; but awfter his mistake, he was far
worse--far, far worse. He never got over that, never."

"What happened to him?"

"A most extraordinary thing. I never knew of anything like it in all
the world.

"You see, there were two trees which grew close together near the royal
palace. One of these was his Majesty's private drinking tree. The
other, as it chawnced, was a rubber tree."

Curly deliberately removed his hat and placed it on his knee, wiping,
as he did so, a brow dotted thick with moisture. No one broke the
silence.

"You will easily understand," resumed the speaker, "that when the King
of Gee-Whiz had chopped into the rubber tree with his little gold axe,
drinking awfterwards a cupful of pure caoutchouc, it did not take him
long to repent of his inadvertence. The results were what I may call
most extraordinary. I should judge the rubber juice to have been of
very high proof indeed.

"To be brief, I give you my word of honor, the King was turned into an
absolutely elastic person on the spot! When he stamped his foot he
bounded into the air. 'He's a regular bounder, anyway,' said Sir
Harry, who would always have his joke. 'And,' said he to me, as I
remember distinctly, 'if his conscience becomes elastic, we're gone,
the same as Cook and Morgenstern.' Sir Harry was a great wit.

"Now, the more furious the King became, the more helpless he became as
well. He simply bounced up and down and around and about. Reigning
monarch, too--lack of dignity--all that sort of thing--must have been
most annoying to him. We could do nothing to calm him. In all my
travels, I have never seen such a state of affairs; I haven't, really."

"Nor me neither," said Billy Hudgens, sighing, "and I've kept bar from
Butte to El Paso."

"Then what happened?" demanded Curly.

"Everything that could happen," said the other, bitterly. "Lady Sophie
and her maid, Sir Harry and the princess--the entire household suite of
the King of Gee-Whiz--were mad enough to taste also of the juice of
this rubber tree. It had the same effect upon them! I say to you,
positively and truthfully, that then and there the island of Gee-Whiz
was inhabited by the maddest population ever known in any possession of
her Britannic Majesty."

"Reckon they was a pretty lively bunch to hold," suggested Curly; "but
what happened next?"

"I am not quite clear as to all that transpired awfter that. I know
that I was the only sane man left on the isla