“Well, we can’t get any milk at the farmhouse.  I don’t know any other place around here where we can go, so the only thing to do is to go back to Camp Rest-a-While.”

“But there’s no milk there,” said Bunny.

“I know there isn’t.  But we can tell daddy and mother, and ask them what to do.  They wouldn’t want us to go off somewhere else without telling them.  And maybe daddy can go off in the automobile and get some milk at another farm.”

“Maybe,” said Bunny slowly.  “And if we go with him,” he added, “and he does get more milk, we won’t set the pail down in the road when we chase a squirrel.  We’ll put it in the auto.”

“I guess by the time we get the milk it will be too dark to see to chase squirrels,” said Sue.  “It’s getting dark now; come on, Bunny.”

The two children started down the road toward the camp, and as they did so they heard a crackling in the bushes on the side of a hill that led up from the road.

“Oh, here comes that milk dog back again!” cried Sue, and she snuggled up close against her brother, though the sinking sun was still shining across the highway.

“I won’t let him hurt you,” said Bunny.  “Wait until I get a stone or a stick.”

“Oh, you mustn’t do anything to strange dogs!” cried the little girl.  “If you do they might jump at you and bite you.  Just don’t notice him or speak to him, and he’ll think we’re—­we’re stylish, and he’ll pass right by.”

“Oh well, if you want me to do that way,” said Bunny, looking up toward the place the sound came from, “why I will, only——­”

He stopped speaking suddenly, and pointed up the hill.  Sue looked in the same direction.  They saw coming toward them, not a dog, but an old man, dressed in rather ragged clothes.  He looked like what the children called a tramp, though since they had arrived at the camp they had come to know that not all persons who wore ragged clothes were tramps.  Some of the farmers and their helpers wore their raggedest garments to work in the dirt of the fields.

This man might be a farmer.  He had long white hair that hung down under the brim of his black hat, and though he did not have such a nice face as did the children’s father, or their Uncle Tad, still they were not afraid of him.

“Going after milk, little ones?” asked the old man, and his voice was not unpleasant.

“No, sir; we’ve just been,” said Bunny.

“Well, I’m afraid you’ll spill your milk if you swing your pail that way,” went on the old man, for Bunny was moving the pail to and fro, with wide swings of his arms.

“It would spill, if there was any in the pail,” said Sue.

“But there isn’t,” added Bunny.

“It’s spilled already and we don’t know where to get any more,” explained Sue.

“It wasn’t ’zactly spilled,” Bunny added, for he and Sue always tried to speak the exact truth.  “A dog drank it up.”