, and
searched for the trail of a tiger.

The gate was an excellent place for a tiger. Around it was planted
an almost impenetrable screen of evergreens, so thick that the ground
beneath was quite bare of grass. Here the two hunters crawled on
stomachs that began to feel a trifle empty, and here they happened on
the trail.

Tucker found it first. His stumpy tail grew rigid. Nose to the ground,
he crawled and wriggled through the undergrowth, Bobby at his heels.
And now Bobby saw the trail, footprints. It is true that they resembled
those of heavy boots with nails. But on the other hand, no one could say
surely that the nail-marks were not those of claws.

Tucker circled about. The trail grew more exciting. Bobby had to crawl
on hands and feet under and through thickets. Branches had been broken
as by the passage of some large body. The sportsman clutched his weapon
and went on.

An hour later the two hunters returned for breakfast. Washing did
something to restore the leader to a normal appearance, but a wondering
family discovered him covered with wounds and strangely silent.

"Why, Bob, where have you been?" his mother demanded. "Why, I never saw
so many scratches!"

"I've been hunting," he replied briefly. "They don't hurt anyhow."

Then he relapsed into absorbed silence. His mother, putting cream on his
cereal, placed an experienced hand on his forehead. "Are you sure you
feel well, dear?" she asked. "I think your head is a little hot."

"I'm all right, mother."

She was wisely silent, but she ran over in her mind the spring treatment
for children at home. The blood, she felt, should be thinned after a
winter of sausages and rich cocoa. She mentally searched her medicine
case.

A strange thing happened that day. A broken plate disappeared from the
upper shelf of a closet, where Pepy had hidden it; also a cup with a
nick in it, similarly concealed; also the heel of a loaf of bread.
Nor was that the end. For three days a sort of magic reigned in Pepy's
kitchen. Ten potatoes, laid out to peel, became eight. Matches and two
ends of candle walked out, as it were, on their own feet. A tin pan with
a hole in it left the kitchen-table and was discovered hiding in Bobby's
bureau, when the Fraulein put away the washing.

On the third day Mrs. Thorpe took her husband into their room and closed
the door.

"Bob," she said, "I don't want to alarm you. But there is something
wrong with Bobby."

"Sick, you mean?"