THE UNLUCKY SETTLERS.

BY WILLIAM O. STODDARD.

Deacon Whitney's drug store fronted on the green, and Steve had just come out, and his father was standing in the door.

Just then Andy Yokum called out across the street, "Steve! Steve Whitney! what are we boys going to do with this here Saturday, now we've lost our ball?"

"I know what I'd like to do. Come over here."

"What is it, Steve?"

"Well, you see, Andy, I was down to old Captain Hollowboy's after school yesterday with a lot of all sorts of chemicals and things he'd been buying, and I knocked and I knocked, and I couldn't get in; so I went around to the back door, and there was Captain Hollowboy looking up at the biggest hornets' nest you ever saw."

"Hornets' nest? Wasn't he trying to break 'em up?"

"No, sir! He was just looking at 'em. And he told me he'd been watching that nest ever since the hornets began on it."

"Haven't they stung him yet?"

"Well, no; he said they hadn't. He's an old bachelor, you know, and he said hornets were good enough neighbors as long as there weren't any small boys around."

"Couldn't we get him to let us go in on that nest?"

"That's just what I asked him, and he said—"

"Hold up, Steve—here he comes!"

"Good-morning, Captain Hollowboy. Toothache, eh? I'll get you something."

"Toothache, Deacon! No, it isn't toothache. Is this the drug store? Have I got here? Can't but just see."

"Steve," shouted Andy, "just look at his face! It's all mud."

Captain Hollowboy had taken away his great red bandana handkerchief to look around him, and Deacon Whitney was holding up both his hands.

"What is the matter, Captain?"

"Hornets, Deacon, hornets. The most pernicious and ungrateful of all insects. I have applied aqueously saturated alluvium, but I want some ammonia."

"Slapped on some mud first, and now you want to try some hartshorn? That's right. I'll get you some quick."

He was getting behind the counter very fast for so fat a man, but Steve shouted, "Hurrah, Andy! let's go for the Captain's nest."

"Do, my dear boys, do. I consent to their utter obliteration and extermination; but I wish you would preserve their interesting domicile intact."

"He means, Andy, that we may kill the hornets, but we mustn't spoil the nest. He's awful on big words."

"How did it happen?" asked the Deacon, as he held out a big bottle and a sponge.

"Happen? It was no fault of mine. I did but attempt an unobtrusive inspection of the marvellous ramifications of their intricate habitation."

"That's it," said Steve. "He stuck his nose into the nest, and they all went for him. Come on, Andy."

They were out of sight by the time half the mud had been sponged from the Captain's long lean face, but before they reached his queer little house, at the further corner of the village green, the hornets were in trouble.

Harman Strauss and Bill Ogden and Van Seaver had seen the Captain run, and they all knew about that hornets' nest.

"Fire's the thing," said Van.

"Biggest smoke we can make," said Harm Strauss.

"We must wrap our heads up," said Bill Ogden, "but it'll be the biggest kind of a Saturday."

Van had some matches in his pocket, and the heap of sticks and straw and chips the boys gathered for him was a foot high by the time he got the third match well a-going.

The hornet's nest was a big one, and there was a wonderfully numerous tribe of winged settlers in it. They had picked out a fine airy place to hang their house—just under the eaves of the open shed, back of Captain Hollowboy's one-story kitchen, at the corner.

The right place for the fire was at the foot of the upright corner post, but Harman Strauss told Van, "If we stick it there, Van, we'll set the house afire."

"That'd never do," said Bill Seaver. "It's jam-full of all sorts of chemicals and things. There'd be an awful blow-up if that house got afire."

"Might spoil the village."

"Oh, but wouldn't it blow those hornets good and high!"

Just at that moment Steve Whitney and Andy Yokum came over the fence. They did not even wait to put their handkerchiefs around their necks and faces before they began to gather great bunches of weeds.

It was time every boy of them had some kind of a brush in his hand, for the angry insects had smelled the smoke, and were coming out to see about it.

