It was not long before he came in sight of home.
Probably no one was up in the Badger household. Usually Bill was the first to get up and Mrs. Badger next, for Andrew Jackson and his father were neither of them fond of early rising.
The front and back doors were no doubt locked, but Bill knew how to get in.
He went to the shed, raised a window and clambered in.
“Perhaps I can get up to my room without anybody hearing me,” he reflected.
He passed softly through the front room into the entry and up the front stairs. All was quiet. Bill concluded that no one was up. He came to the foot of the attic stairs, and his astonished gaze rested on the three Badgers, armed respectively with a gun, a broom and a poker, all on their way to his room.
“Were they going to murder me?” he thought.
Just then Andrew Jackson, who led the rear, and was therefore nearest to Bill, looked back and saw the terrible foe within three feet of him.
He uttered a loud yell, and, scarcely knowing what he was about, brought down the poker with force on his mother’s back, at the same time crying:
“There he is, ma!”