Sue did not know what to make of the strange actions of Dix on the bed where the injured boy had been sleeping, and she whispered to Bunny: 

“Maybe Dix wants to bite him!”

But Bunny shook his head.  He understood what had happened.

“Don’t you see, Sue!” he said.  “He’s been found.”

“O-o-oh!” gasped the little girl.

“Yes, sir, Fred Ward, the boy who ran away from next door to us, has been found.  That’s his dog, Dix.  And Dix knows him, just as we thought he would, even though his face is pretty well bandaged up.  That’s Fred Ward!”

“Is that your name?” asked Mr. Brown, who also understood what had happened.

“Well, I guess it is,” was the slow answer.  “But it isn’t the name I’ve been going by lately.  I called myself Professor Rombodno Prosondo, but now——­”

“Then, it was you all blacked up like a minstrel!” cried Bunny.

“Yes, I was playing on the banjo for Dr. Perry’s medicine show, but when I saw you in the crowd I managed to get away.  Then I joined the circus and now——­”

“Don’t talk and excite yourself,” said Mrs. Jason.  “The doctor will be here in a little while and perhaps he can take the bandages off your face, so your friends will know you.”

“Dix knows him all right,” said Mr. Brown, and indeed the dog was half wild with joy at having found his master.

Dr. Fandon came in a few minutes later and said Fred was much better.  When the face bandages were taken off, so new ones could be put on, Bunny and Sue at once recognized Fred, though his face was badly scratched.

Dix tried to lick his master’s face, but had to be stopped for fear he might do Fred harm.  So the dog had to show his joy by thumping his tail and whining softly.

Then Fred told his story.  As has been said, he ran away from home because he felt his father should not have punished him.

“But I’ve had a good deal worse punishment since,” the lad said, “and I’m sorry I ever ran away.  I’d have gone home long ago only I was ashamed.”

“Well, you needn’t be,” said Mr. Brown.  “Your father and your mother both want you back.  We have been looking for you as well as we could on our auto tour.  But it was Dix who knew you first.”

“I wish he had seen me before the lion did,” said Fred, smiling a little.  “I wonder where he went to after clawing me?”

At that moment there was a noise out in the yard back of the farmhouse.  The crowing of roosters and the squawking of hens could be heard, mingled with a woman’s voice.

“That’s my wife!” cried Mr. Jason, jumping up, but at that moment his wife came into the room.

“I’ve caught it,” she said coolly, though her face was flushed.

“Caught what?” they all cried.

“The circus lion,” she answered.  “I went out to the henhouse, and there he was crouching down in a corner, and looking as if he intended to have his choice of my fat pullets.”