PETER reached town about noon, and set about his peddling at once, going to the better residential sections, where his spoons were in demand, and so successful was he that by three o'clock he had but a few left to trade at the grocer's. He made his purchases with great care, for his list had grown large in spite of the refillings of his larder from time to time through the errands in town done for him by the farmer. He bought the Bible and the A. B. C. blocks, and a red sweater, stockings for Buddy and socks for himself, and the provisions he needed, and a bright, new jack-knife for Buddy. All these he tied in a big gunny-sack, except the knife, slung the sack over his shoulders, and went down to report to George Rapp, stopping at the Post Office, where he asked for mail. The clerk handed him, among the circulars and other advertising matter, a letter.

Peter turned the letter over and over in his hand. He had a sister, but this letter was not from her. It was addressed in pencil and bore the local postmark. Peter held it to the light, playing with the mystery as a cat plays with a mouse, and finally opened it. It was from Mrs. Potter.

“Now I know all about you, Peter Lane,” it ran, “and not much good I must say, although I might have expected it, and I am much surprised and such shiftlessness and you might have let me know that woman was sick for I am not a heathen whatever you may think. I want you to come and get your clock out of my sight and if you have time to saw me some wood I will pay cash. Mrs. Potter.”

Peter folded the letter slowly and put it in his pocket. He knew very well the widow had no cause to single him out to saw her wood, and that she would not be apt to write him for that reason, howevermuch she might underscore “cash.” That she should write him about the clock was not sufficient excuse for a letter. There was no reason why she should write to him at all, unless the underscoring of “that woman” meant she had heard how he had taken the woman and her boy in and it had given her a better opinion of him. If that was so Peter meant to keep far from Mrs. Potter! He began to fear George Rapp might be right, and that the widow had an eye on him—a matrimonial eye. When widows begin writing letters!

When Peter entered George Rapp's livery stable, Rapp was superintending the harnessing of a colt.

“Hello!” he called heartily. “How's Peter? How's the boat? Friend of yours was just enquiring for you in here. Friend from up the river road.”

“She—who was?”

“You guess it!” laughed Rapp. “Widow Potter. Say, why didn't you tell me you were married?”

“Me? Married to Widow Potter?” cried Peter, aghast. “I never in my life married her, George!”

“Oh, not her!” said Rapp. “Not her yet; the other woman. You with a boy three or four years old, posing around as a goody-goody bachelor. But that's the way with you too-good fellows. Hope you can keep your little son.”

“My son?” stammered Peter. “But he's not my son—not my own son.”

“Gee whiz! Is that so!” said Rapp with surprise. “She was that bad, was she? Well, it does you all the more credit, taking him to raise. Anybody else would have sent him to the poor farm or to old snoozer Briggles. You beat anything I ever seen, with your wives nobody ever guessed you had, and your sons that ain't your sons. What makes you act so mysterious?”

Peter put his gunny-sack on the floor.

“I don't know what you 're talking about, George,” he said. “What is it you think you know?”

“I think I know all about it,” said Rapp laughingly. “Come into the office. What a man in the livery stable don't hear ain't worth finding out. I know your wife come back to you at the shanty-boat, Peter, when she was sick and played out and hadn't nowhere else to go, and I know you took her in and got a doctor for her, and I know she brought along her boy, which you say ain't your son. And I know you sold me your boat so you could take her down river and bury her decent, just as if she hadn't ever run off from you—”

“Who said she was my wife? Who said she run off from me?” asked Peter. “You tell me that, George!”

“Why, Widow Potter said so,” said Rapp. “Everybody knows about it. There was a piece in the paper about it. The Doc you had up there told it all around town, I guess. And Widow Potter is so interested she can't sit still. She's just naturally bothering the life out of me. She says she's buying a horse from me, but that's all gee whiz. Anyway, she's dropped in to look at a colt near every day lately, and sort of enquires if you've been up to town. She says she can understand a lot of things she couldn't before. She says she can forgive you a lot of things, now she knows what kind of a wife you had. She says it's some excuse for being shiftless. She's anxious to see you, Peter.”

“She ain't in town now, is she?” asked Peter nervously. “You didn't tell her I was likely to stop in here?”

“I just naturally had to tell her something,” Rapp said. “She's plumb crazy. She says she's willing to let by-gones be by-gones; that it's all as plain as day to her now.”

“All what?” asked poor Peter.

“Why, all,” said Rapp. “Everything. The whole business. Why you didn't marry her long ago, I reckon. She didn't say so in that many words, but she spoke about how curious it was a man could hang around a woman year in and year out, and saw three times as much wood for her as need be, and take any sort of tongue lashing as meek as Moses, and look kind of marriage-like, and not do it. She said a woman couldn't understand that sort of thing, but it was easy to understand when she knew you had a wife somewhere. She said she's sorry for your loss, and she'd like you to come right up and see her.”

Rapp lay back in his chair and laughed.

“Did she honestly say that?” asked Peter, very white.

“Did she!” said Rapp. “You ought to hear what she said, and me trying to sell her that bay colt of mine all the time. 'Good withers on this animal, Mrs. Potter.''Well, he may be considered worthless by some,' says she, 'but I've studied him many a year, and the whole trouble is he's too good.' 'And he's a speedy colt, speedy but strong,' says I. 'Having a wife like that is what did it,' says she, 'for a wife like that chastens a man too much, but I guess he'll be more human now she's gone, and look after his own rights.' 'Want the colt?' I says, and she just stared at the animal without seeing him and says, 'For my part I'd enjoy having a small boy about the house.'”

