Finally we left the railroad track, and started on the home stretch over the old turnpike. We felt more at ease now, since houses were in plain sight, and the town distant only a matter of thirty minutes' walking. Here we met a man driving a sorrel horse in a wagon. Joe Carter hailed him. "Say, mister, do you know what time it is?" asked Joe. The man pulled up the horse, and took a watch out of his pocket. He looked at the dial, and then held the watch to his ear. "Well," he remarked leisurely, "guess my watch has stopped again. But I can tell yer pretty close. It was quarter to nine when I came by Moulton's, an' that wa'n't more'n fifteen minutes ago. It's 'bout nine o'clock now,--I guess you young fellers better be gettin' home pretty quick, or you won't get no breakfast!" "_What?_" We all shouted at once. The man looked at us bewildered. "What are you talkin' about?" Joe Carter asked him; "quarter of nine--in the evening?" "Evening?" said the man; "you crazy? No,--quarter to nine in the mornin', of course. What do you--oh! I see! Been spendin' the night in the woods, an' got lost, ain't yer?" "No," Joe replied; "we been out all day,--we started 'fore daylight this morning, an' we thought it was night." The man still stared, but gradually he began to grasp the situation. His mouth slowly opened, a grin began to creep round to his ears, and he cackled. Cackled offensively and long. We could not stand that, and we hurried along the road. The man stood up in his wagon, looking after us, and still uttering that idiotic cackle. "Well, we're a lot of numb-heads," remarked Rob Currier. Apparently we all agreed, but no one said so. We stubbed along in the dust, silent and ashamed. The fiasco had taken the life out of us. We did not want to go back to the woods and we did not want to return home. The jeers that might greet us there would be worse than the laughter of the man in the wagon. Out for an all-day expedition on the last day before school opened, out for a grand exploration of the wild country,--and we had eaten all three of our meals and come home at nine o'clock in the morning! What were these bats and night-birds that we had seen? Where was the sunset and all the rest of it? This last day of vacation to be spoiled-- Suddenly Joe Carter stopped in the middle of the road. His mouth opened, and then a grin spread over his face. "By Jings!" he shouted. We stopped and gazed at him. Then he began to jump about excitedly on one leg. "Don't you see?" he cried. "What? See what?" "Why, don't you see? What do we care for that old hayseed in the wagon? Or for any one? We've still got a whole day of vacation left!" The following pages contain advertisements of a few of the Macmillan novels. BY E. B. DEWING OTHER PEOPLE'S HOUSES _Cloth, 12mo, $1.50_ SOME OPINIONS OF THE WORK