whom he had now
caught up. "And even if this were the same dog, we could not make him
understand that we wanted him to take us to the place where he dropped
the purse."

"I'm sure it's the same dog," insisted Bunny. "But he's gone now,
anyhow."

This was true. Just as Bunny stopped after his father called to him the
dog ran into an alley between two buildings, and though Mr. Brown, again
holding his two children by the hands, looked in, there was no sight of
the animal.

"Yes, he's gone," agreed Mr. Brown.

"You scared him, chasing after him like that, you did," went on Sue to
her brother. "Didn't he, Daddy?" she asked her father.

"I guess the dog didn't need much scaring," said Mr. Brown. "Are you
sure he's the same one, Bunny?"

Of this Bunny was quite positive, though Sue was not so much so. The
animal looked like the one that had snatched the pocketbook off the
bench and had run into Mr. Foswick's carpenter shop with it. But that
was as far as Sue could go.

The crowd which had started to gather when it saw the chase, now began
to separate when it found there was to be no more excitement, and Mr.
Brown took a short cut through the back streets home with Bunny and Sue.

"We had a lot of adventures, Mother!" said Bunny, when they reached the
house. "We got adrift on a boat, and we had a tow back, and I saw the
dog that had your pocketbook, and I chased him and--and----"

"And I know a riddle about when is a snowdrift like a boat," broke in
Sue, not wanting Bunny to receive all the attention.

"Gracious!" exclaimed Mrs. Brown. "What does all this mean?" she asked
her husband. "Did you really get back my pocketbook? Oh, if my ring has
been found----"

"I'm sorry to say it hasn't," her husband said. "Bunny did think he saw
the dog that took it, but I very much doubt that."

"And what's that about being adrift?"

"They were on the _Fairy_, and she floated out a little way from the
dock."

"That's rather dangerous," said Mother Brown. "If such things are going
to happen it will not be safe for us to go to Christmas Tree Cove."

"Oh, can't we go?" cried Bunny and Sue, thinking their mother was going
to call off the trip.

"There was no danger," their father said, and he explained how it had
happened. "It was not the fault of Bunny and Sue," he added. "The boat
might have drifted off with any one on board."

"But it is strange if that dog should still be around here, after
running off with my pocketb