m Spike,
but abating nothing of her industry until we had the mules loaded and
I was ready to drive them, Heaven knows whither.

"Where shall we go?" quavered Dorothy, sitting on a log with the
dingue in her lap.

One thing was certain; this mammoth-ridden land was no place for
women, and I told her so.

We placed the dingue in a basket and tied it around the leading mule's
neck. Immediately the dingue, alarmed, began dingling like a cow-bell.
It acted like a charm on the other mules, and they gravely filed off
after their leader, following the bell. Dorothy and I, hand in hand,
brought up the rear.

I shall never forget that scene in the forest--the gray arch of the
heavens swimming in mist through which the sun peered shiftily, the
tall pines wavering through the fog, the preoccupied mules marching
single file, the foggy bell-note of the gentle dingue in its swinging
basket, and Dorothy, limp kilts dripping with dew, plodding through
the white dusk.

We followed the terrible tornado-path which the mammoth had left in
its wake, but there were no traces of its human victims--neither one
jot of Professor Smawl nor one solitary tittle of William Spike.

And now I would be glad to end this chapter if I could; I would gladly
leave myself as I was, there in the misty forest, with an arm
encircling the slender body of my little companion, and the mules
moving in a monotonous line, and the dingue discreetly jingling--but
again that menacing shadow falls across my page, and truth bids me
tell all, and I, the slave of accuracy, must remember my vows as the
dauntless disciple of truth.

Towards sunset--or that pale parody of sunset which set the forest
swimming in a ghastly, colorless haze--the mammoth's trail of ruin
brought us suddenly out of the trees to the shore of a great sheet of
water.

It was a desolate spot; northward a chaos of sombre peaks rose, piled
up like thunder-clouds along the horizon; east and south the darkening
wilderness spread like a pall. Westward, crawling out into the mist
from our very feet, the gray waste of water moved under the dull sky,
and flat waves slapped the squatting rocks, heavy with slime.

And now I understood why the trail of the mammoth continued straight
into the lake, for on either hand black, filthy tamarack swamps lay
under ghostly sheets of mist. I strove to creep out into the bog,
seeking a footing, but the swamp quaked and the smooth surface
trembled like jelly in a b