But we did the best we could, and the chicken and cold meats bein' more solid, had held together quite well, so there was some pieces of it conside'able hull, though it was all very wet and soppy. But we separated 'em out as well as we could, and begun to make preparations to eat. We didn't feel so animated about eatin' as we should if we hadn't been so sick to our stomachs. But we felt as if we must hurry, for the man that owned the boat said he knew it would rain before night by the way the sun scalded. There wasn't a man or a woman there but what the presperation and sweat jest poured down their faces. We was a haggard and melancholy lookin' set. There was a piece of woods a little ways off, but it was up quite a rise of ground, and there wasn't one of us but what had the rheumatiz more or less. We made up a fire on the sand, though it seemed as if it was hot enough to steep tea and coffee as it was. After 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."