about it. You bought the pistol and the
rest right enough, didn't you?"

"I know I did, but--but you made me, you big, sneaking thief--and then
you--" Hughie's voice broke in his rage. His face was pale, and his
black eyes were glittering with fierce fury, and in his heart he was
conscious of a wild longing to fall upon Foxy and tear him to pieces.
And Foxy, big and tall as he was, glanced at Hughie's face, and saying
not a word, turned and fled to the front of the school where the other
boys were.

Hughie followed slowly, his heart still swelling with furious rage, and
full of an eager desire to be at Foxy's smiling, fat face.

At the school door stood Miss Morrison, the teacher, smiling down
upon Foxy, who was looking up at her with an expression of such sweet
innocence that Hughie groaned out between his clenched teeth, "Oh, you
red-headed devil, you! Some day I'll make you smile out of the other
side of your big, fat mouth."

"Who are you swearing at?" It was Fusie.

"Oh, Fusie," cried Hughie, "let's get Davie and get into the woods. I'm
not going in to-day. I hate the beastly place, and the whole gang of
them."

Fusie, the little, harum-scarum French waif was ready for anything in
the way of adventure. To him anything was better than the even monotony
of the school routine. True, it might mean a whipping both from the
teacher and from Mrs. McLeod; but as to the teacher's whipping, Fusie
was prepared to stand that for a free day in the woods, and as to the
other, Fusie declared that Mrs. McLeod's whipping "wouldn't hurt a
skeeter."

To Davie Scotch, however, playing truant was a serious matter. He had
been reared in an atmosphere of reverence for established law and order,
but when Hughie gave command, to Davie there seemed nothing for it but
to obey.

The three boys watched till the school was called, and then crawling
along on their stomachs behind the heavy cedar-log fence, they slipped
into the balsam thicket at the edge of the woods and were safe. Here
they flung down their schoolbags, and lying prone upon the fragrant bed
of pine-needles strewn thickly upon the moss, they peered out through
the balsam boughs at the house of their bondage with an exultant sense
of freedom and a feeling of pity, if not of contempt, for the unhappy
and spiritless creatures who were content to be penned inside any house
on such a day as this, and with such a world outside.

For some minutes they rolled about upon the