When you are all choked up, people are sure to see it, and ask fool questions.

So I went around to the gate and stood there looking up and down the road, and over the meadow toward the Big Woods; and all at once, in one of those high, regular bugle calls, like they mostly scream in spring, one of Pryors' ganders split the echoes for a mile; maybe farther.
I was across the road and slinking down inside the meadow fence before I knew it.

There was no thought or plan.

I started for Pryors' and went straight ahead, only I kept out of line with our kitchen windows.
I tramped through the slush, ice, and crossed fields where I was afraid of horses; but when I got to the top of the Pryor backyard fence, I stuck there, for the bulldogs were loose, and came raving at me.

I was going to be eaten alive, for I didn't know the word Laddie did; and those dogs climbed a fence like a person; I saw them the time Leon brought back Even So.