Well, when four boys get caught doing something they're not sure they're supposed to be doing, they don't know what to do or what to say, and sometimes they start talking right away to explain why they are doing what they're doing—which is what we started to do—that is we started to, but all of us talking at once didn't make sense, so we stopped. This is what we all said though: Dragonfly said, "Good morning, Mr. Black!" which is what you say to a teacher when it is morning and you are trying to be polite; Poetry said, "Somebody wrote a crazy poem about you on the black, Mr. Blackboard, and I erased it"; Little Jim said, "That certainly was a good sermon this morning, Mr. Black"; and I, William Jasper Collins, with my torn trousers and my freckled face and my rumpled red hair and my mussed-up mind said, "I hope you don't have to shoot him if he broke his leg. He didn't break it, did he?"

All of us said most of these things at the same time, while we were standing in a semi-circle around the unabridged dictionary with the open notebook on it.

Mr. Black was puffing and panting, he being Poetry-shaped as well as the stove, but he all of a sudden said, "Wait, boys, don't move! I want to get your pictures, right where you are, and as you are." Before we could decide to move or not to move, he whirled around, hurried over toward the shelf where we always set our dinner pails on school days, and came back with his camera which we hadn't noticed had been there. It was a very pretty camera and was the kind people used when they took a flashlight picture.

What on earth he wanted a picture of us for, I didn't know, unless it was so he could prove to anybody who didn't believe it, that we were a bunch of roughnecks. Quick as a blinding flash he had our picture taken, and then he whirled around like he wanted to take some more pictures, and stopped and stared at the Christmas tree which I had stood back up in the corner, with the popcorn and paper chains tangled up on it, and at the erased blackboard and at his desk which didn't have any chairs upside down on it, and he said, "Who straightened up this room! Did you boys do that!"

"Yes, sir," I said, "we did; we wanted to prove to you that we didn't do it."

"You WHAT!"

"We wanted to prove to you that we didn't do it!" Little Jim said.

Mr. Black looked at Little Jim and at all of us like he thought we were even crazier than we felt, and he said, "Prove you didn't do what?"

"That we didn't put the board across the—OUCH!" Dragonfly started to talk, but stopped his sentence with an OUCH when I quick kicked him on the shin.

Mr. Black's eyes opened wide. Then for the first time he seemed to notice that the fire was going again and that the stove wasn't smoking so he scratched his head above his left ear, hurried over to the stove with the camera in his hand, set his camera on his big desk, opened the stove's door and shut it again, and just stood there, looking first at the stove and then at us, and I wished I knew what he was thinking; then I noticed that his eyes glanced off in the direction of the blackboard and to the beech switches which were lying on a ledge at the top. I could just see myself and all of us getting a licking in about seven jiffies. I started to edge toward the door, but he must have guessed what I was thinking, 'cause he barked a command to me which was "William Collins! Stop where you are!"

I stopped stock still, trembling inside of me, wondering what the word "drastic" was going to mean.

Then Mr. Black barked to me, "Go to the blackboard and get me those beech switches!" There was a tone of voice in his words which made me start toward the blackboard instead of toward the only door the schoolhouse had. I had to pass Dragonfly's open window which was still open, on account of there was still some smoke in the room. It would have been easy for me to make a dive out of that window but I didn't want to leave the gang alone there with an angry teacher. I also had to pass close to the unabridged dictionary, and I all of a quick sudden decided if I knew what the word "drastic" meant, it might give me an idea what to do next, so I stopped, and quick turned the pages to the letter "D" and was trying to find drastic, when Mr. Black barked a question at me, and it was, "Young MAN! What are you doing?"

I jumped like I had been shot, but made myself say as calmly as I could, over my shoulder, "I just wanted to look up an important word first. I'll get the switches in just a minute."

"If the word is punishment," Mr. Black said to me angrily, "it's a noun, and it means beech switches.... You bring them to me!" And I knew I had to do it. I stopped looking in the dictionary, and feeling simply terrible inside of me, on account of not having done anything wrong on purpose, but knowing Mr. Black wouldn't believe us even if we told him, I got the switches and took them toward him, but was so nervous I dropped one of them.... Say, Little Jim who is very quick when he makes up his mind to do something, made a dive for the floor, picked up the switch I'd dropped and quick took the other one out of my hand, and handed them both to Mr. Black and said to him very politely, "Here you are, sir, with all the old brown dead leaves gone—every one of them."

"What on earth?" I thought, and looked at Little Jim's face and then at Mr. Black's.

Say our teacher's face had all of a sudden the queerest expression on it, and he looked at Little Jim like he wondered "What on earth?" himself.

Then he looked at me, and his face was hard again.

