them believed so, either, and that
they would bet that any of their dogs could whip Bunty's dog.

Their dogs did not look much like fighting. They were wet with running
through the river, and they were lying round with their tongues hanging
out, panting. But it made the boys think that something ought to be done
to Jim Leonard, if they could ever find him, and some one said that they
ought to look for him right away, but the rest said they ought to stop
and dry their pantaloons first.

Pony began to be afraid they were going to hurt Jim Leonard if they got
hold of him, and he said he was going home; and the boys tried to keep him
from doing it. They said they were just going to build a drift-wood fire
and dry their clothes at it, and they told him that if he went off in his
wet trousers he would be sure to get the ague. But nothing that the boys
could do would keep him, and so the big fellows said to let him go if he
wanted to so much; and he climbed the river bank and left them kindling a
fire.

When he got away and looked back, all the boys had their clothes off and
were dancing round the fire like Indians, and he would have liked to turn
back after he got to the top, and maybe he might have done so if he had
not found Jim Leonard hiding in a hole up there and peeping over at the
boys. Jim was crying, and said his tooth ached awfully, and he was afraid
to go home and get something to put in it, because his mother would whale
him as soon as she caught him.

He said he was hungry, too, and he wanted Pony to go over into a field
with him and get a turnip, but Pony would not do it. He had three cents in
his pocket--the big old kind that were as large as half-dollars and seemed
to buy as much in that day--and he offered to let Jim take them and go and
get something to eat at the grocery.

They decided he should buy two smoked red herrings and a cent's worth of
crackers, and these were what Jim brought back after he had been gone so
long that Pony thought he would never come. He had stopped to get some
apples off one of the trees at his mother's house, and he had to watch his
chance so that she should not see him, and then he had stopped and taken
some potatoes out of a hill that would be first-rate if they could get
some salt to eat them with, after they had built a fire somewhere and
baked them.

They thought it would be a good plan to dig one of these little caves just
under the edge of the bank, and make a hole in