“Yass, madam, but, er, eh—­wouldn’ you sooner take yo’ maid, Robelia, instid?”

“No, for as to dress I’ll be as much of a man, when I get back, as Euonymus.”

“Is Euonymus gwine change dress too?”

“No, these things that I take off, your wife and Robelia may divide between them.”

I started away but Luke lifted a hand.  I thought he was going to claim every dud for Robelia.  Not so.

“We all thanks you mighty much, madam, but in fac’, ef de trufe got to be tol’——­”

“It hasn’t got to be told me, Luke, if I——­”

“Oh, no, madam, o’ co’se.  I ‘uz on’y gwine say—­a-concernin’ Euonymus——­”

I hurried off while the wife chided her good man:  “Why don’t you dess hide all dem thing’ in yo’ heart like dey used to do when d’ angel ‘pear’ unto dem?”

Alone with Euonymus, as I whipped off my feminine garb and whirled into the other, I began to say that however suddenly I might leave the fugitives they must rest assured that I was not deserting them.  To which——­

“Oh, my Lawd,” Euonymus replied, “us know dat!”

We reached the pike again.  “Rebecca, dismount.  Hand me your bridle.  Luke, for you-all’s better safety I’m going back and return these horses.  We may not see one another again——­”

“Oh, Lawdy, Lawdy!” moaned Rebecca.

“In dis vain worl’ you mean,” Luke said.

“That’s all.  Come, don’t waste time.  You’d better walk on for a short way in the pike before taking to the woods.  Now go all night for all you’re worth.  Good-by.”  I turned abruptly.  But my led horse was averse to abruptness, and all the family except the torpid Robelia poured up their blessings and rained kisses on my very feet.

In my half-intelligent plan I intended first to stop at the house we had gone by, and had reached the gate of its front lane when I met one of its household, a lad of sixteen, on the pike.

“Yes, he had just seen the disabled coach.”

I said that by business appointment with the lady who had just left the coach I had gone to the next railway station northward in order to meet her.  That I had come down the turnpike on a hired horse and met her and her servants pushing forward to our appointment as best they could.  Now, I said, our business, a law matter, was accomplished and she was gone on on my hired horse.  This span I was taking back to the stable whence I had hired them for her in the morning.

The boy’s graciousness shamed me through and through.  “Why, certainly!  He would have the coach drawn up to the house before sunrise and would keep it as long as I liked.”  He asked me in, but I went on to the little railway town, repeated my tarradiddle at its “hotel,” and soon was asleep.

["‘Tarradi’l’,’” said Mme. Castanado, “tha’z may be a species of paternoster, I suppose, eh?”

“No,” said Scipion, “I think tha’z juz’ a fashion of speech that he took a drink.  I do that myself, going to bed.”