nd Sue as they leaned over the spring.

"Oh, look!" cried Sue. "What a big frog!"

"But he isn't big enough to swallow Tom," said Bunny.

"No, that's so," agreed Mr. Brown. "We'll have to look for Tom. Bunny
and Sue, you stay with me. Uncle Tad, you and Bunker walk around in the
woods. It may be that Tom fell and hurt himself, when running after a
bird or butterfly, and can't walk. We'll find him."

Tom, having lived all his life in the city, thought the birds and
butterflies were most wonderful creatures. Every time he saw a new one
he would run up to it to get a close look. He never tried to catch them,
he just wanted to watch them fluttering about the flowers.

But, though they looked all around in the woods by the spring, there was
no sign of Tom. Up and down, back and forth, they walked, looking
beside big rocks or stumps, behind fallen logs and under clumps of
bushes they peered, but no Tom could they find.

"Oh, he's losted, just like we was losted," said Sue, sadly.

"Yes, I guess he is," agreed Bunny. "Splash, can't you find Tom?"

The big dog barked: "Bow-wow!" But what he meant by that no one knew.
Splash, however, could not find Tom.

"Let's call his name," said Uncle Tad.

So they called his name.

"Tom! Tom! Tom Vine! Where are you?"

But Tom did not answer.

"This is queer," said Mr. Brown. "I don't believe he'd run away and
leave us. He liked it too much at our camp."

"Perhaps he saw that mean man," said Bunker Blue. "Tom may have seen the
cross farmer who wanted him to come back to work, and Tom may have run
away off and hid--so far off that he can't hear us calling."

"Yes, that's so. He _may_ have done that," agreed Mr. Brown. "We'll go
back to camp, and wait for him. He may come when he thinks the man has
gone away."

Back to camp they all went. Bunny and Sue felt bad about Tom's being
lost. So did the others. Every time Splash would stop in front of a
clump of bushes, and bark, as he often did, Bunny and Sue would run up,
thinking their friend had been found.

But it would be only a bird, a rabbit or a squirrel that Splash had
seen, which made him bark that way. Tom was not to be found.

They waited in camp all the rest of that day, only going out a little
way for a row on the lake. Night came, and there was no Tom. It grew
very dark, and still he had not come.

"Oh, dear!" cried Sue. "Will he have to sleep out alone all night?"

"Perhaps he'll come back before you are awake