To express it briefly, they got. T, Haviland Hicks, Jr., not standing on the order of his going, set off at a sprint that, while it might have caused Ted Meredith to lose sleep, also aroused in Caesar Napoleon an overwhelming desire to take out after the fugitive youth, so that Mr. Bildad was forced to exert his vast strength to hold the massive bulldog. Butch, Beef, Hefty, Tug, Buster, Bunch, Pudge, and Biff, a pachydermic crew, awed by Caesar Napoleon's bloodthirsty actions, jogged off in the wake of Hicks, who confidently expected to hear the bulldog giving tongue, on his trail, at every second. Another lane, making in from a road making a cross-roads with the one from which they came to Bildad's house, ran alongside the orchard for two hundred yards, inside the fence; at its end was a high roadgate. At what they decided was a safe distance from the "war zone," the Heavy-Weight-White-Hope-Brigade, and T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., the latter forcibly restrained from widening the margin between him and peril, held a council on preparedness. "The old pirate!" stormed Butch Brewster, gazing back to where the vast figure of old Bildad, striding toward the house, towered. "We can't let him get away with that, fellows. I'll have some of his cherries now, or--" "No, no--_don't_, Butch!" chattered Hicks, whose dread of dogs amounted to an obsession. "He can still see us, and if you leave the lane, he will send Caesar Napoleon after us! Oh, _don't_--" But Butch Brewster, evidently wrathful at being balked, strode from the path, or lane, of virtue, toward a cherry-tree, whose red fruit hung temptingly low, and his example was followed by every one of the Brigade, leaving the terrified Hicks to wait in the lane, where, because of his alarm, he had no time to wonder at the bravado of his behemoth comrades. However, finding that Bildad had disappeared, and believing he had taken Caesar Napoleon into the house, the sunny Hicks, who was far from a coward otherwise, but who had an unreasonable dread of dogs, little or big, was about to wax courageous, and join his team-mates, when a wild shout burst from Pudge Langdon: "Run, fellows--_run_! Bildad's put the bulldog on us! Here comes--Caesar Napoleon--!" With a blood-chilling _"Woof! Woof!"_ steadily sounding louder, nearer, a streak of color shot across the orchard, from the house, toward the affrighted Brigade, while old Bildad's hoarse growl shattered the echoes with "Take 'em out o' here, Nap--chaw 'em up, boy!" For a startled second, the youths stared at the on-rushing body, shooting toward them through the orchard-grass at terrific speed, and then: