d, arriving at the place of meeting just as their
companions came up with the poultry.

"Hello, Jack!" said Frank; "what's the matter with you?"

"He stumbled over a great piece of bark," Ellis answered for Winch.

"Did you, Jack?"

"Yes!" said Jack, putting on a look of anguish. He had not thought of the
bark before, but supposing Ellis had seen such a piece as he spoke of, he
accepted his theory of the stumbling as readily as the rebel had
recognized in Seth's gobbling one of his own lost turkeys. "And broke my
ankle," added Jack.

"What kind of bark was it? do you know?" said Ellis.

"No. I was hurt so I didn't stop to look."

"Well, I'll tell you. It was the dog's bark." And Ellis and his comrades
shouted with laughter, all except poor Jack Winch, who knew too well that
no other kind of bark had checked his progress.

Then the turkey-stealers had their adventure to relate, and Frank had his
amusing story to tell, and Tucket could brag how near he had come to
being shot for one of Buckley's gobblers, and all were merry but Jack,
who had brought from the field nothing but a counterfeit lameness and
dishonor, and who accordingly lagged behind his comrades, sulky and dumb.

"He limps dreadfully--when any body is looking at him," said Harris.

"Nobody killed, and only one wounded," said Frank.

"The sight of old Buckley coming with his dog would be better than a
surgeon, to cure that wound," said Tucket. "You'd see Winch leg it faster
'n any of us--like the old woman that had the hypo's, and hadn't walked a
step for twenty years, and thought she couldn't; but one day her friends
got up a ghost to scare her, and she ran a mile before they could ketch
her."

Do you know how these jokes, and the laughter that followed, sounded on
the ear of Jack Winch? Even the bark of the rebel mastiff was music in
comparison, and his bite would have hurt him less.

"By the way," said Seth, "the old skinflint will be after us, sure as
guns. Hurry! or we'll hear--'The deep-mouthed bull-dog's heavy bay
resounding up the rocky way, and faint, from farther distance borne, the
darned old rebel's dinner horn.' Give me that chicken, Ellis. And, boys,
we must manage some way to smuggle these fowls into camp. I can carry
this chicken under my coat; but how in Sam Hill you'll manage with the
turkeys, I don't see."

"I know," said Frank, always full of invention. "If nobody else has a
better plan, I've thought of a good one."

Sever