Snap, the big dog, could be heard barking, and a child's voice cried:

"No, you can't have it! You can't have it! Oh, Nan! Bert! Make your dog go 'way!"

Mr. Bobbsey, pushing back his chair so hard that it fell over, rushed from the room.

CHAPTER IV

GETTING READY

"Oh, dear!" cried Mrs. Bobbsey, "I wonder what has happened now!"

"Maybe Snap is barking at a tramp," suggested Bert. "I'll go and see."

"It can't be a tramp!" Nan spoke with scorn. "That sounded like a little girl crying."

"It surely did," Mrs. Bobbsey said. "Wait a minute, Bert. Don't go out just yet."

"But I want to see what it is, Mother!" and Bert paused, half way to the door, out of which Mr. Bobbsey had hurried a few seconds before.

"Your father will do whatever needs to be done," said Bert's mother.

"Perhaps it may be a strange dog, fighting with Snap, and you might get bitten."

"Snap wouldn't bite me."

"Nor me!" put in Nan.

"No, but the strange dog might. Wait a minute."

Flossie and Freddie had also started to leave the room to go out into the yard and see what was going on, but when they heard their mother speak about a strange dog they went back to their chairs by the table.

Then, from the yard, came cries of:

"Make him give her back to me, Mr. Bobbsey! Please make Snap give her back to me!"

"Oh, that's Helen Porter!" cried Nan, as she heard the voice of a child.

"It's Helen, and Snap must have taken something she had."

"I see!" exclaimed Mrs. Bobbsey, looking out the door. "It's Helen's doll. Snap has it in his mouth and he's running with it down to the end of the yard."

"Has Snap really got Helen's doll?" asked Flossie.

"Yes," answered her mother. "Though why he took it I don't know."

"Well, if it's only Snap, and no other dog is there, can't I go out and see?" asked Bert. "Snap won't hurt me."

"No, I don't believe he will," said Mrs. Bobbsey. "Yes, you may all go out. I hope Snap hasn't hurt Helen."

Helen Porter was a little girl who lived next door to the Bobbsey twins, and those of you who have the book about camping on Blueberry Island will remember her as the child who, at first, was thought to have been taken away by the Gypsies.

"Oh, Helen! What is the matter, my dear?" asked Mrs. Bobbsey, as she hurried out into the yard, followed by Bert, Nan, Flossie and Freddie.

"Did Snap bite you?" asked Nan, looking toward her father, who was running after the dog that was carrying the little girl's doll in his mouth.

"No, Snap didn't bite me! But he bit my doll!" Helen answered.

"It doesn't hurt dolls to bite 'em," said Bert, with a laugh.

"It does so!" cried Helen, turning her tear-filled eyes on him. "It makes all their sawdust come out!"

"So it does, my dear," said Mrs. Bobbsey kindly. "But we'll hope that Snap won't bite your doll as hard as that. If he does I'll sew up the holes to keep the sawdust in. But how did he come to do it?"

"I--I guess maybe he liked the cookie my doll had," explained Helen, who was about as old as Flossie.

"Did your doll have a cookie?" asked Nan.

"Yes. I was playing she was a rich lady doll," went on the little girl from next door, "and she was taking a basket of cookies to a poor doll lady. Course I didn't have a whole basket of cookies," explained Helen.

"I had only one, but I made believe it was a whole basket full."

"How did you give it to your doll to carry?" asked Nan, for she had often played games this way herself, making believe different things.

"How did your doll carry the cookie, Helen?"

"She didn't carry it," was the answer. "I tied it to her with a piece of string so she wouldn't lose it. The cookie was tied fast around her waist."

"Oh, then I see what happened," said Mrs. Bobbsey. "Snap came up to you, and he smelled the cookie on your doll; didn't he?"

"Yes'm," answered Helen.

"And he must have thought you meant the cookie for him," went on Nan's mother. "And he tried to take it in his mouth; didn't he?"

"Yes'm," Helen answered again.

"And when he couldn't get the cookie loose, because you had it tied fast to your doll, he took the cookie, doll and all. That's how it was," said Mrs. Bobbsey. "Never mind, Helen. Don't cry. Here comes Mr. Bobbsey now, with your doll."

"But I guess Snap has the cookie," said Bert with a laugh.

"I'll get you another one from Dinah," promised Nan to Helen.

In the meantime Mr. Bobbsey had run down to the lower end of the yard after Snap, the big dog.

"Come here, Snap, you rascal!" he cried. "Come here this minute!"

But for once Snap did not mind. He was rather hungry, and perhaps that accounted for his disobedience. Instead of coming up he ran out of sight behind the little toolhouse. Mr. Bobbsey went after him, but by the time he reached the spot Snap was nowhere to be seen.

"Snap! Snap!" he called out loudly. "Come here, I tell you! Where are you hiding?"