"Never mind," he said. "I bring home the game, just the same."
"You 'bring home the bacon,' in other words," said Chet, approaching him. "Let's see the bunnies?"
Nothing loath, the overdressed boy opened the bag and displayed his plunder. He brought two big hares out of the bag by their ears and held them up with pride.
"Bet they were trapped," said Bobby in an undertone.
"They were not trapped!" cried Purt Sweet sharply. "See! That is where one was shot! And there is the other--see?"
"Jinks!" said Lance. "Both through the head. _You_ never did it, Purt?"
"I did so!" cried the huntsman angrily. "I shot them both."
Chet was looking them over closely. He shook his head.
"They have been shot all right," he said. "And you shot them over there on Cavern Island?"
"That's all right," said Chet thoughtfully. "You may have shot them--and on Cavern Island. But whose rabbits were they before you bought them?"
Bobby and Jess began to giggle. Chet grinned as he added:
"Those are Belgian hares, not rabbits, Pretty. Somebody has put something over on you. Belgian hares don't run wild in the woods of Cavern Island--that is sure."
"Bet he shot them hanging up on a fence," snapped Short and Long, who thus far had said never a word to Prettyman Sweet.
"And I know the market to-day is full of Belgian hares," chuckled Chet. "Oh, Purt! you never could pull off anything like that on us in a hundred years."
The angry Purt snatched up his game bag and marched away.
"That he's been caught in the trick puts a crimp in him," chuckled Chet Belding.
"And that isn't all that ought to happen to him," muttered Short and Long, who seemed to have become suddenly very bitter against the dandified Sweet.
"Can it, Billy, can it," advised Lance. "Give a calf rope enough and he will hang himself."
"And maybe that fellow ought to be hung," was Short and Long's further comment.
"Why, Billy!" exclaimed Laura, "what ever do you mean?"
"Yes, Short and Long," said Jess. "Why the 'orrid hobservation about poor Purt?"
Perhaps Billy Long would have blurted out something, had not another incident taken place which so excited all the young people that they forgot Purt Sweet and his foibles.
The group had reached Lakeside Avenue, which overlooked many shore estates and some private docks. This was the residential end of Centerport, and the vicinity in summer was lovely. Now the outlook on Lake Luna's sparkling surface--frozen in a sheen of ice to the shore of Cavern Island in the middle of the lake--was wonderfully attractive.