Dick gave a little whistle of surprise at hearing such a startling suggestion.
“You certainly do have the most original ideas of any fellow going, Dan,” he remarked. “Such a thing might happen, of course, but there’d be small chance of it up here, with twenty boys in camp.”
“Except for my waking up at the time I did,” urged the other, “nobody’d have known about Asa’s being on his feet in the dead of night. But after you’ve had your little talk with him tell me what comes of it, will you?”
“I certainly will,” promised Dick.
Shortly afterwards he joined Asa, and entered into conversation with the boy. A little later on Dick came sauntