I'll keep closte behind you, and ef anybody offers to trouble you, do you let off a yell and I'll be thar in no time." When Ralph left the school-house he felt mean.

There were Bud and Shocky gone on an errand of mercy, and he, the truant member of the Church of the Best Licks, was not with them.

The more he thought of it the more he seemed to be a coward, and the more he despised himself; so, yielding as usual to the first brave impulse, he leaped nimbly over the fence and started briskly through the forest in a direction intersecting the path on which were Bud and Shocky.

He came in sight just in time to see the first conflict of the Church in the Wilderness with her foes.
For Shocky's little feet went more swiftly on their eager errand than Bud had anticipated.

He got farther out of Bud's reach than the latter intended he should, and he did not discover Pete Jones until Pete, with his hog-drover's whip, was right upon him.
Shocky tried to halloo for Bud, but he was like one in a nightmare.