Page:Milady at Arms (1937).pdf/248

 "What!" exclaimed Zenas, startled momentarily out of his drowsiness. "I hear naught, Sally!" He looked around him.

"There!" whispered Sally, pointngpointing [sic] toward a grape arbor which stood between their destination and them. "That red—thing moving yonder!" She clutched poor Zenas's arm with pinching and painful intensity. Zenas winced.

"Nay, I see naught!" he insisted, peering obligingly, however, in the direction Sally was staring. "Let go, Sally!" The next moment he burst into laughter, for around the end of the arbor stepped—a rooster! It had been his red comb which Sally had glimpsed moving among the grape leaves!

Sally moved forward, her head held high and her cheeks encarmined. "I see naught comical," she remarked loftily, and maintained a dignified silence until they had reached the barn, although Zenas, at her heels, went from one explosive spasm of laughter to another.

But once inside the dark, cool stable interior, both girl and boy, after going from one stall to another, stared in perplexity at each other. Not a horse was left in the barn!

"Now here be a pretty kettle o' fish!" said Zenas, in doleful tones. "Master Wheeler's family must have taken the horses when they fled. 'Twill be a long, hot walk, forsooth, back to the Mountain!"

Absently, Sally seated herself upon the upturned