“Bow wow!” barked Don.

“Squee!  Squee!” cried Squinty.

“Oh, you poor little pig!” grunted Mrs. Pig.  “What has happened to you?”

“Oh, mamma!” squealed Squinty.  “I—­I ran out of the pen to see what it was like outside, and I was just eating some pig weed, when this big dog chased after me.”

“Yes, I did,” said Don, growling in his deep voice.  “The place for pigs, little or big, is in their pen.  The farmer does not want you to come out and spoil his garden.  He tells me to watch you, and to drive you back if you come in it.

“This is the first time I have seen any of you pigs in the garden,” went on Don, still keeping hold of Squinty’s ear, “and I want you, please, to go back in your pen.”

“Oh, I’ll go!  I’ll go!” cried Squinty.  “Only let loose of my ear, Mr. Dog, if you please!”

“What!  Have you hold of Squinty’s ear?” asked Wuff-Wuff.  “Oh, do please let him go!”

“Yes, I will, now that you are here,” said Don, and he took his strong, white teeth from the piggy boy’s ear.  “I did not bite him hard enough to hurt him,” said Don.  “But I had to catch hold of him somewhere, and taking him by the ear was better than taking him by the tail, I think.”

“Oh, yes, indeed!” agreed Mr. Pig.  “Once, when I was a little pig, a dog bit me on the tail, and I never got over it.  In fact I have the marks yet,” and he tried to look around at his tail, which had a kink in it.  But Mr. Pig was too fat to see his own tail.

“So that’s why I took hold of Squinty by the ear,” went on Don.  “Did I hurt you very much?” he asked the little pig who had run out of the pen.

“Oh, no; not much,” Squinty said, as he rubbed his ear with his paw.  Then, as he saw a bunch of pig weed close to him, he began nibbling that.  And his brothers and sisters, seeing him do this, began to eat the pig weed also.

“Come!  This will never do!” barked Don, the dog.  “I am sorry, but all you pigs must go back in your own pen.  The farmer would not like you to be out in his garden.”

“Yes, I suppose we must,” said Mrs. Pig, with a sigh.  “Yet it is very nice out in the garden.  But we must stay in our pen.”

“Come, children,” said Mr. Pig.  “We must stay in our own place, for if we rooted up the farmer’s garden, much as we would like to do it, he would have no vegetables to eat this winter.  Then he might be angry at us, and would give us no more sour milk.  So we will go back to our pen.”

“Bow wow!  Bow wow!” barked Don, running here and there.  “I will show you the way back to your pen,” he said, kindly.

And he capered about, here and there, driving the pigs back to the place where Squinty had run from, and where all the others had come from, to see what had happened to him.

The farmer, who was hoeing corn, heard the barking of his dog.  He dropped the hoe and ran.

“Something must have happened!” he cried.  “Maybe the big bull has gotten loose from his field, and is chasing someone with a red dress.”