"I assure you," said the Professor, "that your tale does credit to your teachers in elocution." "We all thank you," said the Artist, "for what we've had--and won't you continue at the next session--Scheherazade?" "I'll see," said she. "Billy! Where are you!" "I have mysteriously disappeared," replied the Groom from behind the tree. "Come hunt me!" CHAPTER III At the behest of Aconite, the party refrained from expressions of more than mild interest at the Norris Basin. Aconite assured them that they ought to save their strong expressions for things farther on. The Poet wrote some verses for the purpose of creating a legend to account for the fact that the Monarch Geyser ceased to spout some ten years ago. But when he came to the Growler, and the Hurricane, and the new Roaring Holes, which are really gigantic steam whistles, he dismounted from his Pegasus and threaded his way through the dead forest--killed by escaping steam--in a trance of wonder. But Aconite's advice to economize language until the Lower Geyser Basin should be reached was followed so far as superlatives were concerned. Night found them scattered, and it was only when they took the road once more that the party was whole again. The Artist stopped the surrey at the Gibbon Paint Pots so that he might use some of their bubbling sediment as a pigment with which to paint a souvenir picture for each of the party. Cañons, boiling springs and waterfalls--rocks, mountains, wild beauty on every hand--all these they were assured were inconsiderable parts of the prelude to the marvels awaiting them at the next halt. But when they came to the crossing of Nez Percè Creek, the Bride expressed a desire to wait, to stop, to rest her eyes and quiet her spirits before anything more striking should be imposed upon her powers of observation. "I fell like Olger the Dane and King Desiderio, when they watched on the tower for Charlemagne; and if we go on, I shall, like Olger, fall 'as one dead at Desiderio's feet!'" The Poet looked in the Bride's eyes, and nodded sympathetically. Mr. Driscoll pondered the mysteries of the Bride's statement for a while, and threw down his lines. "If that's the way the Bride feels," said he, "we'll stop here and grub our systems up a little." "The champion hard-luck story of this or any other age," said the Colonel, as they lighted their pipes after dinner, "was enacted right up this creek in that Nez Percè uprising wherein I fought and bled and died." "More matter for myths," said the Artist. "Let's have it, e'en though it be as dolorous as the tale of the Patient Griselda."