on one leg.

"Do you mean you don't believe me?" asked the girl, "or is it
that you are merely brave?"

"Merely brave!" exclaimed the young man. "Massachusetts is so
far north for lions," he continued, "that I fancy what you saw
was a grizzly bear. But I have my trusty electric torch with
me, and if there is anything a bear cannot abide, it is to be
pointed at by an electric torch."

"Let us pretend," cried the girl, "that we are the babes in the
wood, and that we are lost."

"We don't have to pretend we're lost," said the man, "and as I
remember it, the babes came to a sad end. Didn't they die,
and didn't the birds bury them with leaves?"

"Sam and Mr. Peabody can be the birds," suggested the girl.

"Sam and Peabody hopping around with leaves in their teeth
would look silly," objected the man, "I doubt if I could keep
from laughing."

"Then," said the girl, "they can be the wicked robbers who
came to kill the babes."

"Very well," said the man with suspicious alacrity, "let us be
babes. If I have to die," he went on heartily, "I would
rather die with you than live with any one else."