"You can count on that, Toby," Max assured him, for everybody felt vastly better, now that the worst seemed known; "but since we've found what was lost, and made an important discovery, let's hike hack to our camp, where we can talk it all over, and settle on our plan of campaign."
"Yes," Bandy-legs remarked, "and while that slippery customer is hanging around here nothing's going to be safe from him. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if the old sneak had paid a visit to our tent while we've been investigating up here; and poking his nose into every package we've got there, hoping to find some peanuts, or something else he likes particularly well," and this prospect sent the boys on the full run over the short-cut between the pond where the frogs held their nightly chorus, and the camp.
CHAPTER XIV
A PLOT AGAINST THE MISSING LINK
"Everything's lovely, and the goose hangs high!" sang out Steve, when they had once more arrived in camp, to find things just as they had been left, with no sign of tampering on the part of the inquisitive and perhaps hungry monkey.
"It's all right, because no damage was done, since Toby got back his stolen high jumpers," Bandy-legs announced.
"Yes, and he's agoin' to have p-p-part of the s-s-same for lunch, understand?" declared the late frog fisherman; "and say, Max, you never did see such c-c-crazy antics in all your life as when they f-f-found that red rag had a jag in it. Great g-g-governor! how they'd try to c-c-crawl up the string backwards, or any old way. Near died alaughin' at the s-s-same; then I reckoned it was kind of c-c-cruel to keep 'em sufferin' so, and I'd knock 'em on the head. 'Bout time I g-g-got busy with the fryingpans, ain't it?"
No one told him to "hold his horses," for they were only too well pleased nowadays when Toby offered to take upon himself the getting of a meal, since he had proved his ability to do fair camp cooking. Time was when they would have utterly refused to let him try his hand, because they knew how he would spoil everything he attempted to serve up; but times had changed apparently, and Nora's lessons were bearing fruit.