should prefer to be unconscious all the time,” flung back Emma.

“Ah! The food does smell good. Food always has a strange effect on me, and really, I haven’t smelled any in almost a thousand years—not since breakfast this morning. By the way, where do we go and when do we start?”

“To the Sierras,” answered Tom Gray. “How are you, Chunky?” he added, extending a hand.

“Starved. How’s yourself?”

“I think after we go back to the dining room and after I have my dessert that I shall feel fit as a fiddle,” replied Tom. “To answer the rest of your question, we expect to start tomorrow forenoon. The ponies will be shipped in a car that is now on the siding at Oakdale.”

“Girls, what do you think of my nephew?” cried Hippy jovially, as they again seated themselves at the table.

“So far as I am concerned, I think that he is another of those bungalow fellows just like yourself, Hippy,” answered Emma. “Mr. Brown, may I ask if you ever have had any experience with mental transmigration?” she asked, turning to Chunky.

Chunky, his mouth full of food, surveyed her solemnly.

“Uh-huh!” he replied thickly. “I met one of those animals once in the Rocky Mountains. You see it was this way. We had been riding far into the night to find a suitable camping place, when we were suddenly halted by a savage growl just ahead of us. I went on ahead, with my trusty rifle ready, to slay the beast whatever it might be. Suddenly I saw him. He was the most terrible looking object that I’ve ever come up with in all my mountain experience. I threw up my rifle and shot the beast dead in his tracks.”

“Wonderful!” breathed Emma. “But what has that to do with mental transmigration?”

“I’m coming to that. It is wonderful—I mean it was. Will you believe it, that terrible beast came to life. Yes, sir, he rose right up and made for us. My pony bolted, and I fell off—just as I ordinarily do before meal time. My feet at the moment chanced to be out of the stirrups and I fell off. Well, I might have been killed—I surely would have been killed, but I wasn’t, just because of that stunt that you mentioned. I transmigrated myself out of that vicinity with a speed that left that terrible object so far behind that he just lay down and died again,” finished Stacy Brown solemnly, amid shouts of laughter, in which all but Emma Dean joined.

Stacy gave her a quick sidelong glance, and Hippy Wingate, observing the look, knew that war had been declared between Stacy Brown and Emma Dean.