One of the things they liked to do was to call people by wrong names. Sometimes this was simple substitution, as when they called somebody named George Tom, or somebody named Rachel Edith. Sometimes they celebrated a certain characteristic-as when they called the innkeeper Tooth, because of the long eyetooth that caught on his lip-or sometimes they picked on the very opposite of what the person wanted to be, as with the innkeeper’s wife, who was very particular about her clean aprons. They called her Greasy-gravy.

The boy who looked after the horses was named Fergie, but they called him Birdie. This annoyed him quite satisfactorily. He was short and thickset, with black curly hair and wide-spaced innocent eyes, and had come out from Ireland just a year or so before. He would chase them when they imitated his way of talking. But the best thing they had managed was to write him a love letter and sign it Rose-the real name, as it happened, of the innkeeper’s daughter-and leave it on the horse blanket he slept under in the barn. They had not realized that he didn’t know how to read. He showed it to some men who came round the stable and it was a great joke and scandal. Rose was soon sent away to learn to be a milliner, though she was not actually suspected of having written the letter.

Neither were Susie and Meggie suspected.

One outcome was that the stable boy showed up at Meggies father’s door and demanded to be taught to read.

It was Susie, the eldest, who sat down on the stool they’d brought, and set to milking the cow, while Meggie wandered about picking and eating the last of the wild strawberries. The place the cow had chosen to browse in at the end of this day was close to the woods, at a little distance from the inn. Between the side door of the inn and the real woods was a stand of apple trees, and between the last of these apple trees and the trees of the woods was a small shack with a door hanging loose. It was called the smokehouse though it was not used for that purpose, or any purpose, at present.

What made Meggie investigate the shack at this time? She never knew. Perhaps it was that the door was shut, or pulled forward to be as nearly shut as it could be. It was not until she began to wrestle with the door to get it open that she heard a baby crying.

She carried it back to show Susie, and when she dipped her fingers in the fresh milk and offered one to the baby, it stopped crying and began to suck hard.

“Did somebody have it and hide it there?” she said, and Susie humiliated her-as she could occasionally do, with certain superior knowledge-by saying that it was nothing like a newborn, it was far too big. And it was dressed the way it wouldn’t be if somebody was just getting rid of it.

“Well yes,” said Meggie. “What are we going to do with it?”

Did she mean, what is the right thing to do with this? In which case the answer would be, to take it to one of their houses. Or take it to the inn, which was closer.

That was not quite what she meant.

No. She meant, how can we use this? How can we best make a joke, or fool somebody?

His plans had never been complete. He understood, when they left home, that his father-who was not under that stone but in the air or walking along the road invisibly and making his views known as well as if they had been talking together-his father was against their going. His mother ought to know that too, but she was ready to give in to that newcomer who looked and even sounded like his father but was entirely a sham. Who might indeed have been his father’s brother but was just the same a sham.

Even when she started packing he had believed something would stop her-it was not till Uncle Andrew arrived that he saw no accident was going to prevent them and it was up to him.

Then when he got tired trying to keep so far ahead of them and slipped off into the woods he started imagining he was an Indian, as he had often done before. It was an idea that came naturally from the paths you found, or the suggestions of paths, leading alongside the road or away from it. Trying his best to glide along without being heard or seen he imagined companion Indians and got so that he could almost see them and he thought of Becky Johnson, how she might have been following along trying for a chance to sneak away the baby whom she loved unreasonably. He had kept in the woods until the others had stopped in front of the inn and he had seen this shack, investigated it before he made his way among the apple trees. Those same apple trees sheltered him when he went out of the side door with the sleeping baby so light in his arms, so faintly breathing, hardly imaginable as a human person. Her eyes were open a crack as she slept. In the shack there were a couple of shelves that had not fallen down, and he put her on the top one, where wolves or wildcats if there were any would not get at her.

He came in late to supper but nobody thought anything of it. He was prepared to say he had been at the toilet, but he wasn’t asked. Everything was sliding along so easily, as if it was still in his imagination.

After the fuss when the baby was found to be missing, he hadn’t wanted to disappear too quickly, so it was almost dark when he ran along under the trees to get a look at her in the shack. He hoped she wouldn’t be hungry already, but thought that if she was he could spit on his finger and let her suck it, and maybe she wouldn’t know the difference between that and milk.

The plans had been made to turn back, just as he had foreseen, and what he was counting on was that once they got back, somehow his mother would understand that their attempts to leave were doomed to failure and would tell Uncle Andrew to get about his business.

Since he now credited his father with putting the whole plan into his head, he supposed his father must have foreseen that this was exactly what would happen.

But there was a flaw. His father had not put into his head any idea of how he was to get the baby back there, other than carrying her all the way, travelling through the woods as he had done part of the way today. And then what? When it turned out that Becky Johnson didn’t have her, when it turned out in fact that Becky Johnson had never left home?

Something would come to him. It would have to. He could certainly carry the baby, now there was no choice. And keep far enough from them that they would not hear the crying. She would be hungry by then.

Could he figure out a way to steal some milk from the inn?

He could not continue with this problem because he noticed something.

The shack door was open, which he thought he had shut.

There was no crying, not a sound.

And there was no baby.

Most of the men staying at the inn had taken bedrooms, but a few, like Andrew, with his nephews James and John, were lying on mats on the wooden floor of the long porch.

Andrew was wakened sometime before midnight by the need to relieve himself. He got up and walked the length of the porch, glanced at the boys to see if they were asleep, then stepped down, and decided, for propriety’s sake, to walk behind the building, down to the field where he could see by the moonlight that the horses were asleep on their feet and munching in their dreams.

James had heard his uncle’s feet and closed his eyes, but he had not slept.

Either the baby had been really stolen this time, or it had been dragged off and mauled and probably half eaten by some animal. There was no reason that he himself should be involved, or in any way held to blame. Perhaps Becky Johnson might be blamed in some way, if he swore he’d seen her in the woods. She would swear she hadn’t been there but he would swear she was.

Because they’d go back, surely. They’d have to bury the baby if they ever found anything left of her, or even if they didn’t, they would have to have a funeral service, wouldn’t they? So what he had wanted to happen would be accomplished. His mother would be in a bad way, though.