ing so;" and Rob manfully
checked the sob just ready to break out, adding, with a plaintive
patience that touched Nan's heart, "If the skeeters didn't bite me so, I
could go to sleep till Marmar comes."

"Put your head on my lap, and I'll cover you up with my apron; I'm not
afraid of the night," said Nan, sitting down and trying to persuade
herself that she did not mind the shadow nor the mysterious rustlings
all about her.

"Wake me up when she comes," said rob, and was fast asleep in five
minutes with his head in Nan's lap under the pinafore.

The little girl sat for some fifteen minutes, staring about her with
anxious eyes, and feeling as if each second was an hour. Then a pale
light began to glimmer over the hill-top and she said to herself,

"I guess the night is over and morning is coming. I'd like to see the
sun rise, so I'll watch, and when it comes up we can find our way right
home."

But before the moon's round face peeped above the hill to destroy her
hope, Nan had fallen asleep, leaning back in a little bower of tall
ferns, and was deep in a mid-summer night's dream of fire-flies and blue
aprons, mountains of huckleberries, and Robby wiping away the tears of a
black cow, who sobbed, "I want to go home! I want to go home!"

While the children were sleeping, peacefully lulled by the drowsy hum of
many neighborly mosquitoes, the family at home were in a great state of
agitation. The hay-cart came at five, and all but Jack, Emil, Nan, and
Rob were at the bars ready for it. Franz drove instead of Silas, and
when the boys told him that the others were going home through the wood,
he said, looking ill-pleased, "They ought to have left Rob to ride, he
will be tired out by the long walk."

"It's shorter that way, and they will carry him," said Stuffy, who was
in a hurry for his supper.

"You are sure Nan and Rob went with them?"

"Of course they did; I saw them getting over the wall, and sung out that
it was most five, and Jack called back that they were going the other
way," explained Tommy.

"Very well, pile in then," and away rattled the hay-cart with the tired
children and the full pails.

Mrs. Jo looked sober when she heard of the division of the party, and
sent Franz back with Toby to find and bring the little ones home. Supper
was over, and the family sitting about in the cool hall as usual, when
Franz came trotting back, hot, dusty, and anxious.

"Have they come?" he called out when half-way up