These reflections spurred The Hopper to action, for the sooner he reached home the more quickly he could explain his protracted stay in New York (to which metropolis he had repaired in the hope of making a better price for eggs with the commission merchants who handled his products), submit himself to Mary’s chastisement, and promise to sin no more.  By returning on Christmas Eve, of all times, again a fugitive, he knew that he would merit the unsparing condemnation that Mary and Humpy would visit upon him.  It was possible, it was even quite likely, that the short, stocky gentleman he had seen on the New Haven local was not a “bull”—­not really a detective who had observed the little transaction in the subway; but the very uncertainty annoyed The Hopper.  In his happy and profitable year at Happy Hill Farm he had learned to prize his personal comfort, and he was humiliated to find that he had been frightened into leaving the train at Bansford to continue his journey afoot, and merely because a man had looked at him a little queerly.

Any Christmas spirit that had taken root in The Hopper’s soul had been disturbed, not to say seriously threatened with extinction, by the untoward occurrences of the afternoon.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

II

The Hopper waited for a limousine to pass and then crawled out of his hiding-place, jumped into the roadster, and was at once in motion.  He glanced back, fearing that the owner might have heard his departure, and then, satisfied of his immediate security, negotiated a difficult turn in the road and settled himself with a feeling of relief to careful but expeditious flight.  It was at this moment, when he had urged the car to its highest speed, that a noise startled him—­an amazing little chirrupy sound which corresponded to none of the familiar forewarnings of engine trouble.  With his eyes to the front he listened for a repetition of the sound.  It rose again—­it was like a perplexing cheep and chirrup, changing to a chortle of glee.

“Goo-goo!  Goo-goo-goo!”

The car was skimming a dark stretch of road and a superstitious awe fell upon The Hopper.  Murder, he gratefully remembered, had never been among his crimes, though he had once winged a too-inquisitive policeman in Kansas City.  He glanced over his shoulder, but saw no pursuing ghost in the snowy highway; then, looking down apprehensively, he detected on the seat beside him what appeared to be an animate bundle, and, prompted by a louder “goo-goo,” he put out his hand.  His fingers touched something warm and soft and were promptly seized and held by Something.

The Hopper snatched his hand free of the tentacles of the unknown and shook it violently.  The nature of the Something troubled him.  He renewed his experiments, steering with his left hand and exposing the right to what now seemed to be the grasp of two very small mittened hands.