er we got the fire started, I histed a umberell and sot down under it
and fanned myself hard, for I was afraid of a sunstroke.

Wal, I guess I had set there ten minutes or more, when all of a sudden I
thought, Where is Josiah? I hadn't seen him since we had got there. I
riz up and asked the company, almost wildly, if they had seen my
companion, Josiah.

They said, No, they hadn't.

But Celestine Wilkin's little girl, who had come with her grandpa and
grandma Gowdy, spoke up, and says she:

"I seen him goin' off toward the woods. He acted dretful strange, too;
he seemed to be a walkin' off sideways."

"Had the sufferin's he had undergone made him delerious?" says I to
myself; and then I started off on the run toward the woods, and old Miss
Bobbet, and Miss Gowdy, and Sister Bamber, and Deacon Dobbinses' wife
all rushed after me.

Oh, the agony of them two or three minutes! my mind so distracted with
fourbodin's, and the presperation and sweat a-pourin' down. But all of a
sudden, on the edge of the woods, we found him. Miss Gowdy, weighin' a
little less than me, mebby one hundred pounds or so, had got a little
ahead of me. He sot backed up against a tree in a awful cramped
position, with his left leg under him. He looked dretful uncomfortable.
But when Miss Gowdy hollered out: "Oh, here you be! We have been skairt
about you. What is the matter?" he smiled a dretful sick smile, and says
he: "Oh, I thought I would come out here and meditate a spell. It was
always a real treat to me to meditate."

Just then I come up a-pantin' for breath, and as the wimmen all turned
to face me, Josiah scowled at me and shook his fist at them four wimmen,
and made the most mysterious motions of his hands toward 'em. But the
minute they turned round he smiled in a sickish way, and pretended to go
to whistlin'.

Says I, "What is the matter, Josiah Allen? What are you off here for?"

"I am a-meditatin', Samantha."

Says I, "Do you come down and jine the company this minute, Josiah
Allen. You was in a awful takin' to come with 'em, and what will they
think to see you act so?"

The wimmen happened to be a-lookin' the other way for a minute, and he
looked at me as if he would take my head off, and made the strangest
motions toward 'em; but the minute they looked at him he would pretend
to smile--that deathly smile.

Says I, "Come, Josiah Allen, we're goin' to get dinner right away, for
we are afraid it will rain."

"Oh, wal," says