ass in the distant future.

When his father asked him how the frog hunt had come out he did manage
to arouse himself sufficiently to narrate some of the particulars,
especially Steve's getting such a monster hermit frog, his falling into
the pond, their making a fire to dry his clothes, and finally how he
stopped the runaway horse under a misunderstanding and never got even so
much as a word of thanks from the pretty inmate of the buggy.

Now at home, when he knew his folks were taking note of his manner of
speech, it was singular how free from stuttering Toby's language could
be. He just gripped himself, and was careful to speak slowly and
distinctly, pronouncing every word as though he were a foreigner trying
to pick up English.

And after all that is the only true way for a stammering boy to cure
himself; if Toby had been as careful when among his chums as he was at
home, he would have undoubtedly thrown the habit away long ago. But then
there were plenty of causes for excitement in a warm baseball game, or
when indulging in a swimming match, which he did not encounter at home;
and this excitement was the main cause for his failure to speak
distinctly.

He sat reading until it was bedtime, for he happened to have an
interesting book, taken from the public library, and all about the
different animals seen by a traveler in the heart of the African forest.
It was highly embellished with colored pictures, supposed to be
produced from photographs which this daring explorer had taken while
concealed near some waterhole, where the animals of the forest were in
the habit of coming to drink nights, and a flashlight camera helped
catch them true to nature.

All of this is told with an object in view. It would serve to explain
why Toby must have dreamed that he too was a bold traveler in this
foreign wilderness, and reveling in the wonderful sights to be met with
there.

Once during the night he was awakened by the rush of the wind, as the
storm that Max had told them would come along during the night, swooped
down upon Carson to blow a few trees over, and hit the tall steeple of
the Methodist church again, possibly wrecking it for the fourth time in
as many years.

As Toby crawled sleepily out of bed, to close the shutters belonging to
the two windows in his room that looked out on the back yard where his
pets were snugly housed, he wondered whether the circus had arrived
safely, and if the storm would keep them from