"Dear, kind, good Mr. Lion, if you'll only let me go home, I'll bend the knife all up, an' I won't ever shoot a single pea, except at the side of our barn, where they can't hurt anybody. Do let me go, 'cause I'm afraid I didn't get the milk for mother before I came here."
"If you neglected to do the errands for your mother, your punishment must be all the more severe," said the judge, and his wife nodded her head as if to say she thought that decision exactly correct.
"I'll never come out here again, an' I'll always do everything mother wants me to," pleaded Jack, but all in vain.
The judge considered the case in silence for some moments; the clerk licked his chops hungrily, as if he expected to be called upon to eat the prisoner; the captain of police brandished his club savagely; the crow made preparations for writing down the prisoner's last words; and Jack's hair would have stood straight up, because of his fright, if he had combed the snarls out so it could.
"Tie him up to the tallest tree by the hair, so he may act as scarecrow to other boys who come out pea-shooting in the morning before they have done the chores," said the judge, with a roar, and no sooner had he spoken than the gorilla and the chimpanzees caught Jack up, climbing the tree with him in their arms without the slightest difficulty.
It hurt terribly to hang there by the hair, but the pain was still greater when the branch broke, and he fell to the—floor, now thoroughly awakened, because he had tumbled out of bed.
It was some moments before he could understand that it was all a dream; but it had frightened him so that he bent the tin knife double and threw it out of the window before he crawled back to bed.
The next morning his mother was pleasantly surprised by seeing him do his work without being reminded of it, and that forenoon, when some of the boys asked him why he was not in the woods shooting lions, he simply told them that it was because he was obliged to take care of the baby.
