But if the boy hoped to get off unseen he was disappointed.  As he started to run he slipped and fell.  Dent heard the noise the lad made, and while Susan was loosening the cord from her apron the man ran forward.

Bob, however, was up like a flash and ran off, but not before Dent had nearly caught him.  Then the hired man knew it would be of no use to chase the mischievous lad, as Bob was very fleet of foot.

“You wait!” cried Dent, shaking his fist at Bob.  “I’ll fix you!”

“You can’t!” was the answer.  “I’m going on a voyage!”

“I hope you never come back here!” said Dent angrily.  “I hope you get lost on a desert island where there’s nothing to eat but seaweed!”

“That would serve him right,” added the cook “The idea of hinting for some of my doughnuts!  I’ll tell his mother on him.”

“And I’ll tell his father,” added Dent.

Bob was a little afraid lest Mrs. Dodson might come out, and seeing the state her employees were in, would know the lad had had a hand in it.  The effects might be more unpleasant than they now promised to be.  So Bob hastened his pace, and was soon out of sight of the big house on the hill.  He left behind him two very angry persons, yet when they glanced at each other neither Susan nor Dent could help laughing.  They looked as if they had been through a cyclone and cloud-burst, both at the same time, as the hired man expressed it.

Bob’s father did hear of the trick, but not in the way the lad expected he would.  On cooling down neither the hired man nor the cook felt like going and making a complaint about what Bob had done.  The trick, however, had been witnessed by the coachman, and he told some friends in the village.  In this way it became known to several persons, and Mr. Henderson heard of it.

“Bob,” he said to his son very sternly that night, “I thought you had given up such foolishness as playing those tricks.”

“I thought I had, too, dad, but I couldn’t help doing this.  Her apron strings came just in the right place.”

“Do you think it was a nice thing to do?”

“No, sir.  I s’pose not.”

Mr. Henderson sighed.  Bob was so frank to acknowledge a fault that it was hard to punish him.

“I don’t know what’s going to become of you,” he said.

“Well, that was my last land joke, dad.”

“Your last land joke?  What do you mean?”

“I’m going to sail with Captain Spark soon, and I’ll not have time for any more.”

“That’s so, and I’m glad of it.  If you try any jokes on the sailors you may find they know a trick or two themselves.”

“Oh, I’m going to turn over a new leaf.”

“It’s about time.”

Bob really intended to mend his ways.  This, perhaps, was due as much to a fear of what the sailors on the ship might do to him if he played any pranks on them as it was to a desire to reform.