y Jack's early in the autumn.

"And you-all," said Russ, copying Frane's speech, speaking to the little
ones and Rose, "must stay back here with me and be brakemen. When we
need the handbrakes, I'll tell you, and you run forward over the
coops--I mean the cars--and set the brakes."

"But suppose we get flung off?" asked Vi.

"That you must not do," said her older brother sternly. "If the train is
going fast you might get a broken leg. Or if it is going around a curve
it would be worse. You must be careful."

"I think this is a dangerous play," said Vi hopefully. There was nobody
really more daring than Vi.

The two Armatage girls tried to coax Rose away from the "train"; but
Rose liked to play with her brothers and sisters, and she knew that
Mother Bunker expected her to. So she excused herself to Philly and
Alice.

Unfortunately they took some offense at this. That evening after supper
Rose found herself ignored by Phillis and Alice Armatage. At another
time this ungenerous act might have hurt the oldest Bunker girl. But she
and Russ had their secret plans to carry through, and Rose was glad to
get away with her brother in a room where nobody would disturb them.

Again Russ had broken up pasteboard boxes, and he had pen and ink. To
make new signs all in "big print" to stick up at the site of Mammy
June's burned cabin was more of a task than merely writing them. This
was Rose's bright idea. Russ did not deny her powers of invention.

They printed four good signs. Oh, the letters were large and black!

"They ought to be," Russ said. "We've used 'most half a bottle of ink."

"Don't let's tell Philly or any of them," said Rose. "They laugh at so
many things we do."

"All right," agreed Russ, although he was less sensitive about being
laughed at than his sister.

But this habit the young Armatages had of laughing at what the little
Bunkers did caused all the trouble on this night. And it was a night
that all of the children and most of the grown folks, too, would be
likely to remember.

The Armatage children knew a great deal more about the plantation and
the country surrounding it than the Bunkers did. That was only natural.
Philly or Alice or Frane, Junior, would not have started off secretly,
as Russ and Rose Bunker did, after nine o'clock at night to go down to
the place where old Mammy June's cabin had been burned.

To tell the truth, the Armatage children had associated so much with the
colored folks