"Ah-h-h!" quavered Ned. "Let's get from under!" He grabbed spasmodically at the reins and gave a shake. Old Sol took a step, and Addison tumbled partly over Willis and Ben, who both gave a howl of nervous apprehension.
"Quit that!" cried Addison, angrily, to me. "Stop, I tell you. You hold that horse."
I pulled old Sol up short and he backed a little, at which Ned jumped out and ran on a few steps; Willis and Ben also slipped out behind.
"Hold still," said Addison to me. "Don't let the horse start and pitch me out."
With that he stood up again and began feeling the object. "'Tis a man's trouser leg, sure--and stocking--but there's something odd inside. Who's got a match?"
Ben had a few matches, with which he had been touching off firecrackers earlier in the day, and ventured up to the back of the wagon. Addison stood up again and struck one, while the rest of us stared as the match burned slowly.
"It is a stuffed man," cried Addison; "a scarecrow, I guess, stuffed with grass. But where have I seen those checkered pants before, to-day?--and, boys, here is a paper, pinned on to them higher up. Back the horse a little."
I backed a step, and Addison, striking another match, read aloud on the piece of paper, "THIS IS ENOCH."
"Oho!" cried Ned. "Alf and Halse did that!"
"Yes, these are Enoch's clothes, sure," said Addison. "There's his hat on a big pine knot for a head, with his pocket handkerchief tied round it for a face, and great daubs of wheel grease for mouth, eyes and nose."
"Well, that's a queer sort of joke!" remarked Willis.
"I'm glad they didn't carry Enoch's clothes clean home with them," said I.
"I was afraid they had," Addison remarked; "and I was thinking whether or not he could make it out as stealing, against them."
"Had we better take them down and send them back to him?" I asked.
"No, sir-ee," said Addison. "We will not meddle with them. Enoch may send the sheriff up here by morning. It would be a pretty go if the clothes were found in our possession. Let them hang right where they are, I say, and let's be going, too, before any one comes along and catches us here!"
We drove on accordingly, and reached home without further adventures.
The house was dark; all had retired, except Theodora, who was sitting at her window looking out for us. She came down stairs quietly, lighted a lamp and had set on a lunch for us by the time we came in from the wagon-house. They had gathered three quarts of field strawberries that afternoon and had saved a quart for us. They were the first strawberries of the season. How good they did taste, hungry as we were that night, along with some big slices of Gram's new "mug bread" and butter, and a plentiful swig of lemonade, a pitcherful of which Theodora had also set aside for us.
"Doad!" cried Addison, giving her a pat on the shoulder. "You are the boss girl of this county!"
"Oh, I wanted to hear all the Fourth o' July news," said Theodora. "Now tell me. But don't talk so loud, or you will wake Gramp and Gram."
"The news, well, jingo, I don't know whether we ought to tell it all, or not; what think?" said Addison to me, doubtfully.
"Has Halse got home?" I asked.
"Yes, he came just before supper. He said he rode up _with a fellow_ as far as the forks of the road," replied Theodora.
"Did he say why he left us and came home so early?" asked Addison.
"Yes; he said there was nothing going on, and he had got tired of loafing around."
Addison laughed; so did I.
"But I knew there was something behind it all," Theodora continued. "Now what was it?"
"Nothing--much," replied Addison, evasively.
"Oh, but there was," exclaimed Theodora. "Tell me."
"Nothing but the usual 'circus,' when Halse goes out anywhere," replied Addison wearily, yet still laughing a little.
"But tell me what it was," Theodora urged.
With a certain reluctance which boys always feel, to divulge circumstances that pertain mainly to boys and boys' affairs, we related to her the salient events of the afternoon, for it would have been a bad return for her kindness to us to have refused altogether, and we felt, too, that her motive was something more than mere curiosity.
Theodora was a fun-loving girl by nature; she laughed over the snap-cracker episodes, and laughed, indeed, at the Elm House roof exploit, and even could not help laughing at Alfred and Halse's final trick with Enoch's clothes.
"But that _was_ mean," she kept saying. "What do you suppose he will do?
Will he have them arrested?"
"No, I guess not," replied Addison. "I think it will pass as a joke.
Enoch will probably get his clothes back, in a day or two, if not his boots."
"But he declared he would give Alf and Halse an awful licking the first time he meets them out anywheres," I said.
"Well, I shouldn't much blame him, I do say, if he did," observed Theodora, laughing again.
"I would if I were he," said Addison. "You see, they begun on Enoch in the first place."
Just then we heard a little creaking noise in the chamber stairway.
"Sh," whispered Theodora. "I believe Halse is there, on the stairs, listening."
"Well, listeners rarely hear much good of themselves," said Addison, loudly enough for him to hear it. We heard still another little creaking noise, this time higher up the stairs, as if he were tiptoeing back to his room.
"I am sorry if he overheard us," Theodora remarked in a low tone, as we got up to go to our rooms.
"I don't care," said Addison. "What could he expect any one to say of a mean thing like that?"
When I entered our room, Halse was in bed, and pretended to snore.
"Oh, that's too thin, Halse," said I. "We heard you on the stairs."
"You are a couple of tell-tales!" he exclaimed, hotly. "To come home and chatter out everything that happened, to the girls!"
There was some little force in the reproach, and I did not at once reply to it. "Tell-tale, tell-tale!" he kept calling out, tauntingly, as I was undressing.
"You just wait till Enoch gets hold of you!" I remarked, beginning to grow irritated.
"I'm not afraid of any of your Enochs!" cried Halse.
"What were you on the top of the Elm House for, then?" I asked, sarcastically. "I wouldn't like to be in your shoes the next time Enoch gets his eye on you."
"If he touches me, I'll fix him!" cried Halstead, wrathfully. "And I'll slap you, too, if you don't keep still," he added, giving me a kick under the bedspread, which I did not quite dare to resent, and so turned over to the wall and fell asleep.