were doing what was very, very
wrong--like three little mice that were playing in the barn though
the old mouse said: 'Little mice, beware! When the owl comes singing
"Too-whoo" take care!' If you do it again we shall consider it
deliberately unfriendly of you.... Well, I'll toddle my decrepit old
bones out of this. Eleven o'clock! How time has flown, to be sure!
Thank you for a pleasant evening. Good-by, George. Good-by, all! Be
good little boys--go nighty-nighty!"

They raced to the corner, scurried down the first side street, turned
again, and slowed to a gallop. Pringle was in high feather; he caroled
blithesome as he rode:

_"So those three little owls flew back up in the barn--
Inky, dinky, doodum, day!
And they said, 'Those little mice make us feel so nice and warm!'
Inky, dinky, doodum, day!
Then they all began to sing, 'Too-whit! Too-who!'
I don't think much of this song, do you?
But there's one thing about it--'tis certainly true--
Inky, dinky, doodum, day!"_

They reached the open; the gallop became a trot.

"I go north here," said Foy at the cross-roads above the town. "Which
way for you?"

"North too," said Pringle. "I don't know just where, but you can tell
me. I go to a railroad station first--Aden. Then to the Vorhis place?"

"Vorhis? I'm going there myself?" said Foy. "You didn't tell me your
name yet."

"Pringle."

"What? Not John Wesley Pringle? Great Scott, man! I've heard Stella
talk about you a thousand times. Say, I'm sure glad to meet you! My
name's Foy--Christopher Foy."

"Why, yes," said Pringle. "I think I've heard Stella speak of you,
too."

Chapter III

Being a child must have been great fun--once. Nowadays one would as
lief be a Strasburg goose. When you and I went to school it was not
quite so bad. True, neither of us could now extract a cube root with
a stump puller, and it is sad to reflect how little call life has made
for duodecimals. Sometimes it seems that all our struggle with moody
verbs and insubordinate conjunctions was a wicked waste--poor little
sleepy puzzleheads! But there were certain joyous facts which we
remember yet. Lake Erie was very like a whale; Lake Ontario was a
seal; and Italy was a boot.

The great Chihuahuan desert is a boot too; a larger boot than Italy.
The leg of it is in Mexico, the toe is in Arizona, the heel in New
Mexico; and the Jornado is in the boot-heel.

El Jornado del Muerto--the Jour