I got into the bushes quick as scat. Biting hard on my breath, sort of. For right there in front of our eyes was a regular old gee-whacker of a dinosaur. Bigger than the town water tower and the Methodist Church steeple put together. I tell you it was risky for us.

My chum got ready with his trusty bow and arrow.

“Do you think you can hit him in the heart?” I said, excited-like, squinting ahead to where the dinosaur was dragging his slimy body out of the pond.

Scoop Ellery’s face was rigid.

“Got to,” he said, steady-like. “If I miss, he’ll turn on us and kill us both.” [2]

“It’s a lucky thing for Red and Peg,” I said, thinking of my other chums, “that they aren’t in it.”

“They’ll miss us,” said Scoop, “if we get killed.”

My thoughts took a crazy jump.

“Why not aim for a tickly spot in his ribs,” I snickered, pointing to the dinosaur, “and let him giggle himself to death?”

“Sh-h-h-h!” cautioned Scoop, putting out a hand. “He’s listening. The wind is blowing that way. He smells us.”

“What of it?” I grinned. “We don’t smell bad.”

“Keep still,” scowled Scoop, “while I aim.”

Bing! went the bow cord. My eyes followed the arrow. It struck. The old dinosaur angrily tooted his horn. But he didn’t drop dead. For his hide was sixteen inches thick.

We were lost! Scoop said so. And without arguing the matter I went lickety-cut for a tree.

“Come on!” I yipped over my shoulder. “He’s after us.”

Up the tree I went monkey-fashion. And when I straddled a limb and squinted down, there [3]was the old dinosaur chewing my footprints off the tree trunk.

“How much longer have we got to live?” I panted.

“Two minutes and fifteen seconds,” informed Scoop, who, of course, had followed me into the tree.

“I can’t die that quick,” I told him. “For I’m all out of wind.”

But he was squinting down at the dinosaur and seemed not to hear me.

“He’s got his trunk coiled around the tree,” he said. “Feel it shake! He’s pulling it up by the roots.”

“Wait a minute; wait a minute,” I said, motioning the other down. “You’re getting things muddled. A dinosaur hasn’t got a trunk. This must be a hairy elephant.”

“Climb higher,” cried Scoop. “He’s reaching for us.”

So up we went.

All of a sudden I heard some one go, “Hem-m-m!” And what do you know if there wasn’t another boy in the top of the tree! A stranger. About our age.

“You had me guessing,” he said, grinning [4]good-natured-like. “I thought at first you were crazy.”

Staring, I finally managed to get my tongue unhooked.

“Where’d you come from?” I bit off, letting my face go dark. For he didn’t belong in our dinosaur game. And I wanted him to know it.

Instead of answering, he inquired pleasantly:

“Was that a cow that chased you up the tree?”

“Huh!” I grunted, letting myself go stiff. “Do you suppose we’d run from a cow?”

“It made a noise like a cow,” he grinned, “when you shot it with your toy bow and arrow.”

“It’s a dinosaur,” I scowled.

His grin spread wider.

“And it was a dodo bird,” he said, “that picked me up by the seat of the pants and dropped me in the top of this tree.”

Well, that kind of took my breath. And I glared at him for a moment or two. Then his steady, friendly grin put me to laughing.

“I saw you coming through the woods,” he said after a moment. “I couldn’t quite figure out what you were doing. So I climbed up here to watch.”

Something poked a green snout from the stranger’s right-hand coat pocket. [5]

“Are you after frogs, too?” he inquired, following my eyes.

“Frogs?” I repeated, staring harder at the squirming pocket.

He pointed down to the pond in the ravine.

“It’s full of frogs,” he told me. “Big fellows. See?” and producing an old lunker of a bullfrog he held it up.

“Hello!” he said.

“K-k-kroak!” responded the frog.

The boy laughed.

“Perfect,” he said, patting the frog on the head. “Now say it in Chinese. Hello!”

“K-k-kroak!”

The grinning eyes looked into mine.

“Would you like to hear him say it in Yiddish?”

“I’d like to make a meal of his fried legs,” I returned.

“You can have him,” the other offered. Then, without another word, he let himself down limb by limb, scooting in the direction of town, a mile away.

Scoop gave a queer throat sound and came out of his thoughts.

“That’s the new kid,” he said.

“You talk like you know him.”

“I know of him. He belongs to the new family [6]in the old Matson house. Ricks is the name on the mailbox. There’s a man and a woman and this boy in the family—only the woman is a Miss Polly Ricks, and not the boy’s mother. The mother is dead, I guess.”

Then my chum told me how his pa was the administrator of the Matson estate; and, of course, it was through Mr. Ellery, a Tutter storekeeper, that the new family had rented the long-vacant house where Mr. Matson, a queer old man, had been murdered for his money. It is a lonely brick house on the edge of town. The front yard is full of pine trees, just like a cemetery. And when the wind blows the pines whisper strange stories about the murder and about the vanished body.

It is no place for people to live. Everybody in Tutter says so. And I wondered why this new Ricks family had picked out such a lonely, spooky home.

It was a queer move for them to make.

We talked it over and exchanged opinions on the way into town. And when we came to the grove of pine trees, Scoop took me through a hole in the hedge and pointed out a brand new lock on the barn door.

A queer, droning sound weighted the air. I called the other’s attention to it. [7]

“Machinery,” said Scoop, nodding toward the east wing of the big barn. “Not farm machinery,” he explained, “but lathes for turning steel, and drillers. Pa helped unload the truck.”

“Mr. Ricks must be a machinist,” I said.

“I have a hunch,” said Scoop, “that he’s an inventor.” [8]