ated by the
dog's behavior when he felt the loop tighten on his tail, and looked
round to see what the matter was. The boys hardly had a chance to cheer
him before he flashed out of sight round the corner, and they hardly had
time to think before he flashed into sight again from the other
direction. He whizzed along the ground, and the can hurtled in the air,
but there was no other sound, and the cheers died away on the boys'
lips. The boy who owned the dog began to cry, and the other fellows
began to blame him for not stopping the dog. But he might as well have
tried to stop a streak of lightning; the only thing you could do was to
keep out of the dog's way. As an experiment it was successful beyond the
wildest dreams of its projectors, though it would have been a sort of
relief if the dog had taken some other road, for variety, or had even
reversed his course. But he kept on as he began, and by a common impulse
the boys made up their minds to abandon the whole affair to him. They
all ran home and hid, or else walked about and tried to ignore it. But
at this point the grown-up people began to be interested; the mothers
came to their doors to see what was the matter. Yet even the mothers
were powerless in a case like that, and the enthusiast had to be left
to his fate. He was found under a barn at last, breathless, almost
lifeless, and he tried to bite the man who untied the can from his tail.
Eventually he got well again, and lived to be a solemn warning to the
boys; he was touchingly distrustful of their advances for a time, but he
finally forgot and forgave everything. They did not forget, and they
never tried tying a tin can to a dog's tail again, among all the things
they tried and kept trying. Once was enough; and they never even liked
to talk of it, the sight was so awful. They were really fond of the dog,
and if they could have thought he would take the matter so seriously,
they would not have tried to have that kind of fun with him. It cured
them of ever wanting to have that kind of fun with any dog.

As the weather softened, tops came in some weeks after marbles went out,
and just after foot-races were over, and a little before swimming began.
At first the boys bought their tops at the stores, but after a while the
boy whose father had the turning-shop on the Hydraulic learned to turn
their tops, and did it for nothing, which was cheaper than buying tops,
especially as he furnished the wood, too, and you only h