“Hello, Phil!” cried Chap, “I’ll tell you a splendid thing for this afternoon. We’ll take our guns and go over to the Green Swamp. We are pretty sure to get a shot at something,—big blacksnakes, perhaps, and I want one to stuff,—and then we may find the lonely sumach.”
Among the boy-beliefs of that neighborhood was one that in or about the centre of the Green Swamp there stood a large and poisonous sumach-tree, which, like the direful upas of Java, dealt out death to all who ventured beneath its shade.
Next to owning a tug-boat and blowing up the old wreck, Chap’s dearest desire was to find this tree. Not that he wished to venture beneath its shade, but he wished to see it, and to go just under its outer twigs, so that if he began to feel sick or faint, he would be pretty sure that he would die should he go all the way under, and that this was actually a poisonous sumach-tree, just as good as a real upas.
“Chap,” said Phil, “you are always going in for something watery. I believe that in a former state of existence you were a stork.”
“That may be,” said Chap; “and I’m a pretty long-legged bird yet. But what do you say to the swamp? I expect it has dried up a good deal this hot weather, and if we are careful in stepping from one hummock of grass to another, perhaps we won’t get into the mud and water. But you must carry Old Bruden this time, for we may have to take two or three shots at a blacksnake, and long shots, too.”
Phil had begun to cheer up under the influence of Chap’s animation, but his spirits now fell again. He was silent for a moment, and then he said,—
“Chap, let’s go down under the old chestnut-tree and have a talk. I want to tell you something.”
He had resolved to take his friend into his confidence. This sort of thing was too much for one boy to bear alone.
“Any time in pleasant weather, till the burrs begin to stiffen, I don’t mind sitting under a chestnut-tree,” said Chap, as he took his seat beside Phil, beneath the great tree at the bottom of the lawn, “but after that I prefer some other kind of shade. Now, what have you got to tell?”
Thereupon Phil related the facts of Susan’s insubordination and the various other out-of-way events that had happened lately.