terrible state of mind. Being very much afraid of rats he
would have fled from the spot could he have known which way to go. Twice
he tried to strike a match, but each attempt proved a failure, on
account of his extreme nervousness. And now he had no more matches with
him, so that it was impossible to see the connecting door, through which
his retreat must be conducted.

Ted was growing more and more angry outside. He used his knuckles on
the door again, to emphasize his demand.

"Open up here, you lazybones! What ails you?" he roared, discretion
giving way to rage at the delay, when his fingers were fairly itching to
lay hold of those tents, and the balance of the camp stuff belonging to
the boys he detested so much.

"Oh! I'm trying to do it, Ted;" answered his tool within, "but you see
the place is alive with great big rats. They're all around me in here,
and wanting to take a nip out of my legs. Oh! get out of that, hang you!
One got me then! I bet he took a piece out of me as big as a baseball.
They'll eat me alive! Help! Help!"

But Bud was mistaken. It was Bobolink who had pinched him on the sly.
Still, since the other did not know this, his terror was just as much in
evidence.

"Hurry up there, unless you want us to break the old door in!" called
Ted.

"Ah! go roll your hoop!" called out a voice just like the sharp twanging
tones belonging to Bud.

"What's that you say?" shouted the astonished and enraged Ted, who
believed his slave was rising up in rebellion.

"Go chase yourself! I'm openin' as fast as I kin, an' if you talk till
you're blind I aint agoin' to hurry any faster!" Bobolink made Bud
appear to say.

"Aint, hey? Just wait till I get hold of you, Bud Jones; if I don't make
you eat them words, my name is mud!" exclaimed the furious leader,
outside.

"Oh! I never said a word, Ted, sure I didn't!" cried Bud, still
wrestling with the ashcans in the darkness, and kicking right and left
at imaginary rats which he believed were advancing in a drove to snap at
his shins.

"Oh! yes, tell that to the ducks, will you? Every feller here heard what
you said, too. I'm goin' to make you eat it just as soon as I get hold
of you!" declared the furious leader, still bruising his knuckles in
useless attacks on the boards of the door.

Bud Jones was in the most terrible predicament of his whole life. Beset
by innumerable fierce foes as he believed within, there was that big
bully outside, only waiting f