The Good Wolf

You can just imagine how frightening it was to the robbers to find themselves suddenly surrounded by roaring lions, and tigers, and leopards, and huge trampling elephants and hippopotamuses instead of tiny toy creatures they thought they could pick up and carry away. If Barty had not known that all of them were his particular friends he would have been frightened too. The robbers stood in the midst of them all and howled with fright.

"Call them off! Call them off!" they shouted to Barty because they saw he was really the ring-master, "we will never do it again! Never�never�never – never-r-r!"

The captain tried to dart to the crack in the rock and wriggle through, but the biggest lion put out a huge paw and dragged him back by the seat of his trousers. He laid him flat on the grass and put the huge paw on him and roared and roared.

"I wouldn't kill him," cried Barty. "Perhaps he is sorry."

"We are all sorry," the robbers sobbed.

"We are sorrier than we ever were before in our lives!

"I'll see that they are sorry enough," said the biggest lion, but of course it was only Barty who understood what he said. The robbers thought he was roaring and their knees knocked together.

"What are you going to do to them?" asked Barty.

"Watch!" answered the lion.

He made a sign to his mate and two tigers, and each of them took up a robber by his trousers and shook him as if he were a rat.

Their legs flew and their arms flew until they looked as if they would fly to pieces, and they had not even the strength to yell with. Of course it must have been most disagreeable and breath- taking, but it served them perfectly right, for if you are a robber I should like to know what you expect.

When the shaking was over, and the lions and tigers laid the robbers on the ground again, they did look queer. You see the bones had nearly been shaken out of their bodies and the teeth out of their mouths, and the hair had been shaken off their heads, every bit of it, and they were quite bald.

"Now," said the biggest lion to Barty, "you can tell them we are going to give them a nice bit of a run through the forest; and if they can get away from us this time they may as well give one hour a day in the future to remembering that if they come near this cave any more they won't get away again. They might do their remembering from five to six every morning."

So Barty told them, but when he had explained they were more frightened than ever.

"We never can get away from them," the robber captain said, wiping his eyes on his sleeve. "We are too nervous to run, and our knees keep knocking together. Ask him if he won't let us off easier than that. There's not one of us who would think of coming back here. Never – never – never!"

He was in such a state that Barty actually began to feel sorry for him. He turned and spoke to the lion.

"How would it do," he inquired, "if they stopped being robbers and were something nicer instead – bakers or hair dressers or pew openers?"

"We will! We will! We will!" shouted out the robbers.

"I never wanted to be a robber," sobbed the captain. "I always wanted to be a toy-shop man. I'm fond of toys.

"And I wanted to be a confectioner," said another robber.

"And I wanted to learn to play the harp!" cried another.

"And it nearly broke my heart," said the fourth, "because I wasn't allowed to be a gardener, and grow violets and sweet peas."

"Well," said the lion to Barty, "tell them to go away and be anything they like that is decent."

"Wait a minute," said the Good Wolf, stepping forward. "Ask them if they haven't had a great many adventures."

"Yes, thousands of them," the captain answered when Barty asked him. "We've been so many things; we've been pirates and gold- diggers, and we've sailed the Spanish Main and things like that. We could tell stories for years if you'd like to hear them, and if your friends would not mind if we came back here occasionally —

in our best clothes – after we've quite stopped being robbers."

"O, let them – et them!" Barty cried out joyfully.

"That was what I was thinking of," said the Good Wolf. "There is nothing more entertaining than a tame pirate or robber."

"Tell them," said the lion, "that they may come back twice a week. They shall be called 'The Combined Robbers and Pirates Story- telling Club.' And we shall be here to listen and see that they behave themselves."

So it was agreed that the robbers should be allowed to go away and begin working as hard as possible at not being robbers. And they were so relieved that they were going to slip off as quietly as they could, touching their hats meekly to everybody, but Barty could not help shaking hands with the captain just to encourage him a little.

"I was frightened at first," he said, "but it has all turned out to be so nice that I am very glad you came."

When they were gone he sat down and fanned himself with his hat, and the great big lions and tigers standing round him made him look very little indeed.

"Could you get small again, please?" he said. "I'm not a bit frightened, but you are rather too big for my size."

Every one of them began to un-swell that moment, and they got smaller and smaller, and smaller and smaller, until they were just the right size again – Snow Feast size – and they sat down in a ring around Barty; and the circus lady crept out from under a leaf and sat on his shoulder, and the clown crawled out of the bushes and sat down on his foot again but not before he had turned twenty somersaults.

"Well," chuckled Barty, fanning away, "you did stand by me, didn't you? And it has been a 'normous adventure. I shall so like to lie awake and think of it. I know now why you all winked at me, and said you were going to stay to see the fun."

And they all laughed like anything – the Good Wolf more than all the rest.

In fact, they laughed and laughed and laughed until they could scarcely stop themselves, and when at last it was time for

Barty to go home, and he said good-by to them, and the little elephants threw up their trunks and trumpeted for him as if he were a king going back to his palace, he ran down the path in the wood chuckling to himself nearly all the way.

"Oh!" he said, "what wonderful things happen in the deep forest where things sing and things build nests and burrow in the earth, and make little warm caves to live in."

THE END