We had borne up bravely enough hitherto, in spite of our inward, unconfessed quakings.  But now our strained nerves gave way, and sheer panic seized us.  Peter gave a little yelp of pure terror.  We turned and fled across the clearing and into the woods.  Down the long hill we tore, like mad, hunted creatures, firmly convinced that Peg Bowen was after us.  Wild was that scamper, as nightmare-like as any recorded in our dream books.  The Story Girl was in front of me, and I can recall the tremendous leaps she made over fallen logs and little spruce bushes, with her long brown curls streaming out behind her from their scarlet fillet.  Cecily, behind me, kept gasping out the contradictory sentences, “Oh, Bev, wait for me,” and “Oh, Bev, hurry, hurry!” More by blind instinct than anything else we kept together and found our way out of the woods.  Presently we were in the field beyond the brook.  Over us was a dainty sky of shell pink, placid cows were pasturing around us; the farewell summers nodded to us in the friendly breezes.  We halted, with a glad realization that we were back in our own haunts and that Peg Bowen had not caught us.

“Oh, wasn’t that an awful experience?” gasped Cecily, shuddering.  “I wouldn’t go through it again—­I couldn’t, not even for Pat.”

“It come on a fellow so suddent,” said Peter shamefacedly.  “I think I could a-stood my ground if I’d known she was going to come out.  But when she popped out like that I thought I was done for.”

“We shouldn’t have run,” said Felicity gloomily.  “It showed we were afraid of her, and that always makes her awful cross.  She won’t do a thing for Pat now.”

“I don’t believe she could do anything, anyway,” said the Story Girl.  “I think we’ve just been a lot of geese.”

We were all, except Peter, more or less inclined to agree with her.  And the conviction of our folly deepened when we reached the granary and found that Pat, watched over by the faithful Sara Ray, was no better.  The Story Girl announced that she would take him into the kitchen and sit up all night with him.

“He sha’n’t die alone, anyway,” she said miserably, gathering his limp body up in her arms.

We did not think Aunt Olivia would give her permission to stay up; but Aunt Olivia did.  Aunt Olivia really was a duck.  We wanted to stay with her also, but Aunt Janet wouldn’t hear of such a thing.  She ordered us off to bed, saying that it was positively sinful in us to be so worked up over a cat.  Five heart-broken children, who knew that there are many worse friends than dumb, furry folk, climbed Uncle Alec’s stairs to bed that night.

“There’s nothing we can do now, except pray God to make Pat better,” said Cecily.

I must candidly say that her tone savoured strongly of a last resort; but this was owing more to early training than to any lack of faith on Cecily’s part.  She knew and we knew, that prayer was a solemn rite, not to be lightly held, nor degraded to common uses.  Felicity voiced this conviction when she said,