Right that second I remembered my torn trousers, and the place where they were torn clear through to the skin. The scratch was still hurting, so I said, "If you're—if you're going to lick me, d-don't hit me on my scratched thigh!" I turned sidewise to him, stooped over part way, and showed him my torn trousers and the reddish scratch on my thigh, which for some reason didn't look half as bad as I wished it did, right that minute.

Mr. Black frowned, and asked fast, "Where'd you get that scratch!" and Dragonfly said, "When he was up on the—OUCH!" I stopped Dragonfly with a kick on his shin again.

"What's that? Where'd you say he got it?" Mr. Black barked his question to Dragonfly, and before any of us could stop him, Dragonfly had said, "On the schoolhouse roof."

I just couldn't believe Dragonfly was that dumb—that he didn't know he oughtn't to tell where I'd gotten that scratch. I remembered with a mad thought that we'd had trouble with Dragonfly once before, on account of he had been friends with Shorty Long.

There wasn't any time to think or to remember anything else Dragonfly had done, but it certainly didn't feel good to have one of our own gang be what is called a "tattletale." Why he was supposed to be one of my very best friends!

I looked at Little Jim and Poetry to see what they thought and to see if they could think of anything that might help us from getting a licking with those leaveless beech switches. Poetry had a pucker on his forehead like he was thinking, or maybe trying to, and Little Jim had that innocent lamb-like look on his small face which when he looks like that, always reminds me of the picture his mom has on the wall above their piano in their house, of the Good Shepherd with a little lamb in his arms, with the Good Shepherd's hand on the little lamb's poll, which is the top of its head....

Then in a flash I was seeing Mr. Black again standing with one hand on his hip and the other holding onto one of the beech switches, he having laid the other switch down on Sylvia's little sister's desk, which was beside and behind him.

"And what," Mr. Black said to me, "were you doing on the schoolhouse roof?"

Well, I hated to tell him because I thought he wouldn't believe it, and another reason I hated to tell him was because if I did, it would mean I'd have to tell him somebody else had put the board ON the chimney, and that wouldn't be fair to Little Tom Till who was Bob's brother, and also on account of my mom was trying to get Shorty Long's mom to be a Christian, and I hated to be a tattletale about Shorty and Bob, so I just stood there, without answering Mr. Black.

"Answer me!" he demanded. I could see he was getting really angry. I took one quick look at the door to see if I could dive past him and get there first and make a wild dash for home. I saw Little Jim's face and it reminded me again of the Bible picture above his piano, and that reminded me of a Bible verse I'd memorized, which was, "A soft answer turneth away wrath," and I thought of Mr. Black's pretty horse and said, politely, "Your horse is the prettiest horse I ever saw. I hope he didn't fall and break his leg."

I looked at Poetry and he winked at me, and said to Mr. Black, "It'll get dark pretty soon and if there's going to be a cold wave tonight, we'd better help you carry in plenty of wood. We'll help you bank the fire good."

But it was Little Jim who saved us from trouble, when he said what he said, and it was, "That was a good sermon this morning, wasn't it, Mr. Black? All of us are going to try not to be mad at you any more, and if we've done anything wrong, we're sorry. We hope you won't give us a licking, but if you do, we won't even get mad."

Mr. Black looked down at that innocent looking little face, and kept on looking at it, and then he seemed to get a far-away expression in his eyes like he was thinking about something that wasn't in the schoolhouse. I noticed his hand that had the switch in it was trembling, and I knew he was really mad which is the way my hands sometimes shake when I feel that way.

Then he looked up like he was hearing something outside, and without saying anything turned and with the switches in his hands, walked with heavy steps over to the window and looked out, with his back to us. I could hear him breathing heavily like he had been running, and there was a terrible feeling inside of me, which is the way a boy feels when he knows some grown-up person is awful angry.

The four of us stood by the stove and looked at different things, not any of us moving, and not a one of us looking at each other, except I glanced at different ones of us out of the corner of my eye, and then looked away again. I could still hear Mr. Black breathing heavily.... I didn't look, but I guessed he was still standing and looking out into the late afternoon sunlight on the snow.

Then I heard him cough a little and clear his throat, and heard him walking. I looked and he was going to the blackboard, where, very carefully, like he was afraid he'd drop one of them, he laid the beech switches on the shelf, then he turned and sat down in his chair at his desk, and picked up a book that was lying there, opened it and leafed through it slowly....

"What on earth!" I thought.

You could have knocked me over with a turkey feather, when I saw the kind of book he was leafing through. I'd never seen it there on that desk before, and I wondered where it had come from, but there it was as plain as day, an honest-to-goodness great big beautiful brown-bound Bible.

