g on the stump she vacated and provided herself
with a cudgel before starting to investigate. Advancing cautiously, she
saw a bunch of tall grass wave in a suspicious manner. She smote the
clump with her cudgel, and a large, warty toad jumped out into the open.
It was stunned, and stood blinking as if trying to locate the danger.

"Nasty thing!" exclaimed Miss Mercy, viciously, and raised her club to
finish it.

The blow landed, and Miss Mercy and the toad saw stars simultaneously,
for Aunt Lizzie brought down a four-foot stick and crushed in the crown
of Miss Mercy's alpine hat.

"You dread-ful woman!" Aunt Lizzie shrieked at her, and it was her
purpose to strike again but the stick was rotten, and since only some
six inches remained in her hand, she had to content herself with crying:

"You horrible creature! You unnatural woman! 'Shady' Lane--you belong in
an asylum!"

Since Miss Mercy had been told this before, she resented it doubly, and
no one can say what else might have happened if Wallie, hearing the
disturbance, had not hurried forward to discover what was occurring.

"She was killing a hop-toad!" Aunt Lizzie screamed, hysterically. Then
her legs collapsed, while Miss Mercy boomed that if she did, it was none
of Aunt Lizzie's business--it was not her hop-toad.

The astounding news passed from mouth to mouth that Aunt Lizzie and Miss
Mercy had been fighting in the brush with clubs, like Amazons, and
everyone rushed forward to view the combatants and to learn the
details, but the chugging of a motor sent Miss Mercy into the middle of
the road to flag it before they could hear her side of the story.

It proved to be no less a person than Rufus Reed, who was transporting
provisions on a truck between Prouty and a road-camp in the Park. Rufus
welcomed company and intimated that his only wonder was that they were
not all leaving.

So Miss Mercy clambered up beside Rufus and without looking back started
on her return journey to Zanesville, Ohio, to soothe the brow of the
suffering and minister to the wants of the dying in her professional
capacity.

Pinkey sombrely looked after the cloud of dust in which Rufus and the
Angel of Mercy vanished.

"That's one chicken we counted before it was hatched," he observed,
regretfully, to Wallie.

The scenery was sublime that morning and the party were in ecstasies,
but mere mountains, waterfalls, and gorges could not divert Wallie's
mind from the disquieting fact