ecided; "but what could
it be? I don't think he would tell about the tic-tac, but there's
certainly something queer afoot."

The truth was that the captain was renewing his plan of taking Bob
to sea. Had the boy known of it he would have been much surprised,
for he never dreamed of such a thing.

"How did you get along at school to-day?" asked Captain Spark, as
Mrs. Henderson went out to get dinner.

"Pretty well."

"Didn't put any bent pins in the teacher's chair, did you?"

"No, sir."

The boy hoped the captain would not ask him what other prank he had
been up to, for the truth was that Bob had that morning taken a live
mouse to the classroom, releasing it during a study period, and
nearly sending the woman teacher and the girl pupils into hysterics.
His part had not been discovered, but the teacher had threatened to
keep the whole class of boys in that night until the guilty one
confessed, and Bob knew he would have to tell sooner or later, if
some of his companions did not "squeal" on him, in order that they
might be released from suspicion.

"That's right," went on the mariner. "Never put bent pins in the
teacher's chair."

As Bob feared, some one during the afternoon session told of his
part in the mouse episode, and he was the only one kept in. The
teacher made him stay while she corrected a lot of examination
papers, and in the silent schoolroom the boy began to wish he had
not been so fond of a "joke."

The teacher, who was a kind-hearted woman, talked seriously to her
rather wild pupil, pointing out that it was a cowardly thing for a
boy to frighten girls. Bob had never looked at it in just that
light, and he was pretty well ashamed of himself when he was allowed
to go home, with an admonition that he must mend his ways or be
liable to expulsion.

"I'll bet he's been up to some mischief, Lucy," said Captain Spark
when Bob came home quite late that afternoon.

"Perhaps he has. I hope it was nothing serious."

"Shall I ask him what it was?"

"No, we'll find it out sooner or later, and I don't want his father
to worry more than he has to. He has hard work at the mill, and I
like his evenings to be as free from care as possible."

"That's just like a woman," growled the mariner to himself. "They
take more than their share of the burdens that the men and boys
ought to bear. But never mind. I'll get Bob yet, and when I do
I'll make a man of him or know the reason why. He'll find it muc