Professor Boggs was in a brown study from the time his name emerged from the hat on starting from the Upper Geyser Basin, until the equipage of the Seven Wonderers, as the Poet called the party, reached the Thumb Lunch Station on Yellowstone Lake, nineteen miles to the east--which drive they made between breakfast and luncheon. The Colonel had telephoned ahead for a special banquet for the eight that night, at which Professor Boggs was to tell his story, and civilized life was to be resumed for the nonce--"To prevent," as the Colonel explained, "our running wild so that we'll have to be blindfolded and backed onto the cars when we get back to Gardiner." All up the pleasant Firehole Valley, the Professor worked at a packet of papers which he took from his bag. "I'll bet he gives us an essay on some phase of rural education," challenged the Artist, with no takers. Past the exquisite Kepler Cascade they went, after a stop which filled all except the Hired Man and the Professor with delight. When the party alighted for the walk of half a mile to the Lone Star Geyser, these two remained with the surrey--the Professor busy, the Hired Man lazily smoking. His mental film-pack was exhausted. Spring Creek Cañon proved another of those comforting features which relieve the strain of constant astonishment in the Park--the narrow and winding cañon, with its homelike rocks and cliffs, topped by inky evergreens, shut them in like some comforting shelter against the tempest of the marvelous. Down this wild glen tumbled a clear stream of cold water, bordered with ferns, willows and alders. The Bride scooped up a little of the water in her hand and drank it. "Isn't it funny?" she asked. "Isn't what funny?" asked the Groom. "To find water actually cool and clear, and flowing down a glen of just rocks, with no steam, or rainbow colors, or anything but good earth and stones? I feel like one just out of some sort of inferno." "The first feller to roam these here hollers," said Aconite, "was a guy named John Colter. He came out with the Lewis and Clark expedition, and stopped on the way back to trap. That was about 1807. He got into the Park some way, and when he emerged he told of it. And there was where the fust reppytation for truth an' veracity was blighted by the p'isenous exhalations of this region of wonders." "Was he Jimbridgered?" asked the Artist. "Was he whiched?" "Jimbridgered; Marcopoloed; Münchhausened; Mandevilled; Driscolled; placed in the Ananias Club?" "He shore was," replied Aconite. "W'y this place was called Colter's Hell from Saint Joe to Salt Lake by them as didn't believe in it. 'Whar'd this eventuate?' a puncher'd say to a feller that had seen something. 'In Colter's Hell' another would say, meanin' that it never did occur--an' if he didn't smile when he said it, there'd be gun play. An' hyar was all them marvels that Colter'd seen, and more, all the time!"