il between his
legs and head drooping.

"And you too, Dix! Come here!" ordered Mr. Brown.

Dix walked up exactly as Splash had done, with drooping head and tail.
Mr. Brown took hold of the head of first one dog and then the other. He
looked closely at their mouths.

"Here we have the pudding thieves!" he cried. "Splash and Dix found the
dessert in the hollow stump and ate it. Didn't you, you rascals?"

The dogs whined and said not a "word." It was very plain that they had
taken the pudding.

"Oh, please don't whip them, Daddy!" begged Bunny.

"No; I won't," said Mr. Brown.

"I shouldn't have left the pudding where they could get it," said Mrs.
Brown. "It was all my fault. I'll make another for supper."

However, there were some cakes in a tin can in the "Ark," and as Uncle
Tad climbed in and got them out for the children before the garage men
started to pull the stalled automobile out with their machine, Bunny and
Sue had a little dessert after all.

"We're all ready to try to get your car out of the ditch now, Mr.
Brown," said one of the garage men.

"Oh, let's watch, Sue!" cried Bunny.

"But keep out of the way," ordered their father.

There was a puffing of the other auto truck, a grinding of the wheels,
and then the "Ark" was pulled slowly out of the ditch, and on to the
road again, the hind wheels running on long planks which the men put
under them. Thus out on to the safe and solid road rolled the "Ark."

"Hurrah!" cried Bunny Brown.

"Now we're all right," said his Sister Sue.

And indeed they were, for it was found that nothing was broken on the
big machine in which the Brown family were making their tour.

Mr. Brown paid the garage men, who went back to their shop, and the
"Ark" was soon on its way again.

"And the next time I come to a small bridge I'm going to find out how
much weight it will carry before I cross it," said the children's
father.

For a week or more the "Ark" traveled on. Every time he got a chance Mr.
Brown asked about Fred, in the different towns through which they
passed, but could get no trace of the missing boy.

They saw other medicine showmen who had with them players or singers,
but none of them were at all like the runaway Fred.

"It must have been he who was with Dr. Perry," said Mrs. Brown.

"Yes, and I presume he feared we knew him and so he ran on farther," her
husband added. "He may be in Portland now."

"How soon shall we be there?" asked Bunny.

"I