To make a tick-tack get a long string, the longer the better; meaning the longer the safer.  Then get a small fish-hook, and tie it to the end of your string, and tie a little stone about eight inches below your fish-hook.  Select a dark night and the window of the person whose nerves you wish to disturb.  Then sneak up, and fasten the fish-hook to one of the cross pieces of the window.  Then go to the end of your line, and hide behind a wagon or a post.  Pull your string, and “tick-tack” goes the stone on the window.

Wong Lee took it all in good part.  He had been a boy once, himself, away off in China.  And though Wong Lee never had played tick-tack, he probably had played other, Chinese boy games that Injun and Whitey would have been glad to know about, and Wong Lee was of such a disposition that he probably would have told them all about it, had he and the boys come to an understanding in the matter.

Instead of that, when that irritating little sound got on his Chinese nerves, Wong Lee would chase out in answer to the tick-tack, with his pigtail standing straight out in the wind, and pursue the boys from cover to cover.  But he was game, and though he must have known who his tormentors were, he never reported them to Mr. Sherwood or to Bill Jordan.

And so, with one thing and another, the winter finally merged into spring, the soft rains melting away the snow, and giving the brown earth its chance to turn to tender green.  And the swollen river was dotted with cakes of ice, among which the wild ducks dropped on their way South where, it was to be hoped, Slim had recovered from his miseries.  And, as everybody knows, spring is a time that stirs boys and young men to unrest.

Perhaps you have noticed that when a fellow is just swelling up with a desire to do something big in the world, some trifling little thing comes along and knocks his ambition to splinters.  When he is burning to kill a bear, he has to go on an errand for his mother—­or something like that.  Well, here was Whitey, with this spring feeling inciting him to great deeds, instead of making him lazy, as it does some people, and he went to the bunk house, followed by Sitting Bull.  And there was Bill Jordan, with a letter in his hand, and something on his mind that he was dying to tell, but would rather die than not take his time about telling.

So Bill proceeded to peddle out his news, a bit at a time.  “John Big Moose’s goin’ t’ New York,” was the first thing Bill said.

“Hooray!” Whitey cried.

“That’s a fine way t’ take th’ news that you’re goin’ t’ lose your dear teacher,” Bill said reproachfully.

“Oh, of course I’m sorry that John is going away, but just think, there’ll be no more lessons,” Whitey answered.

“O’ course,” Bill said, and he looked at the boy in a very peculiar way.

But Whitey was too excited to notice the look.  “What’s John going for?” he asked.