ey-moon?"

"No!" exclaimed Arthur Raybold, in a loud, sharp voice. "What an
absurdity! Corona, what are you talking about?"

To this his sister paid no attention whatever. "I think," she said, "it
was a noble thing to do. An assertion of one's inner self is always noble,
and when I heard of this assertion I wished very much to know the man and
the woman who had so asserted themselves, and this was my principal reason
for determining to come to this camp."

"But where on earth," asked Mr. Archibald, "did you hear that we were on a
wedding-journey?"

"I read it in a newspaper," said Corona.

"I do declare," exclaimed Mrs. Archibald, "everything is in the
newspapers! I did think that we might settle down here and enjoy ourselves
without people talking about our reason for coming!"

"You don't mean to say," cried Mrs. Perkenpine, now on her feet, "that you
two elderly ones is the honey-mooners?"

"Yes," said Mr. Archibald, looking with amusement on the astonished faces
about him, "we truly are."

"Well," said the she-guide, seating herself, "if I'd stayed an old maid as
long as that, I think I'd stuck it out. But perhaps you was a widow,
mum?"

"No, indeed," cried Mr. Archibald; "she was a charming girl when I married
her. But just let me tell you how the matter stands," and he proceeded to
relate the facts of the case. "I thought," he said, in conclusion, turning
to Matlack, "that perhaps you knew about it, for I told Mr. Sadler, and I
supposed he might have mentioned it to you."

"No, sir," said Matlack, relighting his pipe, "he knows me better than
that. If he'd called me and said, 'Phil, I want you to take charge of a
couple that's goin' honey-moonin' about twenty-five years after they
married, and a-doin' it for somebody else and not for themselves,' I'd
said to him, 'They're lunatics, and I won't take charge of them.' And
Peter he knows I would have thought that and would have said it, and so he
did not mention the particulars to me. He knows that the only things that
I'm afraid of in this world is lunatics. 'Tisn't only what they might do
to me, but what they might do to themselves, and I won't touch 'em."

"I hope," said Mrs. Archibald, "that you don't consider us lunatics now
that you have heard why we are here."

"Oh no," said the guide; "I've found that you're regular common-sense
people, and I don't change my opinions even when I've heard particulars;
but if I'd heard particulars first, it would ha