“Oh! dear, I thought it was closer on half an hour,” sighed Bumpus, who was dragging his feet along as though each one weighed a ton. “Four whole minutes left! But Allan, mebbe that watch of yours has stopped! I had one that used to play tricks like that on me, ’specially in the mornings, when by rights I ought to have been out of bed. It was the most accommodating thing you ever saw; I’d wake up, take a look and see it stood at a quarter to seven, and then roll over for another little snooze. Then I’d look again after a while, and see it was still a quarter to seven, which allowed me to have another nap. And when my dad came up to ask me if I was sick, I’d tell him he’d have to get me a better watch than that if he expected me to rise promptly.”
“And did he?” asked Davy.
Bumpus shrugged his fat shoulders as he replied:
“I climb out of bed every morning now when a great big alarm clock rattles away close to my ear. Dad sets it there before he retires, and I can’t chuck it out of the window, either. So you see watches go back on their best friends sometimes.”
“Well, mine is running like a steam engine right now,” Allan remarked, “and the four minutes are nearly down to three. Keep a stiff upper lip, Bumpus, and the day’s hike will soon be over, no matter what the night brings.”
That was the thing that bothered them all, for the night was setting in so gloomily that it filled their hearts with secret misgivings and forebodings. The lonesomeness of their surroundings had something to do with this feeling, perhaps, although these boys were used to camping out, and had indeed roughed it many times in far-distant regions, where wild beasts roamed, and made the night hideous with their tongues.
At least nothing of that kind might be expected here along the peaceful Susquehanna. Their sufferings were apt to come mostly from the severity of the weather, and their unpreparedness to meet a storm such as now threatened.
The three minutes had certainly dwindled to two, and might be even approaching the last figure to which their progress was limited, when suddenly Giraffe gave a shout.
“We win, boys!” was the burden of his announcement; “because, as sure as you live, I glimpsed a light ahead there. Look, you can see it easy enough now. We’re going to have a roof over our heads to-night, after all! What a lucky thing it was you said ten minutes, Thad. Suppose, now, you’d just notched it off with five, why, we’d have missed connections, that’s what!”
“But hold on, Giraffe, don’t you see that light’s on the wrong side of the road,” remonstrated Allan. “It ought to be on the right, but instead it lies close to the edge of the water. Now, no man would be silly enough to build his farmhouse on the river bank, where any spring rise might wash it away.”