The farmer trembled visibly as he helped put poor Dorothy in the wagon.  If she could only have known!

The woman dragged off her apron and her jacket to make something of a pillow for the pretty yellow head, that lay so still.  Suddenly Dorothy opened her eyes.

“As sure as you live,” whispered Samanthy, “It is that girl from the san—­sanitation!  I saw her once out with the nurse, and this is her!”

“And there’s a reward——­”

“Shet up!” she snapped.  “Lay still, dearie.  You’re awful weak and we’re taking you home.”

“Home!” murmured Dorothy in a dazed way.

“Yes, to mommer and popper!” This from the farmer.

“Shet up, you, Josiah!  How do you know she wants to go to them folks!  There, dearie, is your head hurt?”

Dorothy only moaned and closed her eyes again.

“Heven’t you got a drop of anything?  Not even a peppermint?  I told you not to eat them all at a gullup,” growled the woman.  “I never saw the like of you fer gluttonin’, Josiah!”

“And I never saw the beat of you fer growlin’.  How do you feel, missy?”

“Will—­you—­shet—­up?  Josiah Hobbs!  Don’t you see she’s sleepin’ like a babe?”

“And do you think it’s her?  The one from the sanitation?”

“Shet up!”

“And there’s a lot of money in that.  Well, we need it.”

Mrs. Samanthy Hobbs simply pulled the farmer’s long shaggy beard that bobbed up and down, goat fashion.  Her “shet-ups” seemed exhausted.

Dorothy heard a little—­she could hear the rumble of the wagon, and she could feel the hard, rough, but kind hand of the woman who smoothed her brow in a motherly way.  That in itself was enough to make her close her eyes and feel content.

What a power is the hand of woman!  Even though it be hardened by the hardest kind of work it has in it the magic stroke of tenderness.

“Now, there,” Samanthy would murmur, “soon you will be in bed.  Then we will fix you all up nice.”

Bed!  Dorothy thought she was in bed—­it was so much better than the stones, and that black water.

But she was getting her senses and with them came pain.  Her head hurt, and the wagon jolted so that she was sore all over.

“We have only a few more trots, then we will be at home,” soothed Samanthy.  “After that you kin sleep in a feather bed—­as soft as your own white hands.”

She was smoothing those hands—­they were very white, and very soft.  What had turned Dorothy Dale’s camping days into this tragedy?  Where was Tavia?  And what was to become of Dorothy?

Strange how illness melts the strongest!  Dorothy just wanted to rest—­to rest—­yes, to rest!

At the dingy back door, the old horse stopped.  The farmer and his wife almost carried Dorothy in, and the strain made her close her eyes again; made her forget everything.

After much talk between the farmer and his wife, and many contrary directions, Dorothy was finally enveloped in a nightdress that even Tavia in her palmiest days could not have anticipated.  It was big, it was broad, it was long, and it was roomy!