Just at this critical moment the door opened, and Flea, greatly frightened, started back to the window.  She blinked, brushed a dark curl from her eyes, and saw her Prince advancing toward her.  He saw her, too; but did not connect her with the bare-footed girl on Cayuga Lake, but only with the boy who had kept from him the greased pig at the Dryden fair.  He glanced at Squeaky calmly eating the salad and smiled.

“Bless my soul, Ann!” he said, turning to a lady who had followed him in, “we have company to dinner, or my name isn’t Horace Shellington!  Why didn’t you young gentlemen wait, and we should all have been seated together?”

There was a whirling in Flukey’s head, such as he had never felt before; but Flea’s ashen face brought back his scattered senses.  He tried to lift his arm to throw it about her; but dropped it with a groan.  Realizing the agony that had swept over her dear one, Flea gathered in a deep breath and took his fevered hand in hers.

“It weren’t him,” she cried, lifting her eyes to her questioner and sullenly moving her head toward the shivering boy at her side.  “I e’t yer victuals—­he didn’t.  If one of us goes to jail, I do—­see?”

“Let me think,” ruminated Horace, eying her gravely.  “Six months is about the shortest sentence given to a fellow for breaking into a house.  And what about the pig?  I see him in the act of theft.  Shall he go with you?”

“He were hungry, that’s why Prince Squeaky stealed,” exclaimed Flea, dropping Flukey’s fingers.  There was something in the kindly eyes of the man that forced her forward a step.  She thrust out her hand in appealing anxiety.  “We was all hungry,” she continued, a dry sob strangling her.  “Flukey nor me nor the pig nor Snatchet ain’t e’t in a long time.  We did steal; but if I knowed it were yer house—­”

A quizzical expression flashing into Shellington’s eyes stopped her words.

“You wouldn’t have come in?” he queried.

Flea nodded just as Snatchet jumped to the floor with another plump bird between his teeth.  Flukey staggered to his sister’s side.

“Let me tell ye how it was, Mister,” he begged, his eyes bloodshot and restless.  “We be lookin’ for a good land where boys don’t have to steal, and when they get sick they get well again.”

Here Flea burst forth impetuously.

“He has such hellish rheumatiz that he can’t set in no dark prison.  I can set weeks among rats and bugs what be in all prisons!  I ain’t afraid of nothing what lives!”

Flukey interrupted her by taking her arm and pushing her back a little.

“I’m a thief by trade,” he said; “but my sister ain’t.  She ain’t never stole nothin’ in all her life, she ain’t.  Take me, will ye, Mister?”

“Sister!” murmured the gentleman, turning to Flea.

If nothing else had been said, the question would have been answered in the affirmative by the vivid blush that dyed Flea’s dark skin.  Her embarrassment brought another exclamation from Flukey.