At a word from Wild Bill the procession set out. Scipio headed it, with a child clinging to each hand, doddling along at his side all blissfully unconscious, but delighted at going whither their elders led them. Vada babbled with delight, and kept up a fire of chattering questions in a truly feminine manner, while little Jamie, stolid but no less joyous, devoured everything with hungry, thoughtful eyes, and punctuated his sister's remarks with characteristic grunts, and an occasional emphatic ejaculation and protest at the yellow pup, who would lick his dirty legs. Behind these came Sandy Joyce, the picture of absurd dignity, as he vainly strove to carry the boiler of water without scalding himself. Toby came immediately behind him, with the bundle of laundry, a tumbled mass in his arms, crushed firmly to his stout chest, lest, by any ill-fate, he should drop any of the strange garments, which looked so absurdly small in his ignorant eyes. Next came Sunny with the cleansing properties, which he carried gingerly, as though the very nature of them were repugnant to him, and the labor of carrying them an offense to his creed of life. The soap particularly troubled him. Its slippery nature made him drop it several times, till it seemed almost as though it resented him personally, and was trying to escape from the insult of such association. Wild Bill brought up the rear of the column, bearing the bright tin dippers, which clattered violently as they swung together on their string loops. He suggested nothing so much as a herder driving before him his unusual flock by the aid of a violent rattling on tin cans. Solemnly the procession wound its way down the hill. Only the voices of the children, the yapping of the pup and the clatter of tinware enlivened the journey. The men's minds were engrossed with their various charges. It was serious--desperately serious. But then, a bath in any form, much less a bath of two small children, was an affair of the gravest importance to these men. Then, too, there was nervousness with it. Everybody felt responsible, from the father to the desperate instigator of what was, in their minds, something almost amounting to an outrage.