“O, I’m such a terrible absent-minded man!” he exclaimed. “I’m forever forgetting something. Remember how I drove over to the Basin that Saturday night, and walked home, never thinking of the horse and buggy, till next morning, when we thought they had been stolen, and had that famous hunt for the thieves? That’s the way Jack came to live with us. Pippy arrested him, and brought him home, and he has been with us ever since,” Mr. Chatford went on, congratulating himself on having steered clear of the dangerous rock. “Get up, Maje! don’t be so blamed lazy! There’s my nephew, Syd Chatford, crossing the road; I’ll ask him if he has seen ’em pass.”