhaps we'd better not say anything about it until after breakfast. She's had a powerful uneasy night, and it's been a good bit of a ride over, too."

To this the boys a.s.sented, and the four walked across the yard to the kitchen door, where the little girl was shyly waiting for them.

"Ain't you the young chap that beat in the bicycle slow race?" asked Nancy, when she caught a sight of Tilly's face as he removed his hat.

The other two boys laughed, and the farmer, looking squarely at his visitor, said:

"Well, I thought I'd seen you somewhere."

And then they settled down to breakfast in the happiest frame of mind, evidently, that could be imagined. But all the time Old Tilly kept one hand down at his side, a little out of sight, and the boys noticed that he took upon his plate only such things as he could very easily manage with one hand. The breakfast, for a hurried one, was very satisfactory indeed. Jot and Kent ate with full appreciation of it.

But had they watched closely, they would have seen how Old Tilly's face now flushed and then grew pale, and that occasionally he brought his lips together as though striving to control himself.

But, all unmindful of what the boy was undergoing, Nancy presided merrily over the table, and kept prompting Jim to fill up the plates as they needed it, and pressed this and that upon the boys' attention.

"I don't feel as if I should ever want to go away again," she cried.

"It's so good to be at home. I've been through every room in the house and taken a view of them all." And then she said laughingly, turning to the boys, "Not that there are so very many of 'em, but they're all we've got, you know. After breakfast we're going out to the barn, ain't we, Polly?" she added.

But now Kent noticed that Jot's face had suddenly sobered; he was looking at Old Tilly anxiously; he had seen. His hand come up from beneath the table, and he was sure that the handkerchief was spotted with red. "I say--Old Tilly--" Jot got to his feet hastily.

But Old Tilly's face was white, and he was swaying from side to side.

Old Tilly was fainting away.

CHAPTER VIII.

"I--I'm awake now. What's the matter? Who's sick?"

Old Tilly sat up dizzily. He had lost consciousness only for a moment, but his face seemed to be growing whiter and whiter. Jot and Kent hovered over him anxiously.

"You got kind of faint, Old Till--just for a minute. You're all right now," Kent said.

"Of course I'm all right!--I always was! I don't see what you're making such a fuss about!" But the pale face belied his words.

Kent lifted the clumsily bandaged hand and unwound the handkerchief. It was stained with blood.

"Oh, what have you done, Kent! You shouldn't have taken the bandage off!" exclaimed Jot, in fright. "See how the blood is dripping from the cloth!"

"It's nothing, I tell you!" growled Old Tilly. "Wind the thing up again!

It's only a nail tear!"

Old Tilly was swaying again, and they forced him gently back. The little woman looked up startled.

"What is it, Jim? How did it happen?" she quavered.

Jim's face looked very sober. "I guess I better fetch the doctor," he said. "He hurt it on a nail, he says. I won't stop to harness up--Old Betty's used to bein' rode bareback."