of the apple tree, and scrambled up to a seat on a strong limb. Several tempting looking "summer sweetnin's" were within his reach. He seized one, looked it all over for blemishes and, finding none, set his teeth in it.
"How is it?" asked Bobby, biting carefully around a wormy apple.
"Fine," returned his chum, and tossed Bobby an apple he plucked.
At that very moment a voice hailed them from a distance, and a dog barked. "There's that Applethwaite Plunkit and his dog," gasped Bobby.
"Sure it is," said Fred, turning his gaze upon the lanky boy of twelve, or so, and the big black and brown dog that were running together across the pasture.
"Now we're in for it!" exclaimed Bobby, somewhat worried.
CHAPTER III
FRED IN TROUBLE
Fred sat kicking his bare heels together and grinning over the fence at the Plunkit boy and his dog.
"Get down out of that tree – you!" exclaimed the Plunkit boy.
"Who says so?" demanded Fred.
"I do."
"Well, say it again," responded Master Fred, in a most tantalizing way. "I like to hear you."
Applethwaite Plunkit was not a nice looking boy at all. He had perfectly white hair, but he wasn't an albino, for albinoes have pink-rimmed eyes. His eyes were very strange looking, however, for they were not mates. One was one color, and one was another.
There are many such afflicted people in the world; usually they have one gray eye and one brown one. But Ap Plunkit had one eye that was of a sickly brown color, while the other was of a sickly green. That means that the "whites" of his mismated eyes were yellowish in hue.
Perhaps, because of this misfortune, the other boys plagued him, and that had soured his temper. He was very angry with Fred.
"Get out of that tree, you red-headed monkey!" he shouted, "or I'll set my dog on you!"
"I won't do it, you white-headed donkey – and your dog can't get me; not unless he can climb a tree," added Fred, grinning again.
"I'll come over there and knock you out of it," threatened Ap.
"I'd like to see you do it," responded Fred, swinging his feet again.
"I'll show you!" cried Ap, and he started for the hole in the fence. "Come on, Rove!" he called to the dog.
The big dog followed his master. He was part Newfoundland and would have made a fine playmate for any boy, if he had not been trained to be ugly with all strangers. When he got through the fence and saw Bobby standing idly by, he growled at him.
"Look out, Bob!" shouted Fred. "He'll bite you."
"I'm not doing anything," said Bobby Blake. "And you had better not set your dog on me, Plunkit."
"You fellers are too fresh," said the farm boy. "My father says you're not to come around here – "
"Your father doesn't own this land, and your father doesn't own this creek," whipped in Fred, from the branch.
"You fellers came across our land to get here," declared Ap.
"How do you know that, Mr. Smartie?" asked Fred. He had just finished eating an apple. He threw the core at the dog and hit him on the nose. Rover growled and then jumped up and snapped at Master Fred's bare heels.
"Scubbity-yow!" shrieked the daring Fred, kicking up his heels excitedly. "Didn't get me that time, did you? I'm not your meat."
"You stop that, Ap," ordered Bobby. "Call off your dog."
He had not been altogether idle. There was a heavy club of hard wood lying nearby, and he seized it.
"He'd better get down out of that tree or Rove will eat him up," said Ap, boastfully.
"Those branches overhang this land. The apples don't belong to you any more than they do to us," said Bobby, and he thought he was quite right in saying so.
"Yah!" scoffed Ap. "He had to climb the tree-trunk to get there, and the tree's on our side of the fence."
"Didn't neither, Mr. Smartie!" cried Fred, in delight. "I jumped up and grabbed a limb, and pulled myself up. Have an apple?" and he aimed one of the hard, green ones at Ap.
"Don't you do that, Fred!" called up Bobby, in haste.
"Well, then, I'll give it to the dog," said Fred, throwing the apple to Rover.
"You come down out of that tree, and you stop pelting my dog!" commanded Applethwaite Plunkit.
"Yes – I – will!" responded Fred, biting into another apple.
"Well! I'll lick one of you, anyway!" exclaimed Ap, who had been slily stepping nearer.
And immediately he threw himself on Bobby. He caught the latter so unexpectedly that he couldn't have used the club had he wished to.
"Come on, Rove!" shrieked Ap. "Bite him, boy – bite him!"
"You stop that!" shouted the red-haired boy in the tree. "Bobby hasn't done a thing – "
The dog growled and ran around the two struggling boys. Perhaps he was looking for a chance to bite his master's antagonist. At least, it looked so.
Bobby Blake, although never a quarrelsome lad, was no mollycoddle. Attacked as he had been, he struggled manfully to escape the bigger boy. He dropped the club, but he tore off Ap's hat and flung it into the creek.
"Go for it, sir! After it!" he screamed, and Rover heard him and saw the hat. That was one of the dog's accomplishments. He was a Newfoundland, and retrieving articles from the water was right in his line.
He barked and bounded to the edge of the steep bank. He evidently considered that, after all, his master and Bobby were only playing, and this part of the play he approved of.
The instant Bobby heard the splash of the big dog into the water, he twisted in Ap's grasp, tripped him, and fell on top of the larger boy.
"Oh! oh! oh!" gasped Ap. "You're hurtin' me – you're killin' me! I can't breathe – "
"Scubbity-yow!" yelled Fred, giving voice to his favorite battle-cry, and he dropped from the apple tree, running to Bobby's help.
But Bobby got up and released the bawling farm-boy at once. "Come on, Fred," he said. "Let's get out o' here."
"Why, you got the best of him!" cried Fred, in disgust. "Let's duck him! Let's throw him in after his old dog."
"No you don't," declared Bobby, seizing Fred's hand. "We're going to get out while we have the chance. I only tripped him and got the dog out of the way so you could escape."
"Huh!" exclaimed Fred. "I didn't get as many apples as I wanted."
"I don't care. You come on," said his chum.
"Whoever heard of the winning side giving way like this?" grumbled the red-haired boy. "Anyway," he added, picking
