hey went in and sat down
with the family at dinner. It was a farmer's dinner, as it used to be in
southern Ohio fifty years ago: a deep dish of fried salt pork swimming in
its own fat, plenty of shortened biscuit and warm green-apple sauce, with
good butter. The Boy's Town boys did not like the looks of the fat pork,
but they were wolf-hungry, and the biscuit were splendid. In the middle of
the table there was a big crock of buttermilk, all cold and dripping from
the spring-house where it had been standing in the running water; then
there was a hot apple-pie right out of the oven; and they made a pretty
fair meal, after all.

After dinner they hauled more rails, and when they had hauled all the
rails there were, they started for the swimming-hole in the creek. On the
way they came to a mulberry-tree in the edge of the woods-pasture, and it
was so full of berries and they were so ripe that the grass which the
cattle had cropped short was fairly red under the tree. The boys got up
into the tree and gorged themselves among the yellow-hammers and
woodpeckers; and Frank and Jake kept holloing out to each other how glad
they were they had come; but Dave kept quiet, and told them to wait till
they came to the swimming-hole.

It was while they were in the tree that something happened which happened
four times in all that day, if it really happened: nobody could say
afterwards whether it had or not. Frank was reaching out for a place in
the tree where the berries seemed thicker than anywhere else, when a
strong blaze of light flashed into his eyes, and blinded him.

"Oh, hello, Dave Black!" he holloed. "That's mean! What are you throwin'
that light in my face for?"

But he laughed at the joke, and he laughed more when Dave shouted back, "I
ain't throwin' no light in your face."

"Yes, you are; you've got a piece of look-in'-glass, and you're flashin'
it in my face."

"Wish I may die, if I have," said Dave, so seriously that Frank had to
believe him.

"Well, then, Jake Milrace has."

"I hain't, any such thing," said Jake, and then Dave Black roared back,
laughing: "Oh, I'll tell you! It's one of the pieces of tin we strung
along that line in the corn-field to keep the crows off, corn-plantin'
time."

The boys shouted together at the joke on Frank, and Dave parted the
branches for a better look at the corn-field.

"Well, well! Heigh there!" he called towards the field. "Oh, he's gone
now!" he said to the other boys, c