and the Master emerged into a Bedlam of noise and confusion. "Best hide in the station, Ma'am !" shouted the telegraph operator, at sight of the Mis tress. "There is a mad dog loose out here! He 's chasing folks around, and—” "Mad dog!" repeated the Mistress in high contempt. "If you knew anything about dogs, you'd know mad ones never 'chase folks around' any more than typhoid patients do. Then-" A flash of tawny light beneath the station lamp, a scurrying of frightened idlers, a final wasted shot from the policeman's pistol, as Wolf dived headlong through the frightened. crowd toward the voice he heard and recognized. Up to the Mistress and the Master galloped Wolf. He was bleeding, his eyes were bloodshot, his fur was rumpled. He seized the astounded Master's gloved hand lightly between his teeth and sought to pull him across the tracks and toward the lake. The Master knew dogs, especially he knew Wolf, and without a word he suffered himself to be led. The Mistress and one or two inquisitive men followed. Presently, Wolf loosed his hold on the Master's hand and ran on ahead, darting back every few moments to make certain he was followed. "Heroism consists in-hanging-onone-minute-longer," the Boy was whispering deliriously to himself for the hundreth time as Wolf pattered up to him in triumph across the ice, with the human rescuers a scant ten yards behind! By MRS. JOHN T. VAN SANT SMALL Polly washed her children's clothes and hung them in the sun, And Tubby Spriggles' goat came by and ate them, every one. First he ate a button, then he ate a string, And then he made a meal of it and finished everything. Every frock and every frill, every lacy skirt, And then he nipped the clothes-pins off and had them for dessert. And so these children, every one, And when for months they had to roam And this is what they undertook: "If all the Scamper Children tried!" They searched among them- The swiftest runner of the lot, go, To Cuba, Haiti, Mexico, To Isle of Man and Finisterre "THE SCAMPER CHIL DREN PLAYED ABOUT, All in the space of blindman's-buff You 've ever heard of fast they whirled. And many others who reside Popped through the earth, a-hastening, Around a cottage near the town "I'm tired of staying out," one said; "Once in that house, I 'll go to bed!" "And as for me," replied an elf, "I'll search along the pantry shelf!" Ere long the moaning wind of night They pounded at the cottage door, And tugged and rattled o'er and o'er; They beat the house on every side, And swung the shutters open wide; "I'LL SEARCH They shook the windows, skipping none, And shouted out above the din For all to follow him within. |