by name, and shouting for Cham.

[Illustration: ON GUARD.]

He stopped on top of a high hill called the Ledge, and looked down the
steep side of it a moment. Hark! He certainly heard the whine of a dog.
He clambered down a little way, and called his loudest. The dog's whine
answered him again. With a new hope in his heart, he called, and
listened until the whine grew louder and louder, and he recognized
Cham's bark. Catching at branches, stumbling, sliding, and blundering,
he made his way down the hill-side, until suddenly the dog's bark was
almost at his ears. And at last, there, farther round the side, on a
ledge, just where a light motion would send her rolling down a steep
declivity, lay Hetty; and Champion-stanch old Champion--sat upright
before her, like a brave, resolute soldier on guard, pricking up his
ears, barking loud in answer to Rudy's calls, his body quivering all
over, and his feet restless on the ground. But Rudy knew that Hetty
could roll no farther, and that Champion would sit there until help
came. He did not wait to waken Hetty, but climbing to her, he patted
Cham on the head, and bade him watch her till he returned. Then he
planted a rough, glad, boyish kiss on her unconscious cheek, and hurried
home as he had never hurried in his life before.

The mother's pride in her boy that night made her face shine, as she sat
by Hetty, who lay on the sofa, waited upon by everybody, because of her
ankle, which was slightly sprained. And she said nothing about the chips
Rudy was making, against all regulations, on the floor, as he was
whittling into shape a bench for Hetty's doll's kitchen.

"I'll tell you what, though, Het," said Rudy, "when you want to go off
again to see whether mountains are plum-colored or not, you'd better
take somebody along who knows that a carrot-weed's a flower, and that
stumps and stones _are_ stumps and stones. You'd better take a
person--like me, you know," he said, winking comically at Hetty--"who
won't mistake a frightened squirrel for the king of the brown elves off
on a hunting spree, or for anything else that never was born, except
inside of your topsy-turvy head."

Hetty laughed, and blushed rosy red. "I guess I won't," she said; "but
if you had found yourself, Rudy, sliding and tumbling and running like
lightning down that hill, I guess _your_ head would have been
topsy-turvy for once. And I don't know which is the funniest, to faint
away, or to wake up and find Cham l