s it was long since known to be hopeless to attempt to
extract evidence from him, and his complicity in matters of this kind was
generously overlooked by the people of Waddy.

The expedition was not a success. Dick planned it and captained it well;
but the best laid plans of youth are not less fallible than those of mice
and men, and one always runs a great risk in looting an orchard in broad
daylight--although it will be admitted, by those readers who were once
young enough and human enough to rob orchards, that stealing cherries in
the dark is as aggravating and unsatisfactory an undertaking as eating
soup with a two-pronged fork.

Dick stationed Gable in a convenient tree, with strict orders to cry
'nit' should anybody come in sight from the black clump of fir-trees
surrounding the squatter's house. Then he led his party over the fence
and along thick lines of currant bushes, creeping under their cover to
where the beautiful white-heart cherries hung ripening in the sun. Dick
was very busy indeed in the finest of the trees when the note of warning
came from Ted McKnight.

'Nit! nit! NIT! Here comes Jock with a dog.'

Dick was last in the rush. He saw the two McKnights safe away, and was
following Peterson, full of hope, when there came a rush of feet behind
and he was sent sprawling by a heavy body striking him between the
shoulders. When he was quite able to grasp the situation he found himself
on the broad of his back, with a big mastiff lying on his chest, one paw
on either side of his head, and a long, warm tongue lolling in his face
with affectionate familiarity. The expression in the dog's eye, he
noticed, was decidedly genial, but its attitude was firm. The amiable eye
reassured him; he was not going to be eaten, but at the same time he was
given to understand that that dog would do his duty though the heavens
fell.

A minute later the mastiff was whistled off; Dick was taken by the ear
and gently assisted to his feet, and stood defiantly under the stern eye
of a rugged, spare-boned, iron-grey Scotchman, six feet high, and framed
like an iron cage. Jock retained his hold on the boy's ear.

'Eh, eh, what is it, laddie?' he said, 'enterin' an' stealin', enterin'
an' stealin'. A monstrous crime. Come wi' me.'

Dick followed reluctantly, but the grip on his ear lobe was emphatic, and
in his one short struggle for freedom he felt as if he were grappling
with the great poppet-legs at the Silver Stream. Summer