“Did she say that?” asked Peter. “She didn't say that!”

“I never told anything nearer the truth,” Rapp assured him. “She said that she believed, now, you were a fully proper person to raise a small boy, but that if Briggles was bound to take the boy, she—”

“Briggles?” asked Peter breathlessly. “Who is Briggles? What has he got to do with it?”

“Don't you know who Briggles is?” asked Rapp with real surprise. “He used to be a Reverend, but he got kicked out, I hear say. He hires a team now and again to take a child out in the country.”

“What does he take children to the country for?”

“To put them in families,” Rapp explained, and he told Peter how Mr. Briggles hunted up children for the Society he had organized; how he collected money and spent the money, and put the children in any family that would take them, and paid himself twenty dollars a child for doing it, charging mileage and expense extra. “Last time he come down here he had a nice little girl from Derlingport,” said Rapp. “Her name was Susie. He put her with a woman named Crink.”

“Susie? Susie what?” asked Peter.

“I don't know, but I felt sorry for her. He might as well have put her in hell as with that Crink woman. He'll probably get twenty dollars by-and-by for taking her out and putting her somewheres else, if they don't work her to death. It's 'God help the little children but give me the money,' so far as I see. He gets an order from the court, just like he did in your case—”

Peter had let himself drop into a chair as Rapp talked but now he leaped from it.

“What's that? He ain't after Buddy?” he cried aghast.

“He drove down to-day,” said Rapp. “I told him—”

But Peter was gone. He slammed the office door so hard that one of the small panes of glass clattered tinklingly to the floor. He slung his gunny-sack over his shoulder and was dog-trotting down the incline into the street before George Rapp could get to his feet, for Rapp was never hasty. Along the street toward the feed-yard, where his farmer friend had put up his team, Peter ran, the heavy sack swinging from side to side over his shoulder and almost swinging him off his feet. He had spent more time at Rapp's than he had intended, but he met the farmer driving out of the feed-yard and threw the sack into the wagon bed.

“Whoa-up!” said the farmer, pulling hard on his reins, but Peter was already on the seat beside him.

“Get along,” he cried. “I want to get home. I want to get home quick.”

Through all the long ride Peter sat staring straight ahead, holding tight to the wagon seat. The cold wind blew against his face but he did not notice it. He was thinking of Buddy—of tow-headed, freckled-faced, blue-eyed, merry Buddy, perhaps already on his way to a “good home” like the “good home” to which Susie had been condemned. There were no hills and the horses, with their light load and a driver with several warming drinks in his body, covered most of the distance at a good trot, but when the track left the road to avoid the snow-drifts that covered it in places, and the horses slowed to a walk, Peter longed to get down and run. It was long after dark when they reached the gate that opened into Rapp's lowland, and Peter did not stop to take his purchases from the wagon. He did not wait to open the gate, but cleared it at one leap and ran down the faintly defined path, between the trees and bushes, as fast as he could rim.

Years in the open had mended the weak lungs that had driven him to the open air, but long before he came in sight of the shanty-boat his breath was coming in great sobs and he was gasping painfully. But still he kept on, falling into a dog-trot and pressing his elbows close against his sides, breathing through his open mouth. The path was rough, rising and falling, littered with branches and roots. The calves of his legs seemed swelled to bursting. Time and again he fell but scrambled up and ran on until at last he caught sight of the light in the cabin-boat window. He stopped and leaned with his hand against a tree, striving to get one last breath sufficient to carry him to the boat, and as he stopped he heard the shrill falsetto of Booge:

Go wash the little baby, the baby, the baby, Go wash the little baby, and give it toast and tea, Go wash the little baby, the baby, the baby, Go wash the little baby and bring it back to me.

It was Buddy's supper song.

“Sing it again, Uncle Booge! Sing it again!” came Buddy's sharply commanding voice, and Peter wrapped his arms around the tree trunk, and laid his forehead against it. He was happy, but trembling so violently that the branches of the small elm shook above his head. He twined his legs around the tree, to still their trembling, and hugged the tree close, for he felt as if he would be shaken to pieces. Even his forehead rattled against the bark of the trunk, but he was happy. Buddy was not gone!

He clung there while his breath slowly returned, and until his trembling dwindled into mere shivers, listening to Booge boom and trill his songs, and to Buddy clamor for more. And as he stepped toward the boat Booge's voice took up a new verse; one Peter had never heard:—

Peter opened the door. Buddy flew from his seat on the bunk and threw himself into Peter's arms.

“Uncle Peter! Uncle Peter!” he cried. “Did you bring me my mama?”

“No, Buddy-boy,” said Peter gently. “She's off on the long trip yet. We mustn't fret about that. Ain't you glad Uncle Peter come back?”

“Yes—and—and Uncle Booge made me a wagon,” said Buddy, “and it got broke.”

“A feller sort of fell on it,” explained Booge carelessly, “and busted it. He come visiting when we wasn't ready for comp'ny.”

Peter listened while Booge told the story of Mr. Briggles's arrival, reception and departure.

“And he failed on the wagon and broke it,” said Buddy, “and Booge slided him. And Booge is going to mend my wagon.”

“Maybe Uncle Peter'll mend it for you, Buddy,” said Booge. “I guess Booge has got to take a trip, like your ma did, to-morrow.”

“You couldn't talk sense if you tried, could you?” said Peter with vexation. “You are going to stay here every bit as long as I do. Ain't he, Buddy-boy?”