is next selection. He was astonished to see Miss Mercy's alpine
hat rising, as it were, from the earth at his feet to crowd him from his
desirable position. As she stood up she jabbed him in the nostril with
the quill, and Mr. Stott gave ground before he realized it. Miss Mercy
snickered in appreciation of the cleverness of her manoeuvre.

As Wallie observed them while waiting his opportunity to get a dill
pickle or whatever crumb they might leave him, he thought grimly that if
they had been without food for twenty-four hours instead of less than
half a dozen, they would have been close to cannibalism. He, for one,
would not care to be adrift in an open boat with Mrs. Budlong--hungry
and armed with a hatchet--while Stott, he was sure would murder him for
a frankfurter in those circumstances.

Aunt Lizzie, to whom accidents of an unusual nature seemed always to be
happening, wandered off with a wedge of pie and a cup of coffee and sat
down on an ant-hill.

While she sipped her coffee and drank in the scenery simultaneously, the
inhabitants of the hill came out in swarms to investigate the monster
who was destroying their home. They attacked her with the ferocity for
which red ants are noted, and she dropped her pie and coffee and ran
screaming to the wagon.

Fearful that she would be pursued by them, she got into the surrey,
where she became involved in a quarrel with Miss Mercy, who was eating
her lunch there.

Miss Mercy caught a butterfly that lighted on a seat-cover and pulled
off first one wing and then the other in spite of Aunt Lizzie's
entreaties. She dropped it on the bottom of the surrey and put her
astonishingly large foot upon it.

"There," she snickered, "I squashed it."

Aunt Lizzie, to whom anything alive was as if it were human, wrung her
hands in anguish.

"I think you are horrid!"

"What good is it?"

"What good are you, either? I shan't ride with you." Aunt Lizzie climbed
into the third seat of the surrey, where she refused to answer Miss
Mercy when she spoke to her.

The rest and food freshened the party considerably but by four o'clock
they were again hungry and drooping in their saddles. Only Mr. Stott,
endowed, as it seemed, with the infinite wisdom of the Almighty,
retained his spirits and kept up an unending flow of instructive
conversation upon topics of which he had the barest smattering of
knowledge. Constantly dashing off on his part to investigate gulches and
side trails cause