for Bill, as he was able to
obtain a much better breakfast there than at home.

When breakfast was over he said soberly:

"Dick, I must go back."

"Why do you go back at all?" said Dick impulsively.

"I must. It is the only home I have."

"I wish you could stay with me."

"So do I, but Mr. Badger would come after me."

"I suppose he would. Do you think he will flog you?"

"I am sure he will."

"I'd like to flog him--the brute! Don't take it too hard, Bill. You'll
be a man some time, and then no one can punish you."

Poor Bill! As he took his lonely way back to the house of his tyrannical
employer in the early morning he could not help wishing that he was
already a man and his days of thraldom were over. He was barely sixteen.
Five long, weary years lay before him.

"I'll try to stand it, though it's hard," murmured Bill. "I suppose he's
very mad because I wasn't home last night. But I'm glad I went. I had
two good meals and a quiet night's sleep."

It was not long before he came in sight of home.

Probably no one was up in the Badger household. Usually Bill was the
first to get up and Mrs. Badger next, for Andrew Jackson and his father
were neither of them fond of early rising.

The front and back doors were no doubt locked, but Bill knew how to get
in.

He went to the shed, raised a window and clambered in.

"Perhaps I can get up to my room without anybody hearing me," he
reflected.

He passed softly through the front room into the entry and up the front
stairs. All was quiet. Bill concluded that no one was up. He came to the
foot of the attic stairs, and his astonished gaze rested on the three
Badgers, armed respectively with a gun, a broom and a poker, all on
their way to his room.

"Were they going to murder me?" he thought.

Just then Andrew Jackson, who led the rear, and was therefore nearest to
Bill, looked back and saw the terrible foe within three feet of him.

He uttered a loud yell, and, scarcely knowing what he was about, brought
down the poker with force on his mother's back, at the same time
crying:

"There he is, ma!"

Mrs. Badger, in her flurry, struck her husband with the broom, while her
husband, equally panic-stricken, fired the musket. It was overloaded,
and, as a natural result, "kicked," overthrowing Mr. Badger, who in his
downward progress carried with him his wife and son.

Astonished and terrified, Bill turned and fled, leaving the house in the
same way he entered