When he heard about the lights going out at the church, just when a convert was about to be immersed, and the cries of the alarmed audience, together with shrieks from the frightened woman, who really thought she had been transplanted from this world into another, since everything became suddenly black around her, the guide grinned. He had never heard of such carrying on, and thought it was comical. But Thad knew that more than one person had need of a doctor after that episode; and that if actual proof could be procured concerning the culprits who cut the electric wires, they would have been severely punished by the town fathers.
Somehow none of the boys seemed in such a hurry to lie down now. Thad’s stories of events which they knew from first hands started them talking again; and by degrees some of the rest related other doings that were commonly laid at the door of the three Cranford scapegraces.
Bumpus changed his blanket three separate times in the course of half an hour. There was no draught now to complain of, since Eli had managed to get the door closed; but Thad noticed the fat and timid scout eying that wide throat of the chimney; and really believed Bumpus had come to suspect that it was large enough to admit of the passage of one of those hungry wolves, should they find all other avenues of ingress closed to them. And he did not fancy being directly in the road of the first one that came in.
Bumpus knew that he must prove a juicy morsel for any half-starved beast of prey; and that, given the chance, they were just sure to pick him out. Giraffe was playing safe under any considerations, for the animal that would prefer that bag of bones must be out of its mind.
And Thad also made up his mind that after Bumpus got fairly to sleep he would manage to get possession of the gun he had hitched closer to him, and which was the double-barreled weapon carried into the woods by Davy, who had made no protest when the stout boy coolly appropriated the same.
There could be no telling but that Bumpus, with his mind worked up over that bear, and the wolf that had howled away off up the river, might dream he was being hotly attacked. And a gun in the possession of a greenhorn can be even more dangerous under such conditions than if an adept handled it.
“I’ve just thought of a good thing,” suddenly exclaimed Bumpus.
“Then get it out of your system in a hurry, or it’ll hurt you,” said Giraffe.
“No danger of anything good ever hurting you, Giraffe,” declared the other, with a fine show of sarcasm that caused the tall scout to grin; for somehow, when he and Bumpus got to exchanging compliments, Giraffe always seemed rather tickled if the other managed to give him a sly dig.
“Well, let’s hear what struck you, all of a sudden,” he remarked.