All of us were so quiet, and I had such a tense feeling inside of me that I couldn't say a word, and didn't want to anyway. The fingers of one of Mr. Black's hands were sort of drumming on the desk, and he was looking at something in the very front of the Bible in the place where people nearly always write their names, to show whose Bible it is.

Then real slow-like, he began to turn the pages not looking up at any of us, but like he was thinking about something that wasn't in the schoolroom. I could hear the crackling of the fire in the stove, and hear us all breathing. I caught a corner of Poetry's eye with a corner of one of mine, but couldn't tell what he was thinking. Little Jim had his small hands stretched out in front of him warming them at the stove, and Dragonfly was trying to get his father's big red bandanna handkerchief out of his pocket before he would sneeze about something, but didn't get it out quick enough and the sneeze showered itself on the hot stove and made a sizzling sound.

Dragonfly grabbed his nose with the red handkerchief and stopped most of the next sneeze, so only a little tail of it exploded.

The fingers of both Mr. Black's hands were drumming on the desk on each side of his open Bible, and he had his eyes glued to the page, although I could tell the way he was staring at the page that he maybe wasn't reading but only thinking.

It was as quiet, in fact ten times as quiet, as if we were having school.

A jiffy later, I heard Mr. Black clear his throat and say to us, "It's been a very exciting afternoon, boys, and I don't feel any too well. I think I ran too hard to catch Prince." He took a very deep breath, and sighed, and yawned and leaned back in his chair, without looking straight at us but just in our direction, just as Little Jim piped up and said, "Did you catch him? Was he hurt?"

"Circus stopped him," Mr. Black said, "and we put him up in their barn till he calms down and quits trembling.... You boys want to bring in a couple of armloads of wood?"

Well, in a few jiffies all of us boys were carrying in wood and stacking it in the back of the schoolroom where we would have plenty to keep the schoolhouse nice and warm tomorrow.

I just couldn't figure it out—our not getting any licking, and Mr. Black reading the Bible and all of a sudden acting very kind. Why, when we carried in our loads of wood, he acted like he was our very best friend, and that we not only hadn't done anything wrong, but that he didn't even think we had. I couldn't understand it, but all the time Little Jim had a happy grin on his face, while we worked, and he kept saying, "I thought it would work.... I was pretty sure it would, and it did."

"What worked!" I said to him, just as he opened the door for me and I went in with an armload of wood, and he shut the door after me. Dragonfly and Poetry were out in the woodshed getting another load.

"Oh, something," Little Jim said, and wouldn't tell me, but he certainly had a cheerful expression on his face.

Pretty soon when we were all done and were getting ready to go home, Mr. Black stopped us and said, "Wait a minute, boys, I need one more picture.... You know, next Wednesday night Mrs. Mansfield is going to give a book review of The Hoosier Schoolmaster at the Literary Society and I've promised to illustrate the story on the screen with some modern pictures from real life. I ought to have one of a teacher putting a board on the chimney of a schoolhouse.... Leslie, you get that ladder I saw you boys carry behind the schoolhouse awhile ago, and set it up again—here, Bill, hold my Bible a minute." He thrust the beautiful new brown-bound Bible in my hands and started around the schoolhouse with Poetry to where we'd buried the ladder.

"What on earth!" I thought, and decided he must have looked toward the schoolhouse once and seen us putting it there, while he was down the road between the schoolhouse and Circus's house.

Without hardly knowing I was going to, I quick opened the Bible to the first blank page and what I saw was, "To my dear son, Sam Black, from your Mother." And right below it were printed, very carefully, the words:

In a jiffy the ladder was set up, with Little Jim and me holding it, and Mr. Black on his way up. Poetry who knew how to take pictures better than any of the rest of us was standing away out away from the schoolhouse, and snapped the picture, himself.

While Mr. Black was still up on the roof, he called down to all of us in a cheerful voice and said, "That was a very clever poem you boys composed—you know, the one you had on the snow man yesterday, and on the blackboard this afternoon. I think I got a very good picture of both of them for next Wednesday night—the people of Sugar Creek will think it very clever. When I first got the idea of illustrating the book review for Mrs. Mansfield, I didn't know how much cooperation you boys were going to give me."

Things still didn't make sense—I couldn't understand it.

On the way home, though, with Poetry and me carrying Pop's new light ladder and with Little Jim carrying our swing board, all of a sudden Dragonfly let out a yell and made a dive for something shining in the road, swooped down on it and picked it up, and exclaimed, "Good luck! No wonder we had good luck! here's a brand new horseshoe! No wonder we didn't get a lickin' from Mr. Black."

And it was! I knew it must have come off Prince when he was running down this very same road about an hour ago with half a gate swinging on his bridle rein.

