o You're Bumping!" Snarled the Rat.

_The Story of a Stuffed Elephant._ _Page_ 114]

"Excuse me," replied the Elephant. "I didn't mean to."

The Rat tried to bite the Elephant's trunk, but again the swift current
carried the boat downstream.

Finally the rain stopped, after a day or so, but by that time the
Elephant had been carried a long way down the brook, at last coming to a
stop when the board was caught in the roots of an overhanging tree. By
now the Elephant was almost glued fast to the board, so wet and soaking
was he.

The rain stopped, the brook went down, the sun came out, and the
Elephant dried. But he still lay on the board, on the bank of the
stream, under the roots of the tree.

A man, who happened to be passing, saw the Elephant, picked him off the
board, and, seeing that he was an expensive toy, took the plaything to
his home.

"What a fine Elephant!" said the man's wife. "I'll put him on the
mantel, over the stove, so he'll dry out more. Some child lost this. We
haven't any children small enough to want to keep it. I wish I could
find out who owned this Elephant."

"I wish so, myself," thought the Elephant. "Oh, shall I ever get back to
Archie?"

It was a day or so after the big storm that Archie was able to be up and
around, and the first thing he thought of, when he could go outdoors,
was his Elephant.

"Oh, where is he?" cried the little boy. "I 'member I left him in the
yard when we heard the hand-organ music and ran to see the monkey. And
then it rained and I fell down and bumped my nose. Oh, where is my
Elephant?"

"If you left him out here in the yard I fear the Elephant has floated
away," said Mrs. Dunn. "The brook rose very high--almost up to our back
steps--and it probably carried your Elephant away."

"Oh, shall I ever get him back?" cried Archie, feeling sad.

"I'm afraid not," his mother answered.

Archie felt so bad about his toy that his father put an advertisement in
the paper, asking whoever found the Elephant to please bring him back
and get a reward.

If Jeff, the colored boy, had been able to read, he might have seen the
advertisement and have told what he did with the toy.

But Jeff never read the papers. And, besides, it rained so hard when the
colored boy went back from the store, after putting the Elephant on the
board, that Jeff had to go home another way, and he forgot all about the
stuffed plaything he had set aside.

But the man who had taken the Eleph