Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/385

 There stood the old tree, halfway between the Captain's trim little boat-landing and his wide-open back door.

On the one side Lonely could see the russet yellow of the Brandywine pears, on the other, the streaked crimson and yellow of the Strawberry Reds.

Then, after the fashion of all famous hunters and scouts, he dropped prone on the grass, face downward, and stealthily, foot by foot, wormed his circuitous way nearer and nearer the tree. At intervals he lay motionless, a brown spot on the parched brown of the open orchard grass. The busy rattle of dishes floated out to him, warning the intruder that Miss Arabella was "washing up." Then whiffs of the old Captain's pipe-smoke drifted lazily through an open window. The guinea-fowl down in the chicken-yard cluttered and screamed. The sawmill whistled for one o'clock.

As that brazen wail of sound died away, Lonely's arms closed about the rough trunk of the old Strawberry Red. The next second he was shinning nimbly up into its shadowy boughs.