And at noon we went home, but Freckles didn't go into the house for dinner at all. Instead, he went out to the barn and laid down in the hay, and I crawled in there with him. And he cried and cried and choked and choked. I felt sorry for him, and crawled up and licked his face. But he took me by the scruff of the neck and slung me out of the haymow. When I crawled back again, he kicked me in the ribs, but he had on tennis shoes and it didn't hurt much, and anyhow I forgave him. And I went and crawled back to where he was and nuzzled my head up under his armpit. And then he cried harder and hugged me and said I was the best dog in the world and the only friend he ever had. And then I licked his face again and he let me and we both felt better, and pretty soon he went to sleep there and slept for an hour or so, with his head on my ribs, and I lay there quiet so as not to wake him. Even when a flea got me, I let that flea bite and didn't scratch for fear of waking him. But after a while that flea got tired of me, and crawled over on to Freckles, and he waked natural. And when he waked, he was hungry, but he didn't want to go into the house for fear the story had spread to the grown-ups and he would have to answer questions. So he found a couple of raw turnips, and ate them, and a couple of apples, only they were green, and he milked the cow a little into an old tin cup and drank that. And in a little while he begins to have pains, and he thinks he is getting heart's disease and is really going to die, but he says to himself out loud if he dies now he won't get any credit for it, and he would have enjoyed it more if he had died while he still thought Little Eva was young and beautiful and probably going to marry him in the end. But after awhile it seems turning from heart's disease into some kind of stomach trouble; so he drinks some stuff out of a bottle that was left in the barn last spring when Bessie, the old roan mare, had the colic, and whether it is heart's disease or stomach trouble, that stuff cures him. And him and me drift along downtown again to see if maybe the kids have sort of begun to forget about it a little. But they hadn't. It had even spread to some of the grown-ups. We went into Freckles's father's drug store, and Mr. Watson told Freckles to step around to the post office and ask for his mail. And the clerk in the post office when we come in, looks at Freckles very solemn and says: “Ah, here is Mr. H. Watson, after a letter! Will you have a letter written in blood?” So Freckles told his dad there wasn't any mail, and we sneaked along home again. That night at supper I was lying on the porch just outside the dining room and the doors were open, and I heard Freckles's dad say: “Harold, would you like to go to the show to-night?” “No, Pa,” says Freckles.