"I haven't any personal trouble just now, Mrs. Scattergood. Of course, Uncle Jason's difficulty worries me a bit. But when daddy hears about it he will help."

"Your father! Broxton Day! Humph!" exploded the old woman, her wrinkled face flushed and her eyes snapping. "I calc'late Broxton Day has got _his_ hands full right now without doin' anythin' for your Uncle Jase."

"Why, what do you mean, Mrs. Scattergood?"

The color washed out of Janice's cheeks instantly, and her lips remained parted in her excitement. Somehow the tart old woman's speech struck deep into the girl's heart.

For several days she had been fighting down the feeling of suspicion and fear that was rising like a tide within her. Daddy's letter was delayed.

She had not chanced to see any newspaper but the _Courier_ of late. Why!

even Uncle Jason's _Ledger_ had not appeared on the sitting room table.

She watched the hard old face of the crotchety Mrs. Scattergood in a fascination of growing horror, repeating:

"What do you mean? Has anything happened to daddy? And you know it--and I don't?"

"Well, ye oughter if ye don't," snapped Mrs. Scattergood. "I never did believe in hidin' the trewth from folks. No good comes of it."

"What _is_ it? What has happened to my father?" and Janice clutched at her arm.

"Wal, I've gone so fur, I might's well tell ye," the woman said, all of a flutter now. "_Somebody_ oughter tell ye. Ye was bound to find it out, anyway."

"But what is it?"

"Broxton Day's been shot by them Mexicaners. He's shot, is a prisoner, an' I hear tell he ain't never likely to git out o' that plaguey country alive!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "What do you mean? Has anything happened to daddy?"]

CHAPTER X

THE ONLY SERIOUS THING

The gate clashed open again just as Janice's weakened grasp slipped from Mrs. Scattergood's arm and she staggered away from the excited, panting old woman. The girl would have fallen, save that the young man who rushed in at the gate, having seen the danger in season, caught her in his arms.

The girl's eyelids fluttered; her lips remained open; the pallor of her face was terrifying.

"What's happened?" demanded the newcomer. "What have you done to her, Mrs. Scattergood?"

"Me? I ain't done nothing--not a thing!" denied the woman shrilly.

"You said something to her, then?"

"Wal! What if I did? She'd oughter hev been told before."

"_You told her?_"

"Daddy! Oh, Daddy!" moaned Janice.

"You mind your own business, Frank Bowman! You're one o' them foolish folk, too, that's allus tryin' ter hide the trewth 'cause it's bitter.

Sure 'tis bitter; 'twas meant ter be. An' these namby-pamby people in this world that can't stand the trewth to be told to 'em----"

Mrs. Scattergood overlooked the plain fact that the reason she had lost her temper and told this secret to Janice Day was because the girl had told her a few truths. But Frank Bowman was not listening to the old woman's tirade. Janice had not lost consciousness. Only for a moment did she sag helplessly on the young civil engineer's arm.

Then he led her out at the gate and to her car. He aided Janice into the seat, but slipped behind the steering wheel himself and touched the self-starter.

Mrs. Scattergood stared after them, slowly retreating the while toward the house. Her face did not display its customary smirk of complacency.

That bit of gossip that had trembled on the tip of her tongue for days, and which she had been begged not to reveal to Janice, had at length been spoken. Her mind should have been relieved; but Mrs. Scattergood was not satisfied. There was something wrong. All she could see as she stumbled into the house was the stricken face of the young girl who had so often done her a friendly kindness, whose smile had been, after all, a cheering sight to her aging vision, whose whole existence here in Polktown seemed to be for the express purpose of making other people happy. It was with a sort of mental shock that Mrs. Scattergood suddenly discovered she, too, had been blessed and comforted by the spirit of Janice Day.

The car swept up the hill and over its crown, as the old woman retired into her cottage. Frank Bowman had not said a word. He twisted the steering wheel a trifle and they shot around the Town House front and into the Upper Middletown road.

"Oh, Frank! Is it true? It _is_ true!" the girl finally faltered.

"Yes. Your father is wounded. We do not know how badly. No news has come out of the district since the first report. He is a prisoner of the insurrectos at the mine."

"There has been another battle?"

"Yes. Another uprising against the government. It's an awful thing----"

"Is there no hope? Oh, Frank! there must be!"

"Of course there is hope," he cried. "He's no worse off than he has been several times before."

"But you say he is shot!"

"Well--yes. That is the report."

"If one part of the report is true, why not the other?" said the girl, her keenness of wit thus displayed.

"But the wound may not be bad. We don't know that it is. Oh! hang that old woman, anyway! Why did she tell you?"

"Because she was angry with me," sighed Janice.

"Well----"

"And you must all think father very badly hurt or you would not have hid it from me--for how long?"

He told her. "But we don't really know anything about it. Nelson is raising heaven and earth for news. There is a good deal of excitement along the Border, they say----"

"Yes. I read that. Oh! how have you all managed to hide it from me for so long? I felt--Oh, you had no right!"

"We did what we hoped was for the best," Frank said gently.

"Oh, I suppose you did. But daddy wounded! I must go to him, Frank."

"Oh no, my dear girl. That would not be possible. n.o.body can get beyond San Cristoval, and no American is allowed to cross the Border. It is not safe to enter Mexico now on any pretext. Those greasers hate us worse than poison."

Janice tried to control herself. She had not wept; this dry-eyed suffering was a deal worse for the girl, however, than would have been a pa.s.sion of tears.