"Oh, I guess he just went off in the woods for a rest after Flossie and Freddie mauled him when they were playing with him. Go call him, Bert."

So Bert went out in front of the tent and called: "Snoop! Snoop! Hi, Snoop, where are you?"

But no Snoop answered. Then Flossie and Freddie called, and so did Nan, while Sam went farther into the woods among the trees. But the big black cat, that the children loved so dearly, was missing. Snoop did not come to his supper that night.

CHAPTER XVII

FREDDIE IS CAUGHT

"Hark! Wasn't that Snoop?"

"Listen, everybody!"

Bert and Nan suddenly made these exclamations as they, with the rest of the Bobbsey family, were sitting in the main tent after supper. The lanterns had been lighted, the mosquito net drawn over the front door, or flap of the tent, to keep out the bugs, and the camping family was spending a quiet hour before going to bed.

Bert thought he heard, in the woods outside, a noise that sounded like that made by the missing cat Snoop, and Nan, also, thought she heard the same sound.

They all listened, Mr. Bobbsey looking up from his book, while Flossie and Freddie ceased their play. Mrs. Bobbsey stopped her sewing.

"There it is again!" exclaimed Nan, as from the darkness outside the tent there came a queer sound.

"What is it?" asked Mrs. Bobbsey. "It doesn't sound like Snoop."

"Maybe it's Snap!" exclaimed Freddie. "He used to howl like that."

"It did sound a bit like a dog's howl," admitted Bert. "May I go out and see what it is, Daddy?"

"I'll take a look," said Mr. Bobbsey. He stepped to the flap of the tent and listened. The queer sound came again, and he went outside, while Bert went near the tent opening to listen. He, as well as his father, then heard another noise--that made by some one walking across the ground, stepping on and breaking small sticks.

"Who's there?" suddenly called Mr. Bobbsey, exactly, as Bert said afterward, like a soldier sentinel on guard. "Who's there?"

"It's me--Sam," was the answer. "I done heard some queer noise, Mr.

Bobbsey, an' Dinah said as how I'd better git up and see what it was."

"Oh, all right, Sam. We heard it too. Listen again."

Sam stood still, and Mr. Bobbsey remained quietly outside the big tent.

Sam and his wife lived in a smaller tent not far away, and they usually went to bed early, so Sam had had to get up when the queer noise sounded.

Suddenly it came again, and this time Bert, who had stuck his head out between the flaps of the tent, called:

"There it is!"

"Who! Who! Who!" came the sound, and as Mr. Bobbsey heard it he gave a laugh.

"Nothing but an owl," he said. "I should have known it at first, only I couldn't hear well in the tent. You may go back to bed, Sam, it's only an owl."

"Only an owl, Mr. Bobbsey! Yas, I reckon as how it is; but I don't like t' heah it jest de same."

"You don't? Why not, Sam?"

"'Cause as how dey most always ginnerally bring bad luck. I don't like de sound ob dat owl's singin' no how!"

"He wasn't singing, Sam!" laughed Bert, after he had called to the rest of the family inside the tent and told them the cause of the noise.

"Ha! Am dat yo', Bert?" asked the colored man. "Well, maybe an owl don't sing like a canary bird, but dey makes a moanful soun', an' I don't like it. It means bad luck, dat's what it means! An' you all'd better git t'

bed!"

"Oh, I'm not afraid, Sam. We thought it was Snoop mewing, or Snap howling, maybe. You didn't see anything of our lost dog, did you?"

"Not a smitch. An' I suah would like t' hab him back."

"Ask him if he or Dinah saw Snoop," called Flossie.

Bert asked the colored man this, but Sam had seen nothing of the pet cat either.

"Oh, dear!" sighed Freddie. "Both our pets gone--Snap and Snoop! I wish they'd come back."

"Maybe they will," said his mother kindly. "It's time for you to go to bed now, and maybe the morning will bring good news. Snap or Snoop may be back by that time."

"That's what we've been thinking about poor Snap for a long while,"

grumbled Nan.

"Well, I'm afraid Snap _is_ lost for good," said Mrs. Bobbsey. "He never stayed away so long before. But Snoop may be back in the morning. He may have just wandered off. It isn't the first time he has been away all night."

"Only once or twice," said Bert, who came back to the book he was reading. "And both times it was because he got shut by accident in places where he couldn't get out."

"Maybe that's what's happened this time," suggested Nan. "We ought to look around the island."

"We will--to-morrow," declared Bert.

"And look in the cave Flossie and I found," urged Freddie. "Maybe Snoop is there."

"We'll look," promised his brother.

When Flossie and Freddie were taken to their cots by their mother, Flossie, when she had finished her regular prayers, added:

"An' please don't let 'em take Whisker."

"What do you mean by that, Flossie?" asked her mother.

"I mean I was prayin' that they shouldn't take our goat," said the little girl.

"I want to pray that, too!" cried Freddie, who had hopped into bed. "Why didn't you tell me you were going to pray that, Flossie?"