So, with eager hands, they got great stones again, lugging them from their places in the stone wall with infinite toil. They balanced them on the edge of the bridge, and counting, “One,—two,—three,—go!” They each pushed over one, jumping and screaming with delight, at the tremendous splashes, as the water flew up, spattering them well.
“Ow—ow! there goes my hat!” It was Cricket’s wail of anguish, of course. Her next-to-her-best white Leghorn, it was too, for her every-day hat had come to grief through Dixie’s chewing off her ribbons, and was laid up for repairs. There lay the pretty broad-brim, caught right on one of those big stones, with the water lapping all around it. Vainly they ran down to the side of the bridge and tried to reach it. It was too near the middle. The water was already so deep and black that they hesitated to wade in for it.
“Perhaps we can get a stick and reach it,” suggested Hilda. They accordingly broke long sticks from the bushes near by, and then Cricket lay flat down on the bridge, with her head and arms hanging over, and tried to reach the unfortunate hat.
“I can’t quite do it,” she panted. “You hold on to my legs, Eunice, while I lean over a little further, and, Hilda, you catch it with your stick at the side, when I poke it over there.”
So Eunice clung to Cricket’s legs with all her might, while Cricket, fully half over the bridge, made desperate lunges; at last she was successful.
“There it goes! now, catch it, Hilda!” triumphant and breathless.
Just at this critical moment there rose suddenly a tremendous shout from the woods.
“Hi! hi! I’ve caught ye, ye young rogues! I’ll teach ye a lesson, a-dammin’ up my brooks and a-swampin’ my medders, and a-drownin’ my caows! I’ll hev the law on ye!”
Fright and terror! What awful words were these? Cricket hung, paralyzed, over the bridge, and Eunice clung to her black-stockinged legs, with fingers that made black and blue spots in the tender flesh. Hilda, poised on two uncertain stones, stood like a small Colossus, and all of them were white with terror, for an awful, great, big, blue-bloused man was getting over the fence, with, oh, horror, a gun on his shoulder, and a slovenly bull-dog tagging at his heels!
“I’ve been a-watchin’ for ye, since a long time back,” the man said, leisurely coming nearer, seeing that the children were too frightened to run away. “I’m not a-goin’ to eat yer, but I want to know what in thunder you’re allers up to mischief for. Yer’s the doctor’s gal,” he went on, addressing Cricket, “and yer a limb.”