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She retreated—until the night-stick and the kidnaper knife were between her and the poke. “Hadn’t we better be st-starting?” she faltered nervously.

The Piper marked her manner, and showed instant resentment of it. “This here thing was handed me once in part-payment,” he explained. “And I ain’t been able to get rid of it since. Every single day it’s harder to lug around. Because, you see, he’s growin’.”

At that, the Policeman and the Man-Who-Makes-Faces exchanged a glance full of significance. And both shrugged—the Policeman with such an emphatic upside-down shrug that his shoulders brushed the ground.

Gwendolyn’s curiosity emboldened her. “He?” she questioned.

“The pig.”

The pig! Gwendolyn’s pink mouth opened in amazement. Here was the very pig that she heard belonged in a poke!

The Piper was glowering at Jane, who was rocking gently from side to side, displaying first one face, then the other. “Well, I call that dancing,” he declared. And pulling out a small, well-thumbed account-book, jotted down some figures.

Gwendolyn tried to think of something to say—while feeling mistrust toward the Piper, and abhorrence toward the poke and its contents. At last she took refuge in polite inquiry. “When did you come out from town?” she asked.

The Piper grunted rather ill-humoredly (or was it the pig?—she could not be certain), and colored up a little. “I didn’t come out,” he answered in his surly fashion. Whereupon he fell to fitting a coupling upon the ends of two pipes.

“No?”—inquisitively.

“I—er—got run out.”

“Oh!”

Again the Policeman and the Man-Who-Makes-Faces exchanged a significant glance.

“You see,” went on the Piper, “in the City everybody’s in debt. Well, I have to have my money, don’t I? So I dunned ’em all good. But maybe—er—a speck too much. So—”

“Oh, dear!” breathed Gwendolyn

“Of course, I’ve never been what you might call popular. Who would be—if everybody owed him money.”

“Huh!” snorted the Policeman.

“You overcharge,” asserted the little old gentleman.

Gwendolyn hastened to forestall any heated reply from the Piper. “You don’t think your pig had anything to do with it?” she suggested considerately. “‘Cause do—do nice people like pigs?”

“The pig was never in sight,” asserted the Piper. “Guess that’s one reason why I can’t sell him. What people don’t see they don’t want to buy—even when it’s covered up stylish.” (Here he regarded the poke with an expression of entire satisfaction.)

The little company was well on its way by now—though Gwendolyn could not recall the moment of starting. The Piper had not waited to be invited, but strolled along with the others, his birch-stemmed tobacco-pipe in a corner of his mouth, his hands in his pockets, and the pig-poke a-swing at his elbow.

Thomas, left to get Jane along as best he could, had managed most ingeniously. The nurse was cylindrical. All he had to do, therefore, was to give her momentum over the smooth windings of the road by an occasional smart shove with both hands.

Which made it clear that the likelihood of losing Jane, of leaving her behind, was lessening with each moment! For now the more the nurse laughed the easier it would be to get her along.

“Oh, dear!” sighed Gwendolyn, with a sad shake of her yellow head as Jane came trundling up, both fat arms folded to keep them out of the way.

“If she stopped dancin’ where would I come in?” demanded the Piper, resentfully. The pig moved in the poke. He trounced the poor thing irritably.

The Man-Who-Makes-Faces now began to speak—in a curious, chanting fashion. “The mode of locomotion adapted by this woman,” said he, “rather adds to, then detracts from, her value as a nurse. Think what facilities she has for amusing a child!—on, say, an extensive slope of lawn. And her ability to, see two ways—practically at once—gives her further value. Would she ever let a young charge fall over a cliff?”

The barrel was whopping over and over—noiselessly, except for the faint chatter of Jane’s tortoise-shell teeth. Behind it was Thomas, limp-eared by now, and perspiring, but faithful to his task.

“The best thing,” whispered Gwendolyn, reaching to touch a ragged sleeve, “would be to get rid of Thomas. Then she—”

The Policeman heard. “Get rid of Thomas?” he repeated. “Easy enough. Look on the ground.”

She looked.

“See the h’s?”

Sure enough, the road was fairly strewn with the sixth consonant!—both in small letters and capitals.