t take the trouble
to open his eyes to see who was talking to him.

"Waiting," the man said, opening his eyes at last.

"Waiting for what?"

"For a peach to drop into my mouth."

"One has fallen beside your cheek," said Vance, "and another right in
your hand."

[Illustration]

"But I want it in my mouth," sighed the man on the ground. "I am so
dreadfully hungry."

"So dreadfully lazy, you mean," exclaimed Vance, quite out of patience;
and he began to eat the luscious fruit. "You must certainly be the
laziest man in the world."

"If you think that," was the drawling answer, "you ought to see my
cousin Loto, who lives down the river a mile as the crow flies."

"He'll have to be lazy, indeed, to beat you," the Prince said, as he
once more shouldered his box. "Do you know where the Crushed Strawberry
Wizard lives?"

"I know," returned the man, "but I'm too lazy to tell."

"It wouldn't take you any longer to tell than to say you can't tell,"
cried Vance, hotly.

"Perhaps not," was the cool retort; "but if I told it would be doing
something, and I never do anything."

The Prince started on his way without another word. He did not even stop
to put a peach into the lazy man's open mouth, as he at first had some
thought of doing. He kept along beside the river for some time, and had
nearly forgotten the words of the lazy man about his cousin, when
suddenly he came upon what to his horror he at first supposed to be the
body of some thief hanging from a tree. As he got closer, however, he
found that the man was alive and suspended by a belt which went under
his arms. The man did not seem in the least to mind being hung, but
looked quite calm and peaceful. A second man stood upon an overturned
bucket and blew into the mouth of the first with a pair of bellows.

[Illustration]

"What are you doing?" asked Vance curiously, as he stopped beside them.

"Why," replied the man with the bellows, "this fellow is too lazy to
stand, so we have to hang him up; and he is too lazy to breathe for
himself, so he pays me a groat a day to do it for him with the bellows."

"I saw a man up the river who was too lazy to eat," observed Vance. "I
thought he was bad enough, but this is surely the laziest man alive."

"If you think that," the blower answered, "you should see his cousin
Gobbo, who lives a mile farther down the river as the crow flies."

At this Vance was reminded that nightfall was not very far off, and once
more h