“Well, I’ll be horn-swoggled!” exclaimed a startled, mystified voice back of the children.

Jerry opened his eyes on a blurred picture of Danny and Chris turning suddenly about and of Nora springing to her feet.  A man was just getting out of a two-seated buggy.  All sound of his approach had been drowned out by the vociferous lamentations of Jerry and Celia Jane, which still continued.

“What’s the trouble here?” asked the man in a deep, pleasant voice that carried even through the clamor into Jerry’s consciousness.  He raised his head and looked up through swollen and tear-drenched eyes at the man.

“They’re g-goin’ to take Jerry Elbow to the p-p-poor farm Wednesday morning,” Danny stutteringly explained.

“Then you must be the Mullarkey children,” observed the man, speaking to the group.

“I’m Danny,” said Danny, and Chris identified himself.

“Then this must be Jerry Elbow,” the man remarked, stooping to pick Jerry up.

Jerry flung his arms about the man’s neck and clung there desperately.

“Yes, sir, he’s Jerry,” Nora explained, as Celia Jane got up out of the road and brushed the dust from her dress.

“My name’s Tom Phillips,” said their new friend.  “I knew your father, Dan Mullarkey, very well.  He told me once how he found you by the roadside one stormy night far from any house, Jerry Elbow.”

Jerry felt comforted in the strong arms of Mr. Phillips and at the pleasant, deep quality of his voice.  He stopped crying except for the long, shuddering sobs that always came at intervals after he had cried so hard.

“Who said anything about taking you to the poor farm?” he asked Jerry.

“D-D-Darn,” Jerry sobbed out.

“Darn!” said Mr. Phillips, puzzled.  “I say darn, too, but who was it?”

“It was Darn Darner,” Danny told him.

“Oh!” exclaimed Mr. Phillips.  “That scalawag!”

“He said his father said so,” Nora explained.

“That will have to be looked into,” Mr. Phillips remarked.  “Now you children climb into the buggy and I will take you home.  I want to have a talk with your mother.”

“She’s not to home,” said Chris.

“Mebbe she’ll be back,” observed Nora, looking at the sun.  “It’s gettin’ on towards supper time.”

“We’ll see,” was Mr. Phillips’ only comment as he placed Jerry on the front seat and helped Celia Jane in beside him.

Danny and Chris and Nora, in the meantime, had climbed into the back seat.  Mr. Phillips clucked to the horses and they trotted off into town.

Jerry felt greatly comforted to be riding home with this big, pleasant man, and the cruel edge of Darn’s words began to wear off.  He felt that this new friend’s words, “That will have to be looked into,” meant almost as much as though he had said, “I’ll see that nothing of the sort happens.”

His body was still shaken, at longer and longer intervals, by shuddering sobs, but when the Mullarkey home was reached, they had subsided and he was enjoying the unaccustomed buggy ride.