huddled up, with his leg under him, as uncomfortable a lookin' creeter as I ever see. But when we both stood in front of him, he pretended to look careless and happy, and smiled that sick smile.

   Says I, "Come, Josiah Allen; dinner is ready."

   "Oh, I hain't hungry," says he. "The table will probable be full. I had jest as lieves wait."

   "Table full!" says I. "You know jest as well as I do that we are eatin' on the ground. Do you come and eat your dinner this minute."

   "Yes, do come," says Miss Bobbet; "we can't get along without you!"

   "Oh!" says he, with a ghastly smile, pretend

   ing to joke, "I have got plenty to eat here—I can eat muskeeters."

   The air was black with 'em, I couldn't deny it.

   "The muskeeters will eat you, more likely," says I. "Look at your face and hands; they are all covered with 'em."

   "Yes, they have eat considerable of a dinner out of me, but I don't begrech 'em. I hain't small enough, nor mean enough, I hope, to begrech 'em one good meal."

   Miss Bobbet started off in search of her wild turnip, and after she had got out of sight Josiah whispered to me with a savage look and a tone sharp as a sharp ax:

   "Can't you bring forty or fifty more wimmen up here? You couldn't come here a minute, could you, without a lot of other wimmen tight to your heels?"

   I begun to see daylight, and after Miss Bobbet had got her wild turnip and some spignut, I made some excuse to send her on ahead, and then Josiah told me all about why he had gone off by himself alone, and why he had been a-settin' in such a curious position all the time since we had come in sight of him.

   It seems he had set down on that bottle of rossberry jell. That red stripe on the side wasn't hardly finished, as I said, and I hadn't fastened my thread properly, so when he got to pullin' at 'em to try to wipe off the jell, the thread started, and bein' sewed on a machine, that seam jest ripped from top to bottom. That was what he

   had walked off sideways 

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