[Illustration: The Luckless Aviator and the Pig.]
"Are you hurt?" yelled the crowd.
"Am I hurt—aber I am dead, I dink!" shouted back the badly rumpled
Schmidt. "Ach himmel! der Grasshopper is a pig-pen-hopper, ain't it?"
He hastened over to where the Grasshopper, her engine still going and her propeller still beating the air, lay like a dismal wreck in the trees on the other side of the pig-pen.
"Donner und blitzen, you Grasshobber, you my neck brek yet, I dink," roared Schmidt, gazing at the disaster. "Vos iss los mit you, any vay, you bad Grasshobber. Himmel! dot propeller almost takes my nose off. Aber nicht, I am a dunderhead. I forget to turn der switch; dot's vy I can't stob der Grasshobber ven she hobs avay."
Rapidly muttering these remarks in an undertone the old man finally turned off the switch and the engine, with a grunt and a sigh, came to a standstill.
"Vell, I am oud of der race," announced philosophical Schmidt, as the propeller came to a stop. "Aber maybe dot's chust as vell. If I ged into der race maybe I be by der cemetery already to-morrow."
As he was consoling himself with this thought a rough-looking man in overalls hastened up. He carried a shotgun.
"Get off my turnip land," he shouted to the crowd, "or I'll fill some one full of birdshot."
The crowd scattered, and old Schmidt among them; but the man with the shotgun was on him in two jumps.