y left him to look for
Merritt, who also deserved something more than he had received.

"I am going to give you a reward of Merritt, Ernest," he laughed, as he
finally came upon the sneak sitting on a stone at the edge of the woods,
looking very miserable.

"Get out of here, I haven't done nothing," snarled Merritt, too weak to
get up. "It wasn't me, it was Pete Herring."

"What is that mask doing on the ground, Merritt?" asked Jack. "And you
have your old clothes on also. How does that happen, if you were not in
this plot the same as Herring?"

"I was going blackberrying and wore my old clothes so's they wouldn't
get hurt. You gotter wear something over your face, too, to keep it from
getting scratched."

"Well, here's something else," laughed Jack as he plunged his hand into
a mudhole close by and brought it up fairly reeking with black ooze.

Then he gave a generous plaster of the stuff to the bully's face, and
chuckled as he went away:

"They say that mud is a sure cure for a lot of things, Merritt, and
maybe it will cure you of trying to haze a fellow unawares. Think it
over. Thinking won't hurt you, anyhow. You don't do enough to injure
you."

Herring had taken himself off by the time Jack went back to the spring,
evidently fearing that he would get another dose, which in his weak
state he had no desire for and the boy did not find him.

"Well, he has had enough to last him for a time, at any rate," he said
with a grin, "and I am not resentful enough to further add to his
troubles. I wonder how those others are doing?"

He found Holt sitting on the ground looking very wretched and said,
wiping his muddy hand on the fellow's face:

"There's a plaster for you, Holt. You don't look very pretty, but it may
do you good."

"Ouch! it stinks!" yelled Holt.

"So does your reputation," laughed Jack. "One will act as a counter
irritant to the other. And like curses like, you know. That's the new
school of medicine. Who got up this little scheme to waylay me?"

"Pete Herring," muttered Holt. "I had nothing to do with it. I was just
going to catch rabbits."

"With a mask? H'm! you are ashamed to look a rabbit in the face, are
you? Well, you are homely enough to give a young rabbit nervous
prostration, so I can't blame you for that."

"I didn't have nothing to do with it," said Holt, trying to wipe the mud
from his face and making it worse.

"How about the telephone?" asked Jack. "Where was Herring when I