She set her fishnet bag on the stump she vacated and provided herself with a cudgel before starting to investigate. Advancing cautiously, she saw a bunch of tall grass wave in a suspicious manner. She smote the clump with her cudgel, and a large, warty toad jumped out into the open. It was stunned, and stood blinking as if trying to locate the danger.
"Nasty thing!" exclaimed Miss Mercy, viciously, and raised her club to finish it.
The blow landed, and Miss Mercy and the toad saw stars simultaneously, for Aunt Lizzie brought down a four-foot stick and crushed in the crown of Miss Mercy's alpine hat.
"You dread-ful woman!" Aunt Lizzie shrieked at her, and it was her purpose to strike again but the stick was rotten, and since only some six inches remained in her hand, she had to content herself with crying: "You horrible creature! You unnatural woman! 'Shady' Lane--you belong in an asylum!"
Since Miss Mercy had been told this before, she resented it doubly, and no one can say what else might have happened if Wallie, hearing the disturbance, had not hurried forward to discover what was occurring.
"She was killing a hop-toad!" Aunt Lizzie screamed, hysterically. Then her legs collapsed, while Miss Mercy boomed that if she did, it was none of Aunt Lizzie's business--it was not her hop-toad.
The astounding news passed from mouth to mouth that Aunt Lizzie and Miss Mercy had been fighting in the brush with clubs, like Amazons, and everyone rushed forward to view the combatants and to learn the details, but the chugging of a motor sent Miss Mercy into the middle of the road to flag it before they could hear her side of the story.
It proved to be no less a person than Rufus Reed, who was transporting provisions on a truck between Prouty and a road-camp in the Park. Rufus welcomed company and intimated that his only wonder was that they were not all leaving.
So Miss Mercy clambered up beside Rufus and without looking back started on her return journey to Zanesville, Ohio, to soothe the brow of the suffering and minister to the wants of the dying in her professional capacity.
Pinkey sombrely looked after the cloud of dust in which Rufus and the Angel of Mercy vanished.
"That's one chicken we counted before it was hatched," he observed, regretfully, to Wallie.
The scenery was sublime that morning and the party were in ecstasies, but mere mountains, waterfalls, and gorges could not divert Wallie's mind from the disquieting fact that he must somehow convey the information to Mr. Hicks that his presence at table with the guests was undesirable.