one of a teacher putting a board on the chimney of a schoolhouse.... Leslie, you get that ladder I saw you boys carry behind the schoolhouse awhile ago, and set it up again—here, Bill, hold my Bible a minute." He thrust the beautiful new brown-bound Bible in my hands and started around the schoolhouse with Poetry to where we'd buried the ladder.
"What on earth!" I thought, and decided he must have looked toward the schoolhouse once and seen us putting it there, while he was down the road between the schoolhouse and Circus's house.
Without hardly knowing I was going to, I quick opened the Bible to the first blank page and what I saw was, "To my dear son, Sam Black, from your Mother." And right below it were printed, very carefully, the words:
"This Book will keep you from sin,
or
Sin will keep you from this Book."
In a jiffy the ladder was set up, with Little Jim and me holding it, and Mr. Black on his way up. Poetry who knew how to take pictures better than any of the rest of us was standing away out away from the schoolhouse, and snapped the picture, himself.
While Mr. Black was still up on the roof, he called down to all of us in a cheerful voice and said, "That was a very clever poem you boys composed—you know, the one you had on the snow man yesterday, and on the blackboard this afternoon. I think I got a very good picture of both of them for next Wednesday night—the people of Sugar Creek will think it very clever. When I first got the idea of illustrating the book review for Mrs. Mansfield, I didn't know how much cooperation you boys were going to give me."
Things still didn't make sense—I couldn't understand it.
On the way home, though, with Poetry and me carrying Pop's new light ladder and with Little Jim carrying our swing board, all of a sudden Dragonfly let out a yell and made a dive for something shining in the road, swooped down on it and picked it up, and exclaimed, "Good luck! No wonder we had good luck! here's a brand new horseshoe! No wonder we didn't get a lickin' from Mr. Black."
And it was! I knew it must have come off Prince when he was running down this very same road about an hour ago with half a gate swinging on his bridle rein.
Dragonfly hung the new horseshoe on his arm and said excitedly, "Will my mother ever be tickled! She'll hang it above our kitchen door. We've got three there now I found last year, and this is my first one this year. Boy oh boy, it's going to be a lucky year for the Sugar Creek Gang!"