he was never going to stop.

She would not let his father say anything to him, but after a while she
washed him, and when she got him clean she made him up a bed on the lounge
and put him to sleep there where she could see him. She said she was not
going to sleep herself that night, but just stay up and realize that they
had got Pony safe again.

One thing she did ask him, and that was: "What in the world made you want
to sleep in the barn, Pony?" and Pony was ashamed to say he was getting
ready to run off. He began:

"Jim Leonard--" and his mother broke out:

"I knew it was some of Jim Leonard's work!" and she talked against Jim
Leonard until Pony fell asleep, and said Pony should never speak to him
again.

She and Pony's father sat up all night talking, and about daybreak he
recollected that he had left the candle burning in the barn, and he ran
out with all his might to get it before it set the barn on fire. But it
had burned out without catching anything, and he was coming back to the
house when he met Jim Leonard sneaking towards the barn door. He pounced
on him, and caught him by the collar, and he said as savagely as he could:
"What are you doing here, Jim?"

Jim Leonard was too scared to speak, and Pony's father hauled him to the
house door, and holloed in to Pony's mother: "I've got Jim Leonard here,
Lucy"; and she holloed back:

"Oh, well, take him away, and don't let me see the dreadful boy!" and
Pony's father said:

"I'll take him home to his mother, and see what she has to say to him."

All the way down to the river-bank he did not say a word to Jim Leonard,
but when they got to Jim Leonard's mother's house, there she was with her
pipe in her mouth coming out to get chips to kindle the fire with, and she
said:

"I'd like to know what you've got my boy by the collar for, Mr. Baker?"

Pony's father said: "I don't know myself; I'll let him tell you. Pony was
hid in the barn last night, and I just now caught Jim prowling around on
the outside. I should like to hear what he wanted."

Jim Leonard did not say anything. His mother gave him one look, and then
she went into the house and came out with a table-knife in her hand.

She said, "I reckon I can get him to tell you," and she went to a
pear-tree that there was before her house and cut a long sucker from the
foot of it. She came up to Jim and then she said: "Tell!"

She did not have to say it twice, and in about half a second he told how
Pony