like it," went on Captain Ross. "After this, when anybody
asks what you can fill a barrel or a box with to make it weigh less,
just tell 'em to fill it full of holes! Ha! Ha!" and he clapped his big
hand down on his bigger leg and laughed heartily.

Bunny and Sue laughed also, and they knew they were going to have a
jolly time on the trip to Christmas Tree Cove with Captain Ross to sail
the _Fairy_, or, if there was no wind, to send the craft through the
water by her gasolene engine.

This engine Bunker Blue was working on to mend, as it had been broken
just before the two Bunker children went adrift from their father's
dock.

"Will it be ready to sail to-morrow?" asked Bunny, as he watched Bunker
hammering away at the motor.

"Oh, yes," was the answer. "There isn't much the matter with her. We'll
be able to pull out in the morning."

And by hard work everything was finished that night on board the
_Fairy_. Uncle Tad, the jolly old soldier, announced that he had his
"knapsack" packed and enough "rations" to last him for a week, anyhow.

As they were to make an early morning start, Bunny and Sue had said
good-bye to their boy and girl friends the evening before. As they
walked past Mr. Foswick's carpenter shop with Uncle Tad, who went down
the street with them at the last minute to buy something Mrs. Brown
wanted, the children looked at the wood-working place.

"Wouldn't it be funny if that dog should be hiding around here?" asked
Sue of her brother.

"Yes," he agreed, "it would be. But I don't see him."

"I guess if he is here he's hiding," Sue went on. "Maybe there's a hole
under the floor of the shop and he's there, just as once at Grandpa's
farm in the country we found where a hen had her nest under the floor
in the barn. And it had eggs in it!"

"Dogs don't make nests like hens," said Bunny.

"Oh, I know that!" retorted Sue. "But maybe this dog hid the pocketbook
under the boards in the shop floor."

"I hardly think so," put in Uncle Tad. "He probably dropped that
pocketbook in the street, and either some one picked it up and kept it,
or else it was dropped down a sewer."

"But if anybody found it, wouldn't we have got it back?" asked Bunny.
"Daddy put an advertisement in the paper."

"Maybe we would and maybe we wouldn't," said Uncle Tad. "Anyhow, it's
gone."

Bright and early the next morning Bunny Brown and his sister Sue went
aboard the _Fairy_, which was tied at their father's dock. The Brow