while Laddie and Vi leaned against her and listened to the
tale she was telling the little folks.

Phillis and Alice meanwhile showed Rose the interior of the cabin and
all its comforts and wonders. Meanwhile Frane, Junior, took Russ down to
the stream with some of the colored children to show him some of the big
fish he had threatened Laddie with. Here it was that Russ Bunker engaged
in his first adventure at the Meiggs Plantation.

CHAPTER XIII

THE CATFISH

"If Sneezer was here," said Frane, Junior, "he'd show you more fish than
I can. Sneezer used to just smell 'em out. But come on. I know where
some of the big ones stay."

"I don't want to dive in after them," declared Russ Bunker, laughing.
"The way you promised Laddie. And I haven't any hook and line at all."

"We won't go fishing. Not really. Mostly the darkies fish. We don't
bother to. They bring us plenty to eat when we want them at the house."

"You--you don't do much of anything, do you?" asked Russ doubtfully.
"Not for yourselves, I mean."

"Don't have to," returned Frane, Junior. "The darkies do it all for us.
But Phil and Alice and I have to do our own studying."

Russ saw that he was in fun, but he was curious enough to ask the
smaller boy:

"Do you and the girls go to school?"

"School comes to us. There is a teacher comes here. Lives at the house.
But it's vacation time now till after New Year's. I hope she never comes
back!"

"Oh, is she mean to you?"

"Course she is," declared Frane, Junior. "She makes us study. I hate
to."

"Well, sometimes I don't like what they make us learn in school,"
admitted Russ slowly. "But I guess it's good for us."

"How do you know, it is?" demanded the other. "I don't feel any better
after I study. I only get the headache."

Russ could not find an immediate answer for this statement. Besides,
there was something right in front of him then that aroused his
interest. It was a big log spanning the stream, with a shaky railing
nailed to it, made of a long pole attached to several uprights.

"That is the funniest bridge I ever saw," he declared. "Will it hold
you?"

"Look at that log. It would hold a hundred elephants," declared Frane,
Junior, who was inclined to exaggerate a good deal at times.

"Not all at once!" cried Russ.

"Yes, sir. If you could get 'em on it," said Frane. "But I don't s'pose
the railing would stand it."

When the boys went out on the bridge and Russ considered the ra