Dragonfly hung the new horseshoe on his arm and said excitedly, "Will my mother ever be tickled! She'll hang it above our kitchen door. We've got three there now I found last year, and this is my first one this year. Boy oh boy, it's going to be a lucky year for the Sugar Creek Gang!"

Little Jim who had been shuffling along, ahead of the rest of us, with the swing board under one arm and with his stick in his other hand, stopped all of a sudden and looked back over our heads toward where the sun had just gone behind a cloud in the southwest, and he had a far-away expression in his eyes. He didn't pay any attention to what Dragonfly had said, but dropped back beside me and said, "That certainly was a swell sermon yesterday. I knew maybe Sylvia's pop was going to preach about that, and sure enough he did."

"About what?" I asked him, Little Jim being the only one of the gang that it was easy to talk about sermons with, except maybe Poetry.

Little Jim socked at a brown mullein stalk with his stick, and scattered brown seeds in different directions, then he answered me with his back still turned, "Oh, about when you get Jesus in your heart, you don't get mad so easy, and when you do, you behave yourself anyway—just like a fire in a house melts the snow off the roof, or like when spring comes, the new leaves will push all of the old dead leaves off that've hung on all winter."

Just that second Poetry who had the other end of the ladder, yelled back to me and said, "Quit walking so jerkily, Bill Collins!"

Then I remembered that our teacher had been in church that morning, and of course he had heard the part of the sermon I hadn't heard, on account of I had been thinking about Poetry's pet lamb and Snow-white, our white pigeon.

Then Little Jim said, "When I put that question in 'The Minister's Question Box,' just inside the church door this morning, I hoped Sylvia's pop would answer it in his very first sermon, and he did."

So that was it! It was as plain as day to me now. Dragonfly spoke up then and said, "Was that what you were thinking about yesterday afternoon, when you were looking up in the beech tree at the bottom of Bumblebee hill, and when you kept talking about snow on people's houses?" and that was the first time I even guessed that that little spindle-legged guy knew what we were talking about.

"Sure," Little Jim said.

Dragonfly tossed his new horseshoe up in the air and caught it when it came down, and said, "It's a pretty horseshoe, anyway—besides, I bet the gang does have a lucky year, don't you?"

Little Jim whispered to me something that was a real secret, and it made me like him awful well, to know he wasn't afraid to talk to me about it, and it was, "Do you suppose Mr. Black really became a Christian this morning while Sylvia's pop was preaching—or maybe he is just going to let Jesus into his heart, real soon?"

"I don't know," I said.

Poetry who didn't know what we were all talking about, on account of he was up at the other end of the kinda longish ladder, said back to us, "We shouldn't have carried this ladder home. We should have made Shorty Long and Bob Till do it. They took it there, in the first place!"

And Little Jim piped up and said, "Are you sure? Maybe Mr. Black did it, so he could get a picture of it for next Wednesday night."

Dragonfly heard that and said, "But who piled the chairs up on his desk and knocked the Christmas tree over and everything?"

"Yeah, that's right," Little Jim said, "I guess maybe they did do it, but I'm not very mad at 'em."

"I'm not either," I said, "not very much, anyway," and I wasn't,—only I knew that as long as they lived in the neighborhood we could expect most anything to happen.

Then Little Jim said to all of us. "As soon as the new cold wave is over, I'll bet it'll start to get warm, and pretty soon spring'll be here, and all the beech switches all along Sugar Creek will have new green leaves on 'em."

Then Little Jim whisked on ahead of us, every now and then stopping to make rabbit tracks in the snow with his pretty striped ash stick.

Boy oh boy, I wished it was already spring, 'cause when spring came we could all go barefoot again and as soon as Sugar Creek's face was thawed out, we'd go swimming in the old swimming hole and maybe have some very exciting brand new adventures, like we always do every spring and summer. The first thing I wanted to do when spring came, was to go fishing.

I was thinking what fun it'd be when spring came, when all of a sudden, I heard a roaring sound coming from the direction of Dragonfly's pop's woods, like a terrible wind was beginning to blow through the bare trees. I looked up quick, and noticed that the sky in that direction was darkish looking and kinda brownish, like there was a lot of dust blowing in from some far-away prairie. Then I felt a gust of cold wind hit me hard in the face.

In almost a half a jiffy all of us were in a whirling snowstorm, and I knew the new cold wave had already come, and that before spring got to Sugar Creek we'd have a lot more winter—in fact there might even be a blizzard.

"Hurry up!" all of us yelled to all of us. "We've got to get home quick."

But that's the beginning of another Sugar Creek Gang story, which I hope I'll get a chance to write for you real soon.

THE END

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