urnish a banquet."

Ferdinand Frog's eyes seemed to bulge further out of his head than ever.

"I--I never heard of this before!" he stammered.

"Didn't Tired Tim tell you about our new rule?" somebody inquired. "It
was his own idea."

"He never said a word to me about it!" Ferdinand Frog declared with a
loud laugh. "And I can't give you a supper, for I haven't one ready."

"Then we'll postpone it until to-morrow night," the company told him
hopefully.

"What does your rule say?" Ferdinand Frog rolled his eyes as he put the
question to them.

"It says that the banquet must take place the first night the new member
is present," a fat gentleman replied.

"Then I can't give you any food to-morrow night," Mr. Frog informed
them, "because it would be against the rule."

"Then you can't be a member!" a hundred voices croaked.

"I _am_ one now," Ferdinand Frog replied happily. "And what's more, I
don't see how you can keep me out of your singing-parties."

There was silence for a time.

"We've been sold," some one said at last. "We've no rule to prevent this
fellow from coming here. And the worst of it is, as everybody knows, his
voice is so loud it will spoil all our songs."

Oddly enough, the speaker was the very one who had always objected to
inviting Ferdinand Frog to join the singing parties. His own voice had
always been the loudest in the whole company. And naturally he did not
want anybody with a louder one to come and drown his best notes.

But now he couldn't help himself. And thereafter when the singers met in
Cedar Swamp he always turned greener in the face than ever and looked as
if he were about to burst, when Ferdinand Frog opened his mouth its
widest and let his voice rumble forth into the night.

IX

THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

When Ferdinand Frog first came to the Beaver pond to live no one knew
anything about him.

He appeared suddenly--no one knew whence--and at once made himself very
much at home. It was no time at all before he could call every one of
the big Beaver family by name. And he acted exactly as if the pond
belonged to him, instead of to the Beavers, whose great-grandfathers had
dammed the stream many years before.

But the newcomer was so polite that nobody cared to send him away. At
the same time, people couldn't help wondering who the stranger was and
where he had come from and what his plans for the future were. Whenever
two or three Beavers stopped working long e