THE EQUIPMENT.

   After it had been decided that we should start in search of '

    He

   who had been mummified alive,' the next step seemed to be to go. But Leonora demurred to this.

   'We must have our things,' she said; 'what do you think we should take?'

   'Scissors,' I replied; and I regret to say that at first she misinterpreted the phrase.

   Leonora is a powerful as well as a pretty girl, and when the bear fight that ensued was over my rooms were a little mixed.

   This suggested mixed biscuits, that invaluable refreshment of the traveller, and from one thing to another we soon made up a complete list of our needs.

   The scissors, and skates, and the soap we procured at the Church and State stores,

    11

   but not, of course, the revolvers. The revolvers we got of the genuine Government pattern, because both Leonora and I are dreadfully afraid of fire-arms, and we knew that

    these

   , anyhow, would not 'go off.' The jam we got, of course, at the official cartridge emporium, same which we did

    not

   shoot the Arabs. The Gladstone bag and the Bryant & May's matches we procured direct from the makers, resisting the piteous appeals of itinerant vendors. Some life-belts we laid in, and, as will presently be seen, we could have made no more judicious purchase.

    11

   Won't the critics say you are advertising the stores? And the tradesmen won't like it.—

    Publisher.

   Where would the

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