As he approached Mr. Peck's barn, he beheld Al returning from the direction of his goose-pen.
"You needn't look for them, Al Peck," remarked Nat, with a malicious grin, "for you can't find them. You ought to keep your old geese shut up, if you don't want to lose them."
"I haven't lost them," declared Al, with a somewhat puzzled expression of countenance.
"Oh, you haven't?" snapped Nat, angered at the other's apparent coolness. "You needn't think you're going to get them back for nothing. I found them all camped under our haystack this morning, and drove them into the old hen-house. You've just got to pay me ten cents apiece for them before I'll let them out. I bet you'll keep them to home after this."
Al opened his mouth and closed it again like a flash. He was evidently surprised.
Just then Mr. Peck appeared on the scene. Al repeated what Nat had said, to his father's very evident amazement.
"Why, I saw—" began the elder Peck, when Al interrupted him with a gesture, and whispered something in his ear.
A broad grin overspread Mr. Peck's face for a moment; then he said, with becoming gravity:
"I suppose you've got the rights of it, Nat, but seems to me it's a rather mean trick."
Nat had begun to think so, too, by this time, but he refused to listen to the promptings of his better nature and said nothing.