route. I will, if you choose, as we ride, give you a brief account of some
of my discoveries."

The two girls exchanged glances. Quest, who had intercepted them, turned
his horse and rode in between the Professor and Lenora.

"Go right ahead, Professor," he invited. "Fortunately the girls have got
saddles like boxes--I think they both mean to go to sleep."

"An intelligent listener of either sex," the Professor said amiably, "will
be a stimulus to my memory."


2.

"You can call this fairyland, if you want," Laura remarked, gazing around
her; "I call it a nasty, damp, oozy spot."

"It seemed very beautiful when we first came," Lenora sighed, "but that
was after the heat and glare of the desert. There does seem something a
little unhealthy about it."

"I'm just about fed up with Mongars," Quest declared.

"We do nothing but lie about, and they won't even let us fire a gun off."

"Personally," the Professor confessed, holding up a glass bottle in front
of him from which a yellow beetle was making frantic efforts to escape, "I
find this little patch of country unusually interesting. The specimen
which I have here--I spare you the scientific name for him--belongs to a