"But he hasn't brought Fred!" cried Bunny.

"Maybe the minstrel boy wasn't the one after all," suggested Mrs. Brown.

"Well, I'm inclined to think he was," said her husband.

"Did you see him?" eagerly asked Bunny.

"No, he had run away. That's why I think it was Fred."

Then Mr. Brown explained:

"When I got to the hotel," he told Bunny, Sue and the others, "I saw Dr.

Perry walking around rather nervously. I asked him about the boy, and he said that when he and his medicine van reached the hotel after closing the show last night, he found that his banjo player had packed his valise, taken his banjo, and gone off."

"Where?" asked Mrs. Brown.

"n.o.body knows. He left no word. That's what makes me think it was Fred.

He must have seen us in the crowd. And, as soon as he could wash the black off his face, he hurried to the hotel ahead of Dr. Perry, got his bag and ran away. Very likely he did not want to see us and hear us give him the message from his parents. His heart must still be hard against them. It is too bad, if that was Fred, for I had begun to think I had found him. Still it may have been some other young fellow. Dr. Perry said they often came and went without giving any reasons. But we'll still be on the lookout for the missing boy."

Once more the "Ark" started off, and for several days there was just ordinary travel. The children played and had fun, the dogs raced along the road, barking and enjoying themselves, and the weather was fine.

Then came another day of hard rain, and the "Ark" was kept under a big oak tree.

The day after the rain, when the wayside brooks were still high, but the roads fairly good, Mr. Brown went on again. They were coming to a small town, and had to cross a ditch over which was a small bridge. Usually there was but little water in the ditch, but now, because of the rain, the banks were full.

"I hope this bridge is strong enough for our car to go over," said Mr.

Brown. Slowly he steered the big machine on it. Hardly had it reached the middle when there was a cracking of wood, and the bridge bent down.

The automobile sank with it.

"Oh!" cried Bunny, who sat in the back door. "We're going into the ditch, Daddy!"

"We're there _now_!" said Sue as the "Ark" stopped with a jerk and a bounce.

CHAPTER XVII

ON TO PORTLAND

There was no doubt about it, the big automobile was in the ditch. Or rather, the rear wheels, having gone through the small bridge, were now in the water of a little brook. The rains had made the usually dry ditch into a brook that flowed swiftly along.

"Oh dear!" cried Mrs. Brown. "This is too bad!"

"Anybody hurt back there?" asked Mr. Brown, who, at the first feeling that something was wrong, had put on the brakes. The automobile would have stopped anyhow, as the wheels were held fast in the mud and the broken pieces of the bridge.

"No, we're all right," answered Uncle Tad, looking at Bunny and Sue, who, at the first sound of something wrong had crept closer to their mother.

"My nose feels as if I had b.u.mped it," said Bunny, rubbing his "smeller" as he sometimes called it. "Though I don't remember doing it,"

he went on.

"I guess you did it when you jumped out of your seat," said his mother.

"We all jumped, it came so suddenly."

"And I dropped my Teddy bear and Uncle Tad stepped on her," murmured Sue with sorrow in her tones. "Look, Uncle Tad, you've turned on her eyes!"

And, surely enough, the electric eyes of Sallie Malinda were glowing brightly. Uncle Tad must have stepped on the switch b.u.t.ton in the toy's back and turned it on.

"But I guess she's all right," went on Sue, as she turned off the switch and then turned it on again to see that it was working as it should.

"You didn't hurt her, Uncle Tad," she said.

"I'm glad of that, Sue," said the old soldier. "Now I guess I'd better get around to see if I can help your father get the automobile out of the ditch."

Dix and Splash, who had been racing up and down the road, came back, panting and with their long red tongues hanging out of their mouths, to see what the trouble was. They looked at the ditched automobile with their heads on one side, and then sort of barked at one another. It was as if Dix said:

"Well, what do you think about it, Splash? Do you think we had better stay here and help them?"

"Oh, I don't see anything _we_ can do," answered Splash. At least it _seemed_ as if he spoke that way. "Let's keep on playing tag."

And so the two dogs raced away.

"We do seem to be in a fix," remarked Mr. Brown as he came as near as he could to the back of the automobile without getting into the ditch.

"What _can_ we do?" asked Mrs. Brown, and her voice was anxious.

"We'll soon see," answered her husband. "In the first place you had all better get out of the car. I don't know how long it may stand upright.

It may topple over if the water washes away more mud from under one wheel than from under another, and you'll be better out than in."

"But how are we going to _get_ out?" asked Bunny. "The back steps are all under water!"

And so they were. When the bridge broke with the automobile the front wheels were off the wooden planks and on the road beyond, and the rear wheels went down when the bridge broke in the middle. So the "Ark" was standing as though it had come to a sudden stop going up a steep hill, at the bottom of which was a brook. The rear wheels, and all but the top one of the back steps were under water.

"You can crawl out over the front seat," said Mr. Brown. "From there you can easily get down to the ground if Uncle Tad and I help you. Then, Mother, you might try your hand at getting a lunch, for it will soon be noon, while Uncle Tad and I see what we can do about getting the automobile out of the ditch."

"It will be some fun after all," said Bunny as he crawled out over the front seat. "We can picnic alongside the road, Sue, and watch Daddy and Uncle Tad get the car out."

"Yes," said Bunny's sister. "And maybe I'll make a pie for you and Sallie Malinda."

"No, I guess I wouldn't try a pie to-day," said Mrs. Brown with a smile.

"We won't be able to use any stove except the small oil one, out on the ground, and that will cook only a few things. We'll wait for the pie until the auto is safe on the road again."

"I hope we can get it out of the ditch without breaking anything," said Mr. Brown, as he helped his wife and children down the high front steps of the big car, and then lifted out the oil stove, and other things that would be needed for the lunch.

"Do you think there is any danger?" asked Mrs. Brown.

"A little," answered her husband. "But at least none of us can be hurt, and the worst that can happen will be a little damage to our car."

"Oh, the dear old 'Ark!'" cried Mrs. Brown. "I hope it won't be damaged much."