“He hasn’t been playing tag with us this morning,” added a fourth pony, who had a very long tail.
“I wonder where Tinkle can be,” murmured his father.
Then up spoke a little pony with a white spot on his back.
“I saw Tinkle going over that way,” he said, and he raised his hoof and pointed toward a fence on the far side of the field.
“Did you really see him going that way?” asked the father pony.
“I really did,” answered the little pony.
“Oh my! That’s too bad!” thought Tinkle’s father to himself, but he did not say this to the ponies, for he did not want to frighten them. Well did the older pony know of the dangerous swamp that was on the other side of the fence.
“If he is in the sticky bog-mud we’ll have trouble getting him out,” said the father pony to himself. “I must go back and tell some of the others. But I don’t want Tinkle’s mother to know. What shall I do?”
The father pony trotted back to where Dapple Gray and the others stood.