“I know there isn’t anybody holding me, but—­but I can’t find the way.”

That any one could be lost within an easy mile of the manor-house was ridiculously incredible to Thomas Jefferson.  Yet there was no telling, in the case of a girl.

“You want me to show you the way?” he asked, putting all the ungraciousness he could muster into the query.

“You might tell me, I should think!  I’ve walked and walked!”

“I reckon I’d better take you; you might get lost again,” he said, with gloomy sarcasm.  Then he consumed all the time he could for the methodical disposal of his fishing-tackle.  It would be good for her to learn that she must wait on his motions.

She waited patiently, sitting on the ground with one arm around the neck of the Great Dane; and when Thomas Jefferson stole a glance at her to see how she was taking it, she looked so tired and thin and woebegone that he almost let the better part of him get the upper hand.  That made him surlier than ever when he finally recovered his string of fish from the stream and said:  “Well, come on, if you’re comin’.”

He told himself, hypocritically, that it was only to show her what hardships she would have to face if she should try to tag him, that he dragged her such a weary round over the hills and through the worst brier patches and across and across the creek, doubling and circling until the easy mile was spun out into three uncommonly difficult ones.  But at bottom the motive was purely wicked.  In all the range of sentient creatures there is none so innately and barbarously cruel as the human boy-child; and this was the first time Thomas Jefferson had ever had a helplessly pliable subject.

The better she kept up, the more determined he became to break her down; but at the very last, when she stumbled and fell in an old leaf bed and cried for sheer weariness, he relented enough to say:  “I reckon you’ll know better than to go projectin’ round in the woods the next time.  Come on—­we’re ’most there, now.”

But Ardea’s troubles were not yet at an end.  She stopped crying and got up to follow him blindly over more hills and through other brier tangles; and when they finally emerged in the cleared lands, they were still on the wrong side of the creek.

“It’s only about up to your chin; reckon you can wade it?” asked Thomas Jefferson, in a sudden access of heart-hardening.  But it softened him a little to see her gather her torn frock and stumble down to the water’s edge without a word, and he added:  “Hold on; maybe we can find a log, somewhere.”

There was a foot log just around the next bend above, as he very well knew, and thither he led the way.  The dog made the crossing first, and stood wagging his tail encouragingly on the bank of safety.  Then Thomas Jefferson passed his trembling victim out on the log.

“You go first,” he directed; “so ’t I can catch you if you slip.”