a few more pleasant
things to do to me. If you reckon you c'n make me show the white
feather you've got another guess comin', I want you to know. I'm true
grit, I am!"

"You may be singing out of the other side of your mouth, Jud Mabley,
before we're through with you," threatened Curly Baxter.

"Mebbe now you might think to get a hemp rope and try hangin' me,"
laughed the prisoner in an offensive manner. "That's what they do to
spies, you know, in the army. Yes, and I know of a beauty of a limb
that stands straight out from the body of the tree 'bout ten feet
from the ground. Shall I tell you where it lies?"

This sort of defiant talk was causing more of the scouts to become
angry. It seemed to them like adding insult to injury. Here this
fellow had spied upon their meeting, possibly learned all about the
plans they were forming for the midwinter holidays, and then finally
had the misfortune to fall and smash one of the window panes, which
would, of course, have to be made good by the scouts, as they were
under heavy obligations to the trustees of the church for favors
received.

"A mean fellow like you, Jud Mabley," asserted Joe Clausin, "deserves
the worst sort of punishment that could be managed. Why, it would
about serve you right if you got a lovely coat of tar and feathers
to-night."

Jud seemed to shrink a little at hearing that.

"You wouldn't dare try such a game as that," he told them, with a
faint note of fear in his voice. "Every one of you'd have to pay for
it before the law. Some things might pass, but that's goin' it too
strong. My dad'd have you locked up in the town cooler if I came home
lookin' like a bird, sure he would."

Jud's father was something of a local power in politics, so that the
boy's boast was not without more or less force. Some of the scouts may
have considered this; at any rate, one of them now broke out with:

"A ducking ought to be a good enough punishment for this chap, I
should say; so, fellows, let's start in to give it to him."

"I know where I can lay hands on an axe all right, to chop a hole
through the ice," asserted Bobolink, eagerly.

"Then we appoint you a committee of one to supply the necessary tools
for the joyous occasion," Red Collins cried out, gleefully falling in
with the scheme.

"Hold on, boys, don't you think it would be enough if Jud made an
apology to us, and promised not to breathe a word of what he chanced
to hear?"

It was Horace Poole who