The bright little rogue is caught at last.

As into his cage the truant goes
Pet says, "Now, nurse, I do suppose
That salt and sugar, though two nice things,
Are not a match for a birdie's wings;
And, Deb, I think we must just allow,
When a thing's to be done, mamma knows how."

[Illustration]

[Illustration: "SONS OF THE BRAVE."--FROM A PAINTING BY P. R. MORRIS,
A.R.A.--[SEE PAGE 767.]]

THE KING JACK-O'-LANTERN.

BY WILLIAM O. STODDARD.

"There, boys, that's the pumpkin."

"That'll do, Phil; but what'll your father say? Doesn't he mean to take
that pumpkin to town?"

"Well, no, I guess not. Anyhow, he said I might have it."

"Did you tell him what it's for?"

"Of course I did. Only I guess he guessed near enough that I didn't mean
to make any pies."

"What did he say, Phil?"

"Why, he laughed right out--it's easy to get him laughing--and he said
if we could invent anything ugly enough to scare the Sewing Society, we
might have a cart-load of pumpkins, if we'd see that they were pitched
into the big feed kettle after we got done with them, so they could be
boiled for the cows."

"Isn't that a whopper, though! Biggest pumpkin I ever saw. Let's go
right at it."

Clint Burgess had his knife out, and was opening the big blade, but Prop
Corning stopped him.

"Hold on, Clint. Let's practice on some of the little ones first.
Besides, we don't want to carry the big one too far after it's done. We
might drop it and break it."

"That's so," said Clint. "I say, Phil, where'll we go?"

"Up behind the corn-crib--close to the barn; best place in the world to
hide 'em till we want 'em. The Sewing Society don't half get here till
pretty near tea-time."

"We'll show 'em something."

"Teach the girls, too, not to laugh at fellows of our age."

"It's too bad. When a man gets to be thirteen, it's time they let him
come in to tea."

That was where the rules of the Plumville Sewing Society were pinching
the self-esteem of Phil Merritt and his two friends, and Phil's father
and his uncle and his two grown-up brothers had gravely expressed their
entire sympathy, even to the extent of furnishing unlimited pumpkins.

That was a large pumpkin. It had grown by itself in a corner of the corn
field, where it had plenty of room, and, as Clint Burgess remarked when
they were rolling it in behind the corn-crib, "it had just sat still and
swelled."

Prop Corning was the best hand any of them