“A girl!” Tom Smith’s cruel eyes lightened with eagerness.  “Have you seen a girl with him? a kid about twelve-year old?  When?  Now?  Are you sure?  Why, ’twas she that stole him!”

“What should a child of that age want to steal a dog for?” asked one of the other men.

“Better ask her, if you want to know!” retorted the other, rudely.  “I’ll give ’ee another shilling if you can help me lay my hands on the both of them.”

“Right you are,” agreed Bob, promptly, and without a single qualm of conscience.  “We’d better start; ’tis about four miles from here they live, and it’ll be dark soon.”

“Ugh!” Tom Smith looked vexed; he was a lazy man, and he did not relish the prospect of a four miles’ tramp.  “I’ve got to wait for my old woman to come back,” he muttered.

Emma Smith was going round the town with a big basket of tins and brushes and things, trying to sell some, while he hung about the public-house, enjoying himself doing nothing.  Her round was a long one, and few people seemed tempted to buy of such a slovenly, disagreeable-looking woman, one who grew rude too, if people did not want any of her goods.

So it was that Huldah had got safely home without being overtaken, and once within that cosy kitchen felt herself safe from all danger.  She little dreamed that at that moment the three persons she feared most in the world were starting out from Belmouth in search of her.  Poor Huldah!

It was six o’clock and quite dark by the time the trio, and Charlie and the van, reached Wood End; and many a time before they got there Bob Thorp would have thrown up the job, if he had not wanted the money so badly.  For the whole of the four miles Tom Smith grumbled, bullied his wife, beat Charlie, and snapped and snarled at everyone and everything.

“I don’t wonder at anybody’s running away from you,” remarked Bob at last, losing all patience.  “If I was your wife I’d do the same.”

Whereupon Tom snarled again with rage, “She’d better let me catch her trying it on, that’s all,” he said, threateningly, and glared at his wife, as though she had threatened to do so.

A little way beyond the village they drew up, and without troubling to ask anyone’s leave Tom drove the van into a field,—­where they had no possible right to be, and poor tired Charlie and his tired mistress were left to themselves for, at any rate, a few minutes’ peace.

The two men walked on again in silence until they reached the top of Woodend Lane, There Bob Thorp drew up, and showed a decided disinclination to go any further.

“’Tis down there they live, the first cottage you come to; you can’t mistake it.  There’s only an old woman, I b’lieve, besides the girl and the dog.  I’d better keep away, ’cause they knows me, leastways the girl does, and—­and the dog.  If you’ll hand over that six bob now, I’ll be getting home.  I’ve got a good step to go yet.”