er loud bark
Skyrocket took after him.

"Oh, don't let our dog go!" cried Jan. "Make him come back, Uncle Toby.
That man might hurt him."

"Just what I think," said Uncle Toby. "Here, Sky!" he called, for
sometimes the Curlytops' dog was given that short name. "Here, Sky! Come
back. Come back!"

Skyrocket didn't want to. He dearly loved a chase, and this man seemed
willing to run. That the man was out of sight made no difference to the
dog. Skyrocket loved a game of hide and go seek, and perhaps he thought
that was what the stranger was playing.

"Come back here, Sky!" called Uncle Toby.

"Here, Skyrocket! Here!" shouted Ted.

Janet added her voice to that of her brother and Trouble chimed in.
Perhaps all these had an effect on the dog, or he might have thought
that Uncle Toby would punish him if he did not mind. At any rate, after
a few more barks and some growls, looking meanwhile toward the clump of
trees into which the man had disappeared, the dog came back, wagging his
tail and seeming a bit disappointed.

"Who was that man, Uncle Toby?" asked Janet.

"I don't know," was the answer. "No one has lived in that cabin for
years. I guess he is some tramp who didn't have any other place to
stay."

"He didn't look like a tramp," observed Tom.

"No, his clothes weren't ragged," added Ted.

"That's so," agreed Uncle Toby. "From the little look I had of him he
wasn't very ragged. But then maybe he hasn't been a tramp very long, and
it takes quite a while to make one's clothes ragged."

"It doesn't take Trouble long!" laughed Jan. "He can go out with a good
new suit on and come back in half an hour with it all full of cuts and
holes."

"Oh, well, Trouble is different," said Uncle Toby, with a chuckle.

Uncle Toby stood for a few moments looking toward the woods into which
the strange man had run, and then, going to the well, filled the pail
with water and put some in the radiator of the automobile. After that
Uncle Toby went around to the back of the old cabin.

"Are you going to see if anybody else is there?" asked Jan, while Lola
and Mary waited with curiosity for an answer.

"Let me come and help look!" cried Ted.

"So will I!" added Tom.

"If you fellows are going I might as well go, too," said Harry.

"No, you children stay where you are," called Uncle Toby. "I'm just
going to take a look around, and then we'll go on to Crystal Lake. Stay
where you are!"

Ted, Janet, and the others remained in