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We got her to go on finally, and at the next well we boiled a pailful of water and made some tea. We found a grove beside the road and built a fire in our stove there, and while Modestine was grazing we sat and soaked our feet in a brook and looked for blisters. Tish calculated that as we had been walking for six hours we’d probably gone twenty-two miles. But I believe it was about eight.

While we drank our tea and ate the luncheon Hannah had put up we discussed our plans. Tish’s original scheme had been to follow the donkey; but as he would not move without some one ahead, leading him, this was not feasible.

“We want to keep away from the beaten path,” Tish said with a pickle in one hand and her cup in the other. “These days automobiles go everywhere. I’m in favor of heading straight for the mountain.”

“I’m not,” I said firmly. “Here in civilization we can find a barn on a rainy night.”

“There are plenty of caves in the mountains,” said Tish. “Besides, to get the real benefit of this we ought to sleep out, rain or shine. A gentle spring rain hurts no one.”

We rested for two hours; it was very pleasant. Modestine ate all that was left of the luncheon, and Aggie took a nap with her head on her suitcase. If we had not had the suitcases we should have been quite contented. Tish, with her customary ability, solved that.

“We need only one suitcase,” she declared. “We can leave the other two at this farmhouse and pack a few things for each of us in the one we take along. Then we can take turns carrying it.”

Aggie wakened finally and was rather more docile about the suitcases than we had expected. Possibly she would have been more indignant; but her feet had swollen so while she had her shoes off that she could hardly get them on at all, and for the remainder of the day her mind was, you may say, in her feet.

At four we stopped again and made more tea. The road had begun to rise toward the hills and the farmhouses were fewer. Ahead of us loomed Thunder Cloud Mountain, with the Camel’s Back to the right of it. The road led up the valley between.

It was hardly a road at all, being a grass-grown wagontrack with not a house in a mile. Aggie was glad of the grass, for she had taken off her shoes by that time and was carrying them slung over her shoulder on the end of her parasol. We were on the lower slope of the mountain when we heard the green automobile.

It was coming rapidly from behind us. Aggie had just time to sit on a bank–and her feet–before it came in sight. It was a long, low, bright-green car and there were four men in it. They were bent forward, looking ahead, except one man who sat so he could see behind him.

They came on us rather suddenly, and the man who was looking back yelled to us as they passed, but what with noise and dust I couldn’t make out what he said. The next moment the machine flew ahead and out of sight among the trees.

“What did he say?” I asked. Aggie, who has a tendency to hay-fever, was sneezing in the dust.

“I don’t know,” returned Tish absently, staring after them. “Probably asked us if we wanted a ride. Lizzie, those men had guns!”

“Fiddlesticks!” I said.

“Guns!” repeated Tish firmly.

“Well, what of it? Our donkey has a gun.”

And as at that instant the sleeping-bags and provisions slid gently round under Modestine’s stomach, the green automobile and its occupants passed out of our minds for a while.

By the time we had got the things on Modestine’s back again we were convinced he had been a mistake. He objected to standing still to be reloaded, and even with Tish at his head and Aggie at his tail he kept turning in a circle, and in fact finally kicked out at Aggie and stretched her in the road. Then, too, his back was not flat like a horse’s. It went up to a sort of peak, and was about as handy to pack things on as the ridge-pole of a roof.