"'You think you got all of 'em, Bill?" Scraff called.
"'All this time,' I says, an' to save my life I couldn't help laughin' at the look on his face. He knowed right then that I had put up a job on him but he couldn't figure out how."
"Oh Hully Gee!" yelled Jim Scroggie, "Wasn't that corkin'—Oh Mommer! An' what did you an' Maurice do with the weasels?"
Billy grinned sheepishly. "We should'a killed 'em, I s'pose," he said, "but we took 'em down to the marsh an' turned 'em loose there. Maurice said that anythin' that had done the good work them weasels had, deserved life, an' I thought so too."
The twilight shadows were beginning to steal across the glade; the golden-rod of the uplands massed into indistinguishable clumps. The silence of eventide fell soft and sweet and songless—that breathless space between the forest day and darkness.
Billy stood up. "You'll like it here," he said to the other boy who was watching him, a strange wonder in his eyes. "After you know it better," he added.
"I'm afraid I don't fit very well yet," Scroggie answered. "Maybe you'll let me trail along with you sometimes, Bill, and learn things?"
"We'll see," said Billy and without another word turned to the dim pathway among the trees.