“You all right, old feller?” he called.

Underneath the house he heard the responsive tap-tap of a tail in the dry dust.  He climbed out of his clothes, leaving them in a pile in the middle of the floor, tumbled into bed, and pulled the covers high over him.

“Golly!” he said.  “Oh, golly!”

Next day he hunted till sundown.  The Christmas holidays were on and there was no thought of school.  He went only now and then, anyway, for since his father’s death there was too much for him to do at home.  He hunted in the opposite direction from Old Man Thornycroft’s.  It was three miles away; barriers of woods and bottoms and hills lay between, and the old man seldom stirred beyond the boundaries of his own farm; but Davy wanted to be on the safe side.

There were moments, though, when he thought of the old man, and wondered if he had missed the dog and whether he would make any search for him.  There were sober moments, too, when he thought of his mother and Mr. Kirby, and wished he had told them the truth.  But then the long-drawn bay of the hound would come from the bottoms ahead, and he would hurry to the summons, his face flushed and eager.  The music of the dog running, the sound of the shots, and his own triumphant yells started many an echo among the silent frosted hills that day.  He came home with enough meat to last a week—­six rabbits.  As he hurried into the yard he held them up for the inspection of his mother, who was feeding the chickens.

“He’s the finest rabbit dog ever was, Ma!  Oh, golly, he can follow a trail!  I never see anything like it, Ma, I never did!  I’ll skin ’em an’ clean ’em after supper.  You ought to have saw him, Ma!  Golly!”

And while he chopped the wood and milked the cow and fed the mule, and skinned the rabbits, he saw other days ahead like this, and whistled and sang and talked to the hound, who followed close at his heels every step he took.

Then one afternoon, while he was patching the lot fence, with Buck sunning himself near the woodpile, came Old Man Thornycroft.  Davy recognized his buggy as it turned the bend in the road.  He quickly dropped his tools, called Buck to him and got behind the house where he could see without being seen.  The buggy stopped in the road, and the old man, his hard, pinched face working, his buggy whip in his hand, came down the walk and called Mrs. Alien out on the porch.

“I just come to tell you,” he cried, “that your boy Davy run off with my dog las’ Friday evenin’!  There ain’t no use to deny it.  I know all about it.  I seen him when he passed in front of the house.  I found the block I had chained to the dog beside the road.  I heered Squire Jim Kirby talkin’ to some men in Tom Belcher’s sto’ this very mornin’; just happened to overhear him as I come in.  ‘A boy an’ a dog,’ he says, ’is the happiest combination in nater.’  Then he went on to tell about your boy an’ a tan dog.  He had met ’em in the road.  Met ’em when?  Last Friday evenin’.  Oh, there ain’t no use to deny it, Mrs. Allen!  Your boy Davy—­he stole my dog!”