“Isn’t this grand?” were the last words both of our girls uttered as they rolled into the bunks that had been made up with fresh, lavender-scented linen. The brigands had captured them certainly and their adventure was complete. The boys were sleeping on the porch in hammocks. Mr. McRae always slept on the porch unless weather drove him in, and Tom Tit had a little room that he loved, where he kept his treasures, all those he did not put in the hole in the mountain.

Dawn found the babes in the wood much refreshed. The boys were up and out early, helping Tom Tit milk the cow and chop wood. Mr. McRae had started the cooking of breakfast when Lucy and Lil appeared.

“We are so ashamed to be late but we almost slept our heads off,” they apologized. “Now let us help!”

“All right, set the table and skim the milk and get the butter out of the dairy.” The dairy was a cave dug in the side of the mountain where all their food was kept cool in summer and warm in winter. “We shall breakfast on the porch.”

The girls made all haste and set the table with great care.

“Let’s get him to tell us all about himself this morning,” whispered Lucy. “I’m dying to hear about him. Isn’t he romantic?”

“I’m crazy about him. Don’t you reckon he’ll go to the camp with us? Nan would be wild over him.”

“Yes, but he’s ours. We certainly found him.”

“You sound like Tom Tit,” laughed Lil.

“I hope the people at the camp won’t laugh at poor Tom Tit,” said Lucy. “If we could only get there a little ahead and prepare them for his pink pants.”

She need not have worried, as the wise Mr. McRae knew how to manage Tom Tit so that he discarded his pink pants when he was to go among strangers.

“Now, Tom Tit, we must hurry with all of our duties so we can make an early start to walk home with our guests; and we must put on our corduroys for such a long tramp, as the brambles might tear your lovely new trousers.”

So poor Tom Tit did the outside chores with the help of the boys, while the girls assisted Mr. McRae in the house.

Having breakfasted a little after dawn, by seven o’clock they were ready for their ten mile tramp back to the camp. The boys shouldered their guns and the sacks of fox grapes and squirrels. Mr. McRae took with him a small spade while Tom Tit carried a hoe.

“I can’t help thinking both of them are a bit loony,” Skeeter whispered to Lucy. “Why on earth do they want to carry garden tools on a ten mile tramp?”

“Loony yourself! I reckon they want to dig something.”

The old gentleman, as though divining Skeeter’s thoughts, remarked:

“Tom Tit and I have a little duty to attend to today, so we are taking our implements. There are several springs I have not been able to visit this summer and I am going to combine duty with pleasure and look after them today.”

“Look after springs! What for?” from Skeeter.

“I thought I told you that I am a spring-keeper. Perhaps you don’t know what a spring-keeper is.”

“N—o! Not exactly!” said Skeeter.

“Well, every country child knows that in every spring there is or should be a spring-keeper to keep the water clear. It is a kind of crawfish. It may be a superstition that he really does purify water. At any rate, it is a pleasing idea that he can. Whether he can or not, I know I can help a great deal by digging out of the springs the old dead roots and vegetable matter that decays there, so my self-appointed job is to keep the springs of Albemarle county in condition. I am sure I have saved many families from typhoid in the last years. That is something.

“I was born in the mountains, born in a cabin that stands just where the one I live in now stands, in fact the chimney is the same one that has always been there, but the house is new. When I was a mere lad, about twelve years old, there was a terrible epidemic of typhoid fever in the mountains. My whole family was wiped out by it, my father, mother and two sisters dying of it. I just did escape with my life and was nursed back to health by Tom Tit’s granny, as good a woman as ever lived. Afterwards, having no home ties, I drifted to the city where I was successful financially. We of the mountains had not known in the old days what caused typhoid, but afterwards, when I learned it was the water we drank, I determined to come back to my county whenever I could and make some endeavor to better the conditions. Would God that I might have been sooner! My poor boy had an attack of the dread disease just the year before I got my affairs in condition to leave New York, and that is what caused his brain trouble.”

Tom Tit was ahead of the party, gazing up into the air as his old friend spoke. He had a rapt expression on his face that made him for the moment look like Guido Reni’s Christ.

“Sometimes,” continued the old man, “in typhoid, the temperature is so high that certain brain tissue seems to be burned out. I am afraid that is what has happened to my boy.”

“All of us have been inoculated against typhoid,” said Lucy. “Dr. Wright insisted on it—every member of the family. Helen kicked like a steer but she had to do it, too.”

“Well named, well named, that young doctor! I try to get the friends in the mountains to submit to it, too, but it is a difficult matter. I keep the virus on hand all the time, a fresh supply. If I can’t persuade them to let me give them the treatment, I can at least keep their springs clean for them. Sometimes they even object to that,” he laughed, “but they can’t help it, as I do it without their leave. They say I take all the taste out of the water.”

Their way lay around the mountain instead of over it, the course they had taken the day before, and much to the amazement of the young people, they went to the left instead of to the right.

“But Greendale is that way!” declared Frank, pointing to the east.

“Greendale is really due north of us, but I thought you wanted to go by Jude Hanford’s cabin to do your errand. We could go either way to the camp from here, but if we go east, we will miss Jude.”

“Well, if that doesn’t beat all!” exclaimed Frank.

Mr. McRae laughed. “What would you have done last night if Tom Tit had not found you and brought you home?”

“I was going to lie right down and let the robins cover me up,” said Lil.

“I was going to climb the highest tree and look out and see if I could spy a light, like the cock in the ‘Musicians of Bremen,’” said Lucy.

“I was going to follow the path from the spring,” said Frank. “I felt sure from the cleanliness of the spring that we were near some house.”

“And I was going to build a fire and skin the squirrels and have supper,” declared Skeeter. “I was just about famished and I knew that food was what Lil and Lucy needed to put heart in them.”

“Yes, it wouldn’t!” laughed Lil. “Much good burnt squirrel without any salt would do a bruised heel. That was all that was the matter with me.”

That ten miles back to the camp seemed much shorter than it had the day before, and in fact it was, as they made no digressions on the homeward trip.

“We must really have walked twenty miles yesterday. Just think how many times we doubled on our tracks,” said Frank when they finally came to a familiar spot.

They found Jude Hanford’s yard running over with frying-sized chickens and on his door step a water bucket full of eggs all ready to take to the store. Of course he was pleased to sell them without having to take off the commission for the middleman. He joined their procession, with his eggs and three dozen chickens distributed among the bearers.