e
dared not enter and scramble across the couch to where she had sought
refuge by a window. So he turned back toward the goal. "I get you yet,"
he shouted, wiping his damp face on his shirt sleeve.

The other children gathered about him and taunted him with his failure.
To right himself in their eyes he set after one of the Dutchman's girls,
who shook off her wooden shoes and fled frantically in circles to evade
him. But he succeeded in catching her and taking a forfeit from one of
her sun-bleached braids, after which he went to the wagon and sat down
on the tongue to rest.

The game went on. It was the Swede boy's turn at the goal, and he put
his hands over his face and began to count as the children scattered.
"Tane, twanety, thirty, forty, feefty," he chanted, "seexty, saventy,
eighty." As he told the numbers he stealthily watched the kitchen window
where the little girl stood.

The neighbor woman's boy, who was in hiding under the wagon and almost
at his feet, saw him peeking through his fingers and jumped out to
denounce him. "King's ex, king's ex!" he cried, holding up one hand.
"It's no fair; he's looking."

"Ay bane note," declared the Swede boy, stoutly, wheeling about; "yo
late may alone."

"You are, too," persisted the other, springing away to hide again.

The Swede boy once more resumed his chanting, and the little girl, as
she leaned from her vantage-point to listen, wished that she might
return to the yard and take part in the game. But "Frenchy's" brother,
though tired with his struggles, was still sitting menacingly on the
wagon tongue, and she dared not leave her cover.

Suddenly the sight of a slat sunbonnet, hanging on a nail beside her,
suggested a means of circumventing him. She took it down and put it on,
tying the strings under her chin in a hard double knot. The long, stiff
pasteboard slats buried her face completely, and nobody but Luffree,
with his sharp muzzle, could have reached her cheeks to kiss them. So
she sallied bravely into the yard.

The Swede boy had been counting slowly in the hope that she would hide,
and when he saw her approaching he paused a moment, expecting
"Frenchy's" brother to renew the attack. But the figure on the tongue
never moved, even when the little girl, with a saucy swish of her
skirts, paused daringly near it. So he sang out his last call:

"Boshel of wheat, boshel of raye,
Who ain't radey, holer 'Ay.'"

"I," shouted the little gi