“This was going on when the Son of Ben Ali came—when he came and touched me and gave me the sign. And then I knew more than I had known before. After he came he was the first to go into the woods, as I have told you, and the next morning my trouble began.
“Old Grizzly was very mad when, at daylight, he sent for the Son of Ben Ali and found him gone. I slept under the house in a corner of the chimney stack, and I heard Old Grizzly when he came in from the overseer’s house. He bawled at the cook for not having breakfast ready, though it was not time, and then he came out, ripping and rearing, and sent the house-boy for the Son of Ben Ali. But the Son of Ben Ali was not to be found. This made matters worse. Old Grizzly called up my companions and myself, gave us a few bites of stale bread, had his horse saddled, and then carried us to the hut where the Son of Ben Ali had lived.
“I knew then what was going to happen. I ought to have known before, but it had never occurred to me. We were to run the Son of Ben Ali down so that Old Grizzly could capture him. This didn’t suit me at all, but I had to go. There was no way to get out of it.”
“Oh, I don’t see why!” cried Sweetest Susan.
“Me, nuther,” Drusilla chimed in.
“It is simple enough,” said Rambler, placing himself in a more comfortable position—he had been sitting on his haunches. “The other dogs would have gone whether I went or not. So I pretended I was very glad to go. I circled around the house, and ran over the scent twice so as to see what the other dogs would do. They ran over it, too, but I knew that one of them had a faint hint of it. He went back to it, and then”—
Here a spark from the pine knot that made a light in the cabin flew out near Rambler’s head, and suddenly burst into a shower of smaller sparks. Rambler dodged and jumped out of the way so quickly that the children laughed.
“You may think it is funny,” said Rambler, “and it may be, but I’ll not laugh until I see you with a hot spark in your ear.”
He settled himself again and resumed his story, but this time he kept one eye on the pine knot.