“Wouldn’t he make a good scarecrow?” said the landlord, shaking his sides.  “Jimmum, chimney, and all!”

It was necessary to tear his clothes still more in order to get them free from the tangle of wires.  As the poor young culprit crept unwillingly back to the hotel all the cats, dogs, donkeys, and chickens in Castle Cliff seemed to combine in a chorus of mewing, barking, braying, and cackling to inform the whole world that here was a boy who had stolen a chimney!

What wretched little beggar was this coming to the house?  No one thought of its being Jimmy Dunlee.

“We caught this young rogue stealing a chimney,” said Mr. Templeton.

It seemed funny at first, and the Dunlees and Sanfords and Hales all laughed heartily, till it occurred to them that the dear child had been in actual danger; and then they drew long breaths and shuddered, thinking how he might have pitched headlong to the ground and been crushed by the weight of the chimney.

“But my little son,” asked Mrs. Dunlee presently, when the child was once more respectably clad, and was walking down to dinner between herself and Aunt Vi, “but my little son, what could have possessed you to climb a roof?  Was that a nice thing to do?”

“No, mamma, of course not.  But ’twas all Nate Pollard’s fault.  Nate stumped me to it and I took the stump.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why, he said, ‘You won’t dare follow me,’ and I said, ‘Yes, I would.’  And I never mistrusted where he was going.  Who’d have thought of his climbing top of a house?”

“Why, Jamie Dunlee, you did not follow Nate without knowing where he was going?”

“Yes, mamma; if I had known I wouldn’t have followed.  But you see he had stumped me and I’d taken the stump, so I was obliged to go!”

“Obliged to go!” repeated Aunt Vi, laughing, “Isn’t that characteristic of Jimmy?”

The little fellow felt guiltier than ever.  When Aunt Vi used that word of five syllables it always meant that people had done very wrong, so he thought.

“Jamie,” said his mother very seriously, “I am surprised that you should have promised to follow Nate without knowing where he was going!  And you never even asked him where he was going!  Is that the way you play, you boys?”

“No, mamma, it isn’t.  Nate makes you play his way because he’s the oldest.  He’s just as mean!  But I couldn’t back out after I was stumped.”

“Oh, fie!  Backing out is exactly the thing to do when a boy is trying to lead you into mischief!  But we’ll talk more of this by and by.”