ing. You children ought to remember, I got so much on my
mind."

All eyes turned anxiously to the cooking-stove, while an expression of
frank regret began to settle over the different faces. The backbone of
their appetites had been broken, and there was something else, perhaps
something even more appetizing, to come.

Interpreting the trend of their glance and expression, up flared Mrs.
Yellett, with as great a show of indignation as if some one had set a
match to her petticoats.

"I declare, I never see such children; no more nacheral feelin's than a
herd of coyotes; never thinks of a plumb thing but grub. No, make no
mistake about the character of the objec' we've forgot. 'Tain't sweet
pertaters, 'tain't molasses, 'tain't corn-bread--it's paw! It's your pore
old paw--him settin' in the tent, forsook and neglected by his own
children."

All started up to remedy their filial neglect without loss of time, but
Mrs. Yellett waved them back to their places.

"Don't the whole posse of you go after him, like he'd done something and
was to be apprehended. Ben, you go after your father."

Ben strode over to the little white tent that Mary had noticed glimmering
in the moonlight the preceding evening, and presently emerged, supporting
on his arm a partially paralyzed old man, who might have been Rip Van
Winkle in the worst of tempers. His white hair and beard encircled a
shrivelled, hawklike face, the mouth was sucked back in a toothless eddy
that brought tip of nose and tip of chin into whispering distance, the
eyes glittered from behind the overhanging, ragged brows like those of a
hungry animal searching through the brush for its prey.

"If you've done eatin'," whispered Mrs. Yellett to Miss Carmichael, "you'd
better run on. Paw's langwidge is simply awful when we forget to bring him
to meals." Mary ran on.

When, after the lapse of some thirty minutes or so, the stentorian voice
of Mrs. Yellett recalled Mary to camp, she found that the tin breakfast
service had been washed and returned to the mess-box, the beds had been
neatly folded and piled in one of the wagons--in fact, the extremely simple
tent-hold, to coin a word, was in absolute order. It was just 6 A.M., and
Mrs. Yellett thought it high time to begin school. Mary tried to convey to
her that the hour was somewhat unusual, but she seemed to think that for
pupils who were beginning their tasks comparatively late in life it would
be impossible to start sufficie