"There's some after me yet, Phil, and oh! how they do hit you! I'm beginning to swell up right now. How'll I get away from the swarm, Phil? You tell me what to do, and quick!" "Run for the lake and jump in!" called out Phil. "Duck under, and keep there as long as you can stand it." Without thinking twice, and only too willing to blindly obey, Lub galloped straight to the shore of the lake. He happened to strike a little bank, where the water was quite deep. "Here I go!" they heard him shout, and then came a tremendous splash. "Oh! my!" gasped X-Ray, "that settles our fishing for this morning! He'll scare every trout in the lake with his threshing around!" Ethan was bubbling over with laughter, and even Phil had hard work to keep from giving a shout when upon reaching the shore they saw what was going on. Lub stood in water up to his chin. He kept bobbing his head in an anxious effort to locate any determined insect that still hovered near by. Occasionally he would duck entirely out of sight, and move along a dozen feet, as though in hopes of eluding the enemy in this way. Taking pity on the poor fellow Phil assured him the coast was clear, and that he was safe in coming out. Such a woe begone figure he presented. It seemed like a shame to laugh, but the boys could not have helped it had their lives depended on keeping sober faces. Besides looking like a drowned rat, poor Lub found that his face was already swelling up. His jaws looked as they may have done when he had the mumps. One eye threatened to be lost altogether, on account of the puffiness all around it. His nose had received due attention, and even his hands had failed to come through the scorching fire unscathed. Despite all this Lub tried to grin, although the effort was, as X-Ray said pretty much of a "ghastly failure." "I know I'm a sight to behold, fellows," whimpered Lub. "I guess I deserve all I got, too, for being such a fool. But how was I to know that old hornets' nest almost lying on the ground under the bush was _loaded_!" "What did you take it for?" asked Phil. "Why," replied Lub, "I supposed it was a regular giant puff-ball, one of the toad-stool kind that go off with a crack and a puff of smoke when you kick 'em." "Then you actually kicked it?" cried Phil. "Just what I did--oh! murder!" gasped Lub, feeling of his enlarged head in dismay. "And it went off, all right, I bet you?" asserted Ethan, uproariously. "A million of 'em came hustling out and started to eating me up," Lub went on to explain, plaintively. "I killed 'em in droves, but there was always a fresh lot. Then I ran--you saw how I had to carry on. Guess it wasn't any laughing matter to _me_! And it isn't right now. If I keep on swelling like I am I'll bust. Talk to me about having the big head--bein' President of the United States wouldn't make my cranium swell any more. Phil, ain't you going to do something for a chum that's had trouble?"