“‘They got the Honourable Simon T. Griffenbaugh’s youngest that way,’ he says, ‘only a month ago.  Likely the same gang got these two.’

“‘How do you know?’ I asks him.

“‘Well,’ he says, ’they’s a gang of over two hundred of these I-talian Blackhanders working right now on a sewer job something about two miles up the road.  That’s how I know,’ he says.  ’That’s plain enough, ain’t it?  It’s as plain as the back of my hand.  What chance would them two defenceless little children have with a gang of two hundred Blackhanders?’

“But that looked foolish, even to me.  ‘Shucks!’ I says.  ’That don’t stand to reason.’  But then I got another scare.  ‘How about water?’ I says.  ‘Any places round here they could fall into and get drownded?’

“He’d looked glum again when I said two hundred Blackhanders didn’t sound reasonable; but he cheers up at this and says:  ’Oh, yes; lots of places they could drownd—­cricks and rivers and lakes and ponds and tanks—­any number of places they could fall into and never come up again.’  Say, he made that whole neighbourhood sound like Venice, Italy.  You wondered how folks ever got round without gondolas or something.  ’One of Dr. George F. Maybury’s two kids was nearly drownded last Tuesday—­only the older one saved him; a wonder it was they didn’t have to drag the river and find ’em on the bottom locked in each other’s arms!  And a boy by the name of Clifford Something, only the other day, playing down by the railroad tracks—­’

“I shut him off, you bet!  I told him to get out quick and go to his home if he had one.

“’I certainly hope I won’t have to read anything horrible in to-morrow’s paper!’ he says as he goes down the back stoop.  ’Only last week they was a nigger caught—­’

“I shut the door on him.  Rattled good and plenty I was by then.  Back comes this silly old gardener—­he’d gone with his hoe and was still gripping it.  The neighbours down that way hadn’t seen the kids.  Back comes Tillie.  One neighbour where she’d been had seen ’em climb on to a street car—­only it wasn’t going downtown but into the country; and this neighbour had said to herself that the boy would be likely to let some one have it in the eye with his gun, the careless way he was lugging it.

“Thank the Lord, that was a trace!  I telephoned to the police and told ’em all about it.  And I telephoned for a motor car for me and got into some clothes.  Good and scared—­yes!  I caught sight of my face in the looking-glass, and, my! but it was pasty—­it looked like one of these cheap apple pies you see in the window of a two-bit lunch place!  And while I’m waiting for this motor car, what should come but a telegram from Mr. W.B. himself saying that the aunt was worse and he would go to New Jersey himself for the night!  Some said this aunt was worth a good deal more than she was supposed to be.  And I not knowing the name of this town in Jersey where they would all be!—­it was East Something or West Something, and hard to remember, and I’d forgot it.