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She then started up the road, but turned:

“Bring her suitcase, Lizzie,” she said. “There’s no use leaving it there for tramps to come along and steal it.”

She then stalked majestically up the road, and we followed. I am not a complaining woman, but if that girl had left any clothes at home they couldn’t have amounted to much. Aggie refused to help with the suitcase, as she had her knitting bag, and as any exertion in summer brings on her hay fever.

It was perhaps five minutes later that I heard a faint call behind me, and turned to see Myrtle coming along behind. She was not crying now, and her mouth was shut tight.

“I suppose,” she said angrily, “that it does not matter if tramps get me.”

“Miss Tish invited you to the farm,” I replied.

“Invited!” she snapped. “If this is what she calls an invitation, I’d hate to have her make it a request.”

However, she seemed to be really a very nice girl, although misguided, for she took one end of the suitcase. But I learned then how difficult it is for the average mind to grasp the high moral purpose and lofty conception of a woman like Tish.

“I might as well tell you now,” she said, “that I don’t believe they’ll pay any large sum. They’re not going to be very keen about me at home, since this elopement business.”

“Who’ll pay what sum?”

“The ransom,” she said, impatiently. “You don’t suppose I fell for all that patriotic stuff, do you?”

I could only stare at her in dumb rage.

“At first, of course,” she said, “I thought you were white slavers. But I’ve got it now. The other game is different. Oh, I may come from a small town, but I’m not unsophisticated. You people didn’t send my father those black hand letters he’s been getting lately, I suppose?”

“Tish!” I called sharply.

But Tish had stopped and was listening intently. Suddenly she said:

“Run!”

There was a sort of pounding noise somewhere behind, and Aggie screeched that it was the Knowleses’ bull loose on the road. I thought it quite likely, and as we had once had a very unpleasant time with it, spending the entire night in the Knowleses’ pig pen, with the animal putting his horns through the chinks every now and then, I dropped the suitcase and ran. Myrtle ran too, and we reached the farmhouse in safety.

It was then that we realized that the sound was the pursuing car, bumping along slowly on four flat tires. Tish shut and bolted the door, and as the windows were closed with wooden frames, nailed on, we were then in darkness. We could hear the runabout, however, thudding slowly up the drive, and the voices of Mr. Culver and the policeman as they tried the door and the window shutters.

Tish stood just inside the door, and Myrtle was just beside me. Aggie had collapsed on a hall chair. I have, I think, neglected to say that the farmhouse was furnished. Tish’s mother used to go out there every summer, and she was a great woman for being comfortable.

At last Mr. Culver came to the front door and spoke through it.

“Hello, inside there!” he called, in a furious voice. As no one replied, he then banged at the door, and from the sound I fancy the policeman was hammering also, with his mace.

“Open, in the name of the law!” bellowed the policeman.

“Stop that racket,” Tish replied sternly. “Or I shall fire.”

Of course she had no weapon, but they did not know this. We could hear Mr. Culver telling the policeman to keep back, as he knew us, and we had any other set of desperadoes he had ever heard of beaten for recklessness with a gun.

There was a moment’s silence, during which I heard Aggie’s knitting needles going furiously. She learned to knit by touch once when she had iritis and was obliged to finish a slumber robe in time for Tish’s birthday. So the darkness did not trouble her, and I knew she was knitting to compose herself.