As Mr. Bobbsey and his two boys rode up in the automobile, they saw out in front of the office a strange and not very pleasant sight. A man stood there, roughly shaking a boy about Bert's age. The boy seemed to be crying, and trying to get away, but the man held him tightly by one arm, and shook him again and again. "I don't like that," said Mr. Bobbsey in a low voice, as he stopped the automobile. "What makes him do it?" asked Freddie. "Is the boy bad?" "I'll teach you to make me lose money that way!" cried the man as he again roughly shook the boy. "You ought to have better sense than to be cheated that way! It wasn't your money that you lost, it was mine, and money isn't so easily made these days!" "But I couldn't help it!" the boy cried, trying to pull his arm away. He could not do this, for the man held it too tightly. "Yes, you could help it too, if you'd had your eyes open!" the man said in harsh tones. "I left you in charge of the office, and you ought to have been sharp enough not to be fooled and cheated. I--I don't know what to do to you!" Again he shook the boy. "Ouch! You hurt, Mr. Mason!" cried the lad. "Well, you deserve to be hurt, losing money that way," was the answer. "I--I've a good notion to--" But the sentence was not finished. Just then, by a sudden motion, the boy pulled away from the man who was shaking him, and ran down the road. For a moment it seemed as if the man would run after him, but he did not. The two stood looking at one another, while Mr. Bobbsey, having alighted from the automobile, walked up toward the lumber office. "You'd better come back here, Frank," called the man who had been shaking the boy. "You'd better come back." "I'll never come back!" was the answer. "I--I'm going to run away! I'll never live with you again! You treat me too mean! It wasn't my fault about that bad money! I couldn't help it. I'm going to run away, and I'm never coming back again. I can't stand it here!" Bursting into tears, the boy raced off down the road in a cloud of dust. CHAPTER IV OFF FOR MEADOW BROOK Little Freddie, who sat beside his older brother, Bert, in Mr. Bobbsey's automobile, looked on with wonder in his childish eyes, as he saw the boy Mr. Mason had been shaking run down the road. "What's the matter with him, Bert?" Freddie asked. "Didn't he like to be shook?" "I should say _not_!" exclaimed Bert "And I wouldn't myself. I don't think that man did right to shake him so." "It was too bad," added Freddie. "Say, Bert," he went on eagerly, "maybe we could catch up to him in the automobile, and we could take him to Meadow Brook with us. Nobody would shake him there." "No, I guess they wouldn't," said Bert: slowly, thinking how kind his uncle and aunt were. "Then let's go after him!" begged Freddie.