the hen. "I cannot read."

"Oh! Can't you?"

"Certainly not; I've never been to school, you know."

"Well, I have," admitted Dorothy; "but the letters are big and far
apart, and it's hard to spell out the words."

But she looked at each letter carefully, and finally discovered that
these words were written in the sand:

"BEWARE THE WHEELERS!"

"That's rather strange," declared the hen, when Dorothy had read aloud
the words. "What do you suppose the Wheelers are?"

"Folks that wheel, I guess. They must have wheelbarrows, or baby-cabs or
hand-carts," said Dorothy.

"Perhaps they're automobiles," suggested the yellow hen. "There is no
need to beware of baby-cabs and wheelbarrows; but automobiles are
dangerous things. Several of my friends have been run over by them."

"It can't be auto'biles," replied the girl, "for this is a new, wild
country, without even trolley-cars or tel'phones. The people here havn't
been discovered yet, I'm sure; that is, if there _are_ any people. So I
don't b'lieve there _can_ be any auto'biles, Billina."

"Perhaps not," admitted the yellow hen. "Where are you going now?"

"Over to those trees, to see if I can find some fruit or nuts," answered
Dorothy.

She tramped across the sand, skirting the foot of one of the little
rocky hills that stood near, and soon reached the edge of the forest.

At first she was greatly disappointed, because the nearer trees were all
punita, or cotton-wood or eucalyptus, and bore no fruit or nuts at all.
But, bye and bye, when she was almost in despair, the little girl came
upon two trees that promised to furnish her with plenty of food.

One was quite full of square paper boxes, which grew in clusters on all
the limbs, and upon the biggest and ripest boxes the word "Lunch" could
be read, in neat raised letters. This tree seemed to bear all the year
around, for there were lunch-box blossoms on some of the branches, and
on others tiny little lunch-boxes that were as yet quite green, and
evidently not fit to eat until they had grown bigger.

The leaves of this tree were all paper napkins, and it presented a very
pleasing appearance to the hungry little girl.

But the tree next to the lunch-box tree was even more wonderful, for it
bore quantities of tin dinner-pails, which were so full and heavy that
the stout branches bent underneath their weight. Some were small and
dark-brown in color; those larger were of a dull tin color; but the
really ripe