Minkie
up the search until daylight, and came in and asked for a whisky and soda.

[Pg 37]

Meanwhile, Minkie brought Dan to the stable to see me. She came the back way, and climbed to the hay-loft with Jim’s lantern. Dan began to look around for a rat, but she stopped him.

“Are you awake, Bobby?” she asked.

“Awake!” said I. “I should rather think I am, after such goings on in the house.”

“Well,” said she, pulling a small black bag from among the hay, “if you are a good horse, and listen carefully, I will now tell you what a ju-ju is. Come here, Dan. If it is alive, I may want you to bite it.”

Skin me and sell my hide, what do you think it was? Just a small chunk of ivory, [Pg 38]carved to represent a man with a monkey’s head. It had a little coat of colored beads tied where its waist was meant to be, and its eyes were two shiny green stones. And that was all.

[Pg 38]

“Well,” cried Minkie, “this is a surprise. At first sight, I don’t think much of a ju-ju, but that may be only my beastly ignorance, as the man said when he tried to boil a china egg.”

[Pg 39-41]

CHAPTER II

PRINCE JOHN’S STRANGE ALLY

Told by Dandy, the Terrier

I MADE a mistake once, and nipped a tramp’s wooden leg. Since then, I look before I take hold. But even a poodle could see that this thing was old bone, though its eyes glinted like Tibbie’s in the dark, and there was a smell of grease about its beaded kilt. And, talking of kilts, there’s a bare-legged fellow who comes here every summer and struts up and down the road, making the beastliest row with some sort of instrument all pipes and ribbons. Wow! don’t I change his tune if I get out before anybody can catch me!

I

“Why, it’s a baby’s toy,” said I, seeing that Minkie was rather taken with it.


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