Such a fire department as they turned themselves into! Or, rather, they set out as a kind of police brigade to fight a crowd of young incendiaries, and save Captain Hollowboy's house from being set on fire and burned up. They were at least determined that not one of those boys should get any nearer the house they had so carefully built for themselves against the eaves.

"Mud! mud!" shouted Steve, in half a minute. "Boys, where does the Captain keep his mud?"

"Have they stung you?"

"Oh, my nose!"

Steve had just started to run for some mud, when he gave another shrill whoop, "Yow! he's in my neck!" and there was no such thing as any other boy helping him, for each one of them was thrashing away at the nearest hornet. That is, except Van, for he had been after some more sticks, and was just putting them on the fire when he felt as if some one had dropped a live coal right on his left ankle.

"Wah!" yelled Van; "I've burned a hole in one of my stockings. Ou! it's burned another! Oh, boys, it's two hornets lit right side by side. Oh dear!" and there he was, rolling over in the grass, and striking with a bunch of weeds at something he saw in the air above him.

SMOKING THE HORNETS' NEST.—Drawn by S. G. McCutcheon.

Harman Strauss had been the wisest of them all, for he had pulled a couple of damp towels off the clothes-line, and had wrapped his head in one, and given the other to Bill Ogden.

Now he had found Captain Hollowboy's garden rake, and was shouting, "Give it to 'em, boys! You kill the hornets, and I'll pull down the nest. We must keep it for the Captain."

"He wants it for a specimen," explained Steve Whitney.

"Will he pickle it somehow?" asked Andy; but at that moment it seemed to him as if he had leaned against a red-hot pin, and he clapped his hand to his side. He had better not have dropped his bunch of weeds just then, for in a second more he was calling out, "Van! Van! did you say you knew where the mud was?"

"Here it is, Andy, right by the cistern. The Captain must have stirred it up for himself."

"And they kept right on stinging him while he was putting it on."

"Yah! That's just what they're doing now. They can sting right through a shirt sleeve."

"Sting? I guess they can; right through anything. Oh dear! I've got another! Boys, we won't leave one of 'em!"

"Boys! boys! I say, boys, what are you doing? I never indicated my assent to the application of fire!"

"I declare!" exclaimed Deacon Whitney, as he came through the gate behind Captain Hollowboy, "the young rascals have set them all a-going."

"Can you see, Deacon? I can not with any accuracy. Where have they located the combustion?"

"Stuck their bonfire right under the nest, Captain. Let 'em alone. The upright's burnin' a leetle, but you can put it out easy."

As he said that, Harm Strauss made a valiant pull with his rake, and down came the nest right into the bonfire.

"There!" exclaimed Steve, "you've spoiled it!"

"Such an exceptionally well-developed specimen!" groaned the Captain. "Pull it out, one of you."

"Oh! oh!" roared the Deacon, clapping both hands on his ample stomach, and doing his best to lean over; "I hope he has pulled it out. It must have gone in half an inch."

The fire had rapidly blazed high and hot, for straw and splinters and chips kindle fast; and there were no hornets in that nest now, nor any nest left to hold hornets. In fact, for that matter, Captain Hollowboy's yard and garden, and the road in front, were too small to hold what was left of them, and any men and boys at the same time.

Old Mrs. Jones, who lived next door, put her head out of her window to see what was going on, and then that window came down with a great slam; and the next thing seen of Mrs. Jones, her silver spectacles were dropping off into the water-pail as she stooped over it.

There was no doubt but what that settlement of hornets was thoroughly broken up; but Captain Hollowboy led the way back to the drug store, and they were all ready to go with him.

"I am sorry," he said to the Deacon, "that you or any of my young friends are suffering physical inconvenience from the atrocious assaults of those pernicious insects, but I regret the obliteration of so remarkable a specimen of their ingenuity."

BUCKWHEAT CAKES.