Add to this that the first thing I struck was not a spring mattress, or a high hair cushion, but a wheel-barrow, filled with small wooden cones, with sharp edges and cruel points. The shock caused me to send up such a howl that I imagined I could see the hair of every Elk in the land standing on end. A well-defined laugh answered the howl, and before I could think of the front end of the prayers for the dead, I heard the High Muck-a-Muck's voice ring out:-- "Wing him away," he commanded, "on Eincycle, the one-wheeled horse of the Hereafter." [Illustration: MUCK-A-MUCK.] They wung me away at once. I discovered that the one-wheeled horse designated by the High Muck-a-Muck when he made use of the half German and half Latin word in his command was a very modern wheel-barrow. The road over which the winging was done was, to say the least, an unpleasant one. There was an obstruction of some kind every six inches--hills and hollows without number--and, even if I had not already been physically shattered by the exciting episodes of the first part of the initiation, the merciless jolting I got and the sharp-pointed cones I kept dancing up and down on were sufficient torture to make me long for some quiet, peaceful spot on which I might stretch out my wearied limbs and close my eyes forever. I don't know how far I was carried over this rough road, which terminated in a tank of chilly water, into which I was unceremoniously dumped, while a shout went up from the assembled brotherhood that indicated that they were highly delighted over my prospects of being drowned. After sinking three times without any apparent effort having been made to rescue me, I evinced a disposition to remain under water. I was beginning to fill up rapidly, and celestial visions were already flitting before me, when something sharp ran through my shoulder and I felt myself lifted to the water's surface. "See that he remains blindfolded," shouted the High Muck-a-Muck, and, while I still dangled from an iron hook on the end of a stout pole, the dripping handkerchief was tightened across my eyes. "Put him through the Purgation rite," was the next order, in accordance with which I was thrown, face forward, upon a barrel, and one Elk taking me by the heels while another held my head, I was rolled and rolled until I had passed through one of the most violent spells of sea-sickness anybody ever experienced. "Will the candidate recover?" asked the High Muck-a-Muck. "I have some hopes, your Majesty," answered the Potential Pill-Prescriber. "Then bring in the Krupp gun," the Muck-a-Muck commanded, "and while he still has life, let the candidate climb the cloud-heights around which many a Prophet has soared."