"My dears, I have to go and get something. Stay here and don't go away, and I'll soon come back. Give me a kiss, children," and with that he hurried away and went back home by another road.
After a time Grizzle began to cry and said,
"Where's father? Where's father? We can't get home. We can't get home."
But Johnnie said, "Never mind, Grizzle, I can take you home; you just follow me."
So Johnnie looked out for the pebbles he had dropped, and found them at each turn of the road, and a little after midday got home and asked their mother for their dinner.
"There's nothing in the house, children, but you can go and get some water from the well and, please God, we'll have bread in the morning."
When the farmer came home he was astonished to find that the children had found their way home, and could not imagine how they had done so. But at night he said to his wife,
"Betty, my dear, I do not know how the children came home; but that does not make any difference; I cannot bear to see them starve before my eyes, better that they should starve in the forest. I will take them there again tomorrow."
Johnnie heard all this and crept downstairs and put some more pebbles into his pocket; and though the farmer took them this time further into the forest the same thing occurred as the day before.
