o that none of us have
any kick coming."
"That old sneak fools himself more than a few times, don't he?"
Bandy-legs remarked, as if beginning to see the comical side of the
affair. "First there was the half ham which he couldn't take a fancy to
after he stole it, and now here he's gone and cribbed a lot of frogs'
legs that he throws away. It must be just a habit with him to steal. He
can't help it when the temptation rises. I'd call him a kleptomaniac,
wouldn't you, Max?"
"Yes," Toby hastened to remark, out of his turn, "that's what he must
be, but you'll have to excuse m-m-me from s-s-sayin' the same, because
it'd sure take m-m-me a year of Sundays puckerin' up my l-l-lips to
try."
"Now, if you had a chance to capture a monkey, Toby, it wouldn't be near
so silly as hoping to bag a great big lion, or a strong tiger that could
bat us all over with one stroke of his paw," Steve advised the boy who
yearned to be the proud possessor of a menagerie of his own.
"Well, p'raps I may b-b-before we leave here," Toby calmly went on to
say, "that is, if the rest of you g-g-give-me a h-h-helping hand."
"You can count on that, Toby," Max assured him, for everybody felt
vastly better, now that the worst seemed known; "but since we've found
what was lost, and made an important discovery, let's hike hack to our
camp, where we can talk it all over, and settle on our plan of
campaign."
"Yes," Bandy-legs remarked, "and while that slippery customer is hanging
around here nothing's going to be safe from him. I wouldn't be a bit
surprised if the old sneak had paid a visit to our tent while we've been
investigating up here; and poking his nose into every package we've got
there, hoping to find some peanuts, or something else he likes
particularly well," and this prospect sent the boys on the full run over
the short-cut between the pond where the frogs held their nightly
chorus, and the camp.
CHAPTER XIV
A PLOT AGAINST THE MISSING LINK
"Everything's lovely, and the goose hangs high!" sang out Steve, when
they had once more arrived in camp, to find things just as they had been
left, with no sign of tampering on the part of the inquisitive and
perhaps hungry monkey.
"It's all right, because no damage was done, since Toby got back his
stolen high jumpers," Bandy-legs announced.
"Yes, and he's agoin' to have p-p-part of the s-s-same for lunch,
understand?" declared the late frog fisherman; "and say, Max, you never
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