"Auntie Charlotte, you stole Minister away from us in a no-fair way,"

stormed Charlotte as she came around the young larches and wild swamp

root that had formed the world apart for the dangerous Jaguar and me.

"Mother Spurlock can't sing to any good and Sue is so little we gets the

key away from her. Let him come right back!" As she made this peremptory

demand for the release of my prisoner, my name-daughter stood her ground

with her cohorts, who had been scrambling around and over and through

the shrubbery, massed behind her. There were Mikey of the red head,

small James, the musical wee Susan, Maudie Burns and Jennie Todd,

besides several more of the Burns family, a few Sprouls and Paynes and a

very ragged young Jones, and they all looked at me with hostile and

accusing eyes as Charlotte hurled a final invective at me. "You are

wicked and the devil will burn you up," she threatened.

"He won't neither, at all. Hush up!" came a defense and a command in a

very imperious young voice, and the Stray followed the voice from around

the large trunk of the oldest graybeard. He had arrived late on the

scene of action because his impedimenta had been the wriggling puppy of

brindle hue, which he immediately released as he came over and stood

between the Reverend Mr. Goodloe and me, with my hand in his own small

paddie and defiance and defense to the limit in his high-held young head

with its black crest and snapping violet eyes. At last I felt Charlotte

had met her match and I trembled for the result.

"She never stoled nothing," he further declared, looking Charlotte full

in the eye.

"I meant she tooken him away, Stranger," parleyed Charlotte with extreme

mildness for her and giving to the Stray the name that she had decided

upon by translating the cognomen of his state into that of another

almost equally forlorn. "My father told my Auntie Harriet that Aunt

Charlotte would git Minister yet and I'll call the devil to stop her if

she tries to get him away."

"I'll bust that devil's head with a rock and a bad smell," answered the

Stray as he held tighter to my hand and hurled back his threat that held

a remembrance of the conquering of the tenacious turtle.

"Auntie Harriet answered father that Auntie Charlotte and the devil

could do most anything that--" small James was contributing to the

general assault when with a wave of a calming hand Mr. Goodloe took the

field.

"That will do, youngsters," he commanded with extreme mildness it seemed

to me, considering the appalling situation. "I thought you had had about

enough practice for to-day and Charlotte could have taught the little

boy--er--"

"Stranger," prompted Charlotte.




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