“Yes, sir,” says Freckles. “Nearly always when I come to myself in the morning I find I have dyed Spot.”
“That's queer, too,” said his father. And then Harold says he dyes other dogs, too, and once when he woke up in the maple tree there were three strange dogs he had dyed at the foot of it.
“Harold,” says his father, “how often do these spells come on?”
Freckles, he says, some weeks they come often and some weeks hardly ever.
“Humph!” says his father. “And when they come on, do you notice it is harder for you to tell the truth than at any other times?”
Freckles says he doesn't know what he says in his sleep when those spells take him, nor even whether he talks in his sleep or not, but he guesses if he does talk in his sleep what he says would be talk about his dreams, but he can't remember what his dreams are, so he doesn't know whether what he says is true or not.
“Uh-huh!” says his father. “Harold, do you own a gun?”
“No, sir,” says Harold. Which is true, for he only owns a third interest in a gun. Tom Mulligan and Stevie Stevenson own the rest of it, and they are keeping it hid in the rafters of Tom Mulligan's barn till they can save money enough to get it fixed so it will shoot.
“You haven't killed anybody in these spells of yours, have you, Harold?” asks his father.
“No, sir,” says Freckles.