However, you'll see presently that he wasn't to blame for that.

[Illustration: THEY START IN SEARCH OF BENNY.]

'Bijah stopped milking and sprang to his feet.

"Hello!" said he, "Sandy, I vum! That means 't Benny ain't fur off. You
don't ketch that feller to stir a peg from Benny 'f he c'n help
himself."

'Bijah gave Sandy some milk, feeling sure that if Benny was on earth,
Sandy would go straight back again to where he had left him. Benny was
not on earth, but Sandy, having finished his refreshment, without even
waiting to return thanks, trotted off across lots at a great pace,
'Bijah following in hot pursuit. Away they splashed through the marshy
meadows; jump, they went over the stone walls. "Land!" said 'Bijah.
"Where _be_ you a-goin'?" as Sandy leaped across a ditch into the great
Kingsbury orchard. Mr. Kingsbury had died a year before. His wife had
closed the old homestead and gone to live with her daughter, and the
farm had been for sale ever since. 'Bijah sprang over the ditch and came
sprawling into the orchard.

When he had picked himself up, Sandy was nowhere to be seen. The
loneliness of the deserted farm and the soberness of approaching evening
were all about him.

"Hello!" he shouted, and he thought he heard a response. "Hello!" he
repeated, and he was sure of a faint, faint cry, towards which he
bounded, shouting, "Benny, Benny!" and presently directly over his head
he heard a voice which seemed to come from Heaven, saying:

"'Bijah, O 'Bijah, here, up here!"

'Bijah looked toward the sky, and behold, dangling from one of the
topmost branches of a famous big sour apple-tree, a pair of sturdy boy's
legs! And there was Sandy, lying on the ground beneath them.

"Jericho!" said 'Bijah; and he hadn't much more than said it before he
was scrambling up the tree like a great ourang-outang. With some
difficulty he unhooked Benny and brought him to earth, and his great
warm heart swelled with tender pity as he returned home with the poor
boy in his arms; and his shoulder was as wet with Benny's tears when he
reached there, as if he had been out in a thunder storm.

I dare say you will partly guess the story of Benny's misfortune, but
for the sake of those who are not good guessers, I shall tell you that
he had taken a fancy to cut across a corner of the Kingsbury farm that
morning, to make the distance to his grandmother's shorter, in his
unwise fashion, never considering that climbing walls and fences