Arrived on firm ground, Raymonde certainly looked a deplorable object. Her feet were two shapeless lumps of wet clay. She regarded them with rueful consternation. Ardiune came running up, and, being of a practical turn of mind, set to work to scrape her friend clean with a thin piece of stone. She succeeded in removing the bulk of the matter adhering to her, but there still remained a most unsightly coating of mud. "What were you doing to get yourself in such a fix?" she asked. "I don't know. It looked quite solid, and then, when I stepped on it, I just sank in--squash! I might have been swallowed up in it and killed, if Ave hadn't tugged me out!" "You look a nice object to walk home with!" giggled Aveline. "What'll Gibbie say?" What Miss Gibbs remarked when she saw the state of her pupil's garments was: "Really, Raymonde, I might have known you would be sure to do some stupid thing! No other girl in the school has fallen into the mud. Why didn't you keep with the rest, and look where you were going? You're more trouble than everybody else put together. If you can't behave yourself when you come on an excursion, you must be left behind to do some preparation." The Mystics consoled their leader as best they could, offering her their last remaining Paradise drops, and walking in a clump round her through the village to shield her from observation. Ardiune, who was poetically inclined, thought the occasion worthy of being celebrated in verse, and at bedtime handed Raymonde the following effusion, illustrated with spirited sketches in black lead-pencil, representing her with clay-covered feet of gigantic proportions. Raymonde, a nice and cheerful child Who seldom wept and often smiled, Was taken by her teachers kind A jaunt, to elevate her mind. By lengthy ladders undismayed, Behold her seek the quarry's shade, With firm resolve to hit and hew, And find a fossil fern or two. She rapped the rocks with anxious pick, And scooped the ammonites out quick, But as she rang her brief tap-tap There chanced to her a sad mishap. Urged on by hope of fossil round, She stepped on some perfidious ground, So now behold our luckless Ray Plunged in the midst of horrid clay. The mud had nearly reached her waist, She called aloud in frantic haste: "I sink, I sink in quagmire sable, To free myself I am unable!" Her friend, who hurried to her shout, Had much ado to drag her out. See! thick with mud and faint with fright, She bravely bears her woeful plight. Her tender teacher's anxious fears She soothes, and dries her friends' fond tears, Declaring, with a courage calm, The outing had been worth th' alarm.