en they
started for the woods some hours before.

Old dog Spot ran straight to the woodpile and began sniffing and
scratching and whining.

If Johnnie Green hadn't been hungry he would have paid more heed to
Spot's behavior. But the men had already gone into the house. And
Johnnie hurried after them, leaving Spot to nose about the woodpile as
he pleased.

"Humph!" Spot growled. "Seems to me Johnnie Green might stay here a
while and help me. I've been chasing woodchucks and squirrels for him
all the morning. And I showed him a few birds, too."

Spot never once left the woodpile while Johnnie was eating his dinner.
When Johnnie and his father and the hired man came out of the house
later old Spot began to yelp. He made frantic efforts to burrow down
beneath the pile of firewood, stopping now and then to run up to his
young master and bark.

Now that he had had his dinner, Johnnie Green was all ready for any sort
of fun.

"Spot smells some kind of game in the woodpile!" Johnnie exclaimed.

"Perhaps he does," said his father. "But I don't see how he's going to
get hold of it unless we move the woodpile. And I don't believe we'll
quit work to help the old dog catch a chipmunk--or maybe a rat."

"Come on!" Spot begged Johnnie, as plainly as he could bark. "Move some
of this wood for me! There's something under it that I want to get my
teeth on."

"All right! All right!" Johnnie told him. And to his father Johnnie
said, "Do you care if I throw some of the stove wood over on the other
side of the pile?"

"If you're going to move any wood--" Farmer Green replied with a wink at
the hired man--"if you're going to move any wood you might as well move
it into the woodshed and pile it up neatly."

When he heard that suggestion Johnnie Green looked very glum. For a
minute or two he thought he wouldn't bother to help old Spot find what
he was looking for. But Spot teased and teased. And Johnnie couldn't
help being curious to know what it was that Spot was after.

"Maybe there's a muskrat here," he said to himself. "If there is, I'll
have his skin to pay me for my trouble."

V

A DEEP SECRET

Old Spot wouldn't let Johnnie Green alone. He kept jumping against him
and whining, begging him to move some of the wood, because there was
something very, very interesting beneath it.

Still Johnnie hesitated. He hadn't intended to do any work that
afternoon.

"After all," he thought, "I'll have to help carry in thi