should attack the tiger? Owen would
have it that it was only a puppy dog: but Alan said that did not matter;
for it had four legs and a head and a tail, and so had a tiger. Owen
thought he had better let it alone; and Amy tamed the tiger at once by
giving it a bit of bread from her basket.

Suddenly they came to a spot where five or six geese and a few goslings
were waddling about. The gander came towards them, stretching out his
neck, and hissing loudly. Owen and Amy ran back, followed by Alan, who
told them, that, if he had hit the gander with his stick, he would have
frightened the goslings.

[Illustration]

As there was a stile near, leading into a field, they all got over the
stile, and thus passed the geese.

"I wonder how that gander would like it," said Alan, "if I were to turn
back, and lay hold of him by his long neck, and shake him?" Amy begged
of him by no means to think of such a thing; and so Alan told her that
he would not. Little did the gander know of his narrow escape!

Ah, me! what perils await those who go on their travels to seek their
fortunes! A little brook was now before them; and Alan said, "This river
must be crossed, and I hope that none of us will be carried away by the
current. What we shall do if an Indian springs from behind the bushes,
or a crocodile comes out of the sedge, I don't know. Here is the
narrowest part of the river. I will lay my stick across it; and, if we
make believe very much, it will do for a bridge."

"But I can't walk along your stick," said Amy. "Never mind that," said
Alan: "a bridge is a bridge, whether we walk along it or not." So Alan
laid his stick across the narrow part, and then jumped over the brook,
followed by Owen and Amy. No Indian sprang from the bush, no crocodile
came out of the sedge; and the river was crossed without one of them
being drowned.

All at once it came into Alan's head that Uncle Paul had once been
attacked by a wolf, and that they ought to have an adventure of the same
kind: he therefore asked Owen if he would consent to be eaten up by a
wolf. Owen said he did not like it: he thought Alan ought to be eaten,
for he was the biggest. Alan said that would never do; for then there
would be nobody to care for him and Amy.

But, besides this difficulty, there was another: they had no wolf; and,
where to get one, they did not know. At last it was settled. Owen was to
be the wolf, and to spring on Amy; but before he had eaten her up, or