“And I left my Plush Bear—­Oh, I left him in the sand circus cage, where I was playing he was a wild Bear!” cried Arthur.  “Oh, I forgot, I left my nice Plush Bear in a hole!”

“You’d better get him out as soon as you can,” said his mother.

The children remembered the spot where they had been playing on the sand before they took the pony rides.  Nettie ran back there, and soon found her Rag Doll.

“But where’s my Plush Bear?” asked Arthur anxiously, looking up and down the beach.  “I made a hole here, right by Nettie’s Doll, and I put sticks in the hole, like bars in a circus cage, and I left my Plush Bear in the hole.”

“Are you sure this is the place?” asked Mrs. Rowe, as she, too, looked searchingly up and down the sand.  She did not want Arthur to lose his toy.

“It was right here,” declared the fat boy.

“I don’t see any hole,” went on Mrs. Rowe.  Of course she did not know that the pony had scattered the sand, filling up the little cave Arthur had made.

“Oh, where is my Plush Bear?” cried the little fat boy, and he was almost ready to cry.  His mother and Nettie helped him look.  So did other children, wandering up and down the beach, but there was no sign of the toy.  Then a coast guard, one of the men who march up and down the sands, keeping watch for shipwrecks, came along the boardwalk.

“Have you lost something?” asked the guard, as he came down the steps from the boardwalk to the beach.

“We lost a Bear,” said Arthur.

“A bear?” cried the guard, in surprise.  “A—­a bear?”

“My little boy means a Plush Bear,” explained Mrs. Rowe, and then she told what had happened.

“Oh, a toy, buried in the sand,” said the guard, laughing.  “Well, that’s too bad.  Right around here, was it?  Well, I happened to be passing this afternoon, and I noticed just about the spot where the children were sitting on the sand.  I didn’t see the Plush Bear, but I know the children were digging, and it wasn’t at this spot—­it was nearer the ocean.  Over here it was,” the guard went on, moving away from the place where Arthur had been sure he had made the cave for the toy.  “You see, we coast guards get in the habit of noticing things and remembering where they are,” he added.  “You were looking in the wrong place.  I fancy your Bear must have been covered up in some way.  I’ll dig here!”

With a stick the guard began digging, and in a little while he uncovered the Plush Bear.

“Oh, there he is!  There he is!” cried Arthur, as he saw his toy again.  “Oh, thank you for finding him for me!” and he took his plaything from the hands of the coast guard.

“Yes, that’s what I say—­thanks a whole lot of times!” murmured the Plush Bear to himself, as once more he was able to breathe.  “This was the most terrible adventure I ever had!”

But the Plush Bear was to have one even worse, as you shall soon hear.