I crept straight back, keeping the house between me and the enemy until I got to some underbrush. I ducked into this and swung around to the direction where the canoe lay. I don’t want you to think it was easy to find that path through the bushes that led to the canoe. It wasn’t. I came very near to getting lost, but I found where the path began at last and hurried down it, taking all the pains I could to be still. I was making good time, though, because I wanted company. I had all I needed of being alone out there in that woods, and you can believe it, too.
Then all of a sudden something seemed to grab my feet. I let out a yell; I couldn’t help it. You’d have yelled, too. As I say, something seemed to grab my feet and knock them out from under me, and I came down with a smash. The paint-pail went end over end, but I hung onto the other things. I was in a regular panic, but for a minnit I was too stunned to get up. Then I heard Mark Tidd’s voice.
“S-s-sorry to give you a tumble,” says he, “but I had to f-find out.”
“Find out what?” I snapped.
“If it would w-work.”
“Did you do that?”
“T-tied a piece of rope across the path. Tied th-th-three others farther along. They work f-f-fine.”
“Oh,” says I, “they work great. They tickle me most to death.”
“If we were ch-ch-chased they’d come in handy,” says he; and just then we heard Tallow holler loud. “Look out!” says he. “They’re comin’. Look out!”
They had heard me fall, I guess, and the yell I couldn’t stop.