I sat up in bed, and I could feel the old cottage joggle as Rover jerked at his rope, and then, suddenly, the rope broke and off Rover went, barking to beat the band, full tilt toward the slough back of our cottages. About halfway there, I should judge, he came up with what had set him to barking. I heard a rough voice say, “Get away from here! Get away from here!” and a club thumping on Rover’s back, and more barking, and swearing, and then Rover yipped, and began to scream--if you can call it that--the way a dog does when it is hurt, or has its paw run over by a wagon, or breaks a toe. In a second I was out of bed and getting into my clothes, and I heard Rover come yipping and whining back toward the cottage. I did not have many clothes to put on, and in a couple of seconds I was downstairs, and by the time I was out there and Rover was whining at my feet, Wampus and his Uncle Oscar and Skippy and Tad and Jibby were out there, too, and we heard Orph Cadwallader coming running as fast as such a fat man could. Orph had his shotgun, and Wampus’s Uncle Oscar had a pistol, and Jibby had brought along an electric torch. We looked at Rover’s foot and saw it was hurt pretty bad, and that one of his ears was cut where it had been hit, and we were all pretty mad. Nobody had a right to be on our island but us, and most of the time nobody was there but the women and us kids and Orph Cadwallader, and tramps had no business there. They were too dangerous. So Wampus’s Uncle Oscar took the electric torch from Jibby and said: “You boys stay back here; this is a man’s job. Orph and I will attend to this!” So the five of us, Jibby and Wampus and Tad and Skippy and I, we went along with Orph and Wampus’s uncle. I held the piece of rope that was tied around Rover’s neck, and he limped along, whining. We made quite a procession, and when we looked back we could see that all the cottages were lighted up. Everybody was out of bed. You couldn’t expect us to stay back when there was so much excitement. We went through the woods and, before we had gone very far, the light from the electric torch picked out two men who were standing waist-deep in the stinging nettles under the trees, waiting for us to come up to them. It was easy to guess that they had started away from where Rover had met them, and that they had then heard us and stopped. And that was not like river-rats or tramps who had come to snoop around and steal what they could and then get away again. That kind come in skiffs, and, if you see them, they scoot for their skiffs and row away as fast as they can. But these men waited for us. “What’s this mean? What you doing on this island? What you hurt this dog for?” Wampus’s Uncle Oscar asked when we came up to the men.