enough meat to last a week--six rabbits. As he hurried into the yard he
held them up for the inspection of his mother, who was feeding the
chickens.

"He's the finest rabbit dog ever was, Ma! Oh, golly, he can follow a
trail! I never see anything like it, Ma, I never did! I'll skin 'em an'
clean 'em after supper. You ought to have saw him, Ma! Golly!"

And while he chopped the wood and milked the cow and fed the mule, and
skinned the rabbits, he saw other days ahead like this, and whistled and
sang and talked to the hound, who followed close at his heels every step
he took.

Then one afternoon, while he was patching the lot fence, with Buck
sunning himself near the woodpile, came Old Man Thornycroft. Davy
recognized his buggy as it turned the bend in the road. He quickly
dropped his tools, called Buck to him and got behind the house where he
could see without being seen. The buggy stopped in the road, and the old
man, his hard, pinched face working, his buggy whip in his hand, came
down the walk and called Mrs. Alien out on the porch.

"I just come to tell you," he cried, "that your boy Davy run off with my
dog las' Friday evenin'! There ain't no use to deny it. I know all about
it. I seen him when he passed in front of the house. I found the block I
had chained to the dog beside the road. I heered Squire Jim Kirby
talkin' to some men in Tom Belcher's sto' this very mornin'; just
happened to overhear him as I come in. 'A boy an' a dog,' he says, 'is
the happiest combination in nater.' Then he went on to tell about your
boy an' a tan dog. He had met 'em in the road. Met 'em when? Last Friday
evenin'. Oh, there ain't no use to deny it, Mrs. Allen! Your boy