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He looked at me and smiled.

“I’m older than you think,” he said, “and, anyhow, he got a lot off for good behavior. It’s outrageous, the discount that’s given to a criminal for behaving himself. He got–I think I am right when I say–yes, he was sent up in ’07–he got seven years off his sentence.”

We all thought that this was a grave mistake, and Tish, whose father was once warden of the penitentiary, observed that there was nothing like that in old times, and she would write to the governor about it. Tish has written to the governor several times, the last occasion being the rise in price of brooms.

“It’s like this,” said Mr. Muldoon. “They’ve got the glen guarded. There’s a man at each end and the rest are covering the hilltops. A squirrel couldn’t get out without their knowledge. I might have before I got this leg, but now I’m done for.”

“Oh, no!” we chorused.

“It amounts to that,” he said dejectedly. “They’ve been watching you women and they’re not afraid of you. As long as I stay in the cave here I’m safe enough, but let me poke my nose out and I’m gone. It’s an awful thing to have to hide behind a woman’s petticoats!”

We could only silently sympathize.

It was bright and clear that day. The sun came out and dried the road below. It would have been a wonderful day to go on, but none of us thought of it. As Tish said, here was a chance to assist the law and a fellow being in peril of his life. Our place was there.

Even had we doubted Mr. Muldoon’s story, we had proof of it before noon. A man with a gun came out on a ledge of rock across the valley and stood, with his hands to his eyes, peering across at our cave. Tish was hanging some of our clothing out to dry, and although she saw the outlaw as well as we did she did not flinch. After a time the man seemed satisfied and disappeared.

Tish came into the cave then and took a spoonful of blackberry cordial. As we knew, her intrepid spirit had not quailed; but, as she said, one’s body is never as strong as one’s soul. Her knees were shaking.

We put in a quiet and restful afternoon. Mr. Muldoon had a pack of cards with him and we played whist. He played a very fair game, but he was on the alert all the time. At every sound he started, and once or twice he slipped out into the thicket and searched the glen in every direction with his eyes.

He had asked us, if the outlaws surprised us, to say that he was Tish’s nephew, Charlie Sands, and to stick to it. “Unless it’s Naysmith,” he said. “He knows me.” From that to calling us Aunt Tish, Aunt Aggie and Aunt Lizzie was very easy. At four o’clock we stopped playing, with Mr. Muldoon easily the winner, and Aggie made fudge for everybody.

Late in the afternoon Tish called me aside. She said she did not want Mr. Muldoon to feel that he was a burden, but that we were almost out of provisions. We had expected to buy eggs, milk and bread at farmhouses, and instead we had been shut up in the cave. She thought there was a farm up the glen, having heard a cow-bell, and she wanted me to go and find out.

“Go yourself!” I said somewhat rudely. “If you want to be shot down in your tracks by outlaws, well and good. I don’t.”

Aggie, called aside, refused as firmly as I had. Tish stood and looked at us both with her lip curling.

“Very well,” she said coldly; “I shall go. But if I get my neuralgia again from wading through the creek bottom don’t blame me!”

She put on her overshoes and, taking a tin bucket for milk and her trusty rifle, she started while Mr. Muldoon was showing Aggie a new game of solitaire. I went to the cave mouth with her and listened to the crackling of twigs as she slid down into the valley. She came into view at the bottom much sooner than I had expected, having, as I learned later, slipped on a loose stone and rolled fully half the way down.