"Do you mean you don't remember getting up, and coming out here?" continued the scout-master, who always probed things to the very dregs, or until he had extracted all the information possible.
"Not a thing," reaffirmed Bumpus, and his face showed that he was speaking only the truth. "I can remember laying down for a snooze, and then everything seems to be blank after that, till all of a sudden I felt that awful pain, and it made me let out a whoop, I'm telling you."
"I should think it did," muttered Giraffe; "ten Injuns rolled into one couldn't beat that howl. I sure thought the panther had got you that time!"
"Well, likely I thought just that same thing, Giraffe, when I warbled that way, because I remember now I was dreaming about gray-coated panthers. Then I thought about rattlesnakes too, because you know I can't stand for the crawlers. Next thing I opened my eyes with a jump, and saw that old owl, with every feather on his back standing up like the quills of a porcupine, and trying to jab me a second time."
Thad and Allan, who had now returned in time to hear this last exchanged looks.
"A clear case of sleep walking, seems like!" ventured the former.
"Oh! my goodness gracious! I thought I was over them tricks years ago!" exclaimed Bumpus, shivering. "If they're agoing to take me again I see my finish; because some night I'll walk off a precipice, and that'll be the end of me."
"We'll like as not have to tie you by the leg every night, just like Jim is now; and that'll stop you prancing around loose, trying to set my pets free in your sleep," Step Hen went on to say, reassuringly; but somehow Bumpus did not seem to take to the idea the least bit.
"You let me alone, that's all, Step Hen Bingham," he told the other, "and I'll fix my own business. That's what comes of you keeping the silly old owl. Serve you about right if his mate dropped in and bit the end of your big toe off to pay you up for fastening that chain on the poor thing's leg."
"Say, I like that, now; when you were the very first one to ask if we couldn't keep that same owl!" Step Hen told him.