adn't seen Leaper the Locust since the
night before.

"That's strange!" the messenger remarked, turning to his fat companion.
"He was to be here to welcome you."

"Ah! I see him now! He's right here in this tree!" exclaimed the fat
one. And he half-jumped, half-flew into Kiddie Katydid's favorite tree.

"You're wrong!" said Kiddie Katydid. "I'm a Long-horn--and you can't
claim to be a cousin of mine."

"My mistake! My mistake!" said the fat gentleman hastily. And he left
even more suddenly than he had come.

"I hope your friend Leaper hasn't given us the slip," he remarked to the
messenger as he joined him again.

"Never fear! If he fails us we'll find him and punish him as he
deserves," said the messenger with a savage frown.

And Kiddie Katydid, looking down from his tree-top, was gladder than
ever that he had escaped this terrible trouble that had come to Leaper
the Locust.

Soon a patter, patter, patter made itself heard among the leaves.

"My goodness! Can that be rain?" Freddie Firefly exclaimed. "The moon is
shining. And I don't see a cloud in the sky."

Even as he spoke the strange sound grew louder.

"Can it be hailing?" Freddie asked Kiddie Katydid anxiously.

"Oh, no!" Kiddie told him. "What you hear is nothing but Leaper the
Locust's cousin's family. They're just beginning to arrive."

Freddie Firefly could scarcely believe his own ears.

"Why, there must be dozens of them!" he cried.

"More than that!" Kiddie Katydid replied.

"Hundreds, then!"

"Still more!" Kiddie Katydid said.

"Well, _thousands_, then!" cried Freddie Firefly. "You don't mean to say
there are more of 'em than that?"

"There are tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands," Kiddie Katydid
declared solemnly. "They'll eat everything they can find. And we shall
be lucky if they leave enough for the rest of us to live on, after they
pass on."

"How did you learn all this?" Freddie Firefly wanted to know.

"That's another of my secrets," said Kiddie Katydid.

So Freddie Firefly went off to hunt for Leaper the Locust. He knew now
why Leaper had struggled to escape from that mysterious messenger with
the curious message. And Freddie intended to ask Leaper a good many
questions about his cousins.

But he couldn't find Leaper anywhere. He searched for him high and low,
and far and wide. But nobody knew where Leaper was.

"There are lots of Short-horns everywhere to-night," Benjamin Bat told
him. "I claim any one of t