Of the three villains, Jonstone selected the youngest and the tidiest, and with mutual reluctance, suspicion, and startled glances toward where the ladies sat with averted faces, they changed clothes.
A broad felt hat, several sizes too big for him, added the touch of completion to the Carolinian's transformation. He took the spare Winchester and, without a word, walked quietly toward the mouth of the cave and was lost to sight.
Maud did not breathe freely until he had returned, unhurt, carrying both Winchesters and driving an exceedingly sheepish backwoodsman before him.
He expressed the wish to resume his own clothes. This done, he and his cousin broke into good-natured, boyish laughter.
The oldest and most sheepish of the backwoods-men kept repeating, "Who would 'a' thought he'd have a pistol on him!" and seemed to find a world of comfort in the thought.
"What are you going to do with them?" Maud asked almost in a whisper. "I think I feel a little sorry for them."
"_She_ feels a little sorry for them. Don't you?"
"Yes, _sir_!" replied Mr. Jonstone fervently.
Colonel Meredith addressed himself to the young woman with the old face.
"Miss Darling, here," he went on, "is a fairy. She left her wand at home, but if she wants to she can make people's wishes come true. Now suppose you and your friends talk things over and decide upon some sensible wishes to have granted. Of course, it's no use wishing you hadn't robbed a train; but you could wish that the money would be returned, and that the police could be induced to stop looking for you, and that some one could come along and offer you an honest way of making a living. So you talk it over a while and then tell us what you'd like."
"Aren't you going to give us up?" asked one of the men.
"Then I guess there's no use us talking things over. And if the young lady is a fairy, we'd be obliged if she'd get busy along the lines you've just laid down."
All eyes were turned on Maud. And she looked appealingly from Colonel Meredith to Mr. Jonstone and back again.
"What ought I to say? What ought I to promise? _Can_ the money be returned? Can the police be called off? And if I only had some work to give them, but over at The Camp----"
"Every good fairy," said Colonel Meredith, "has two helpers to whom all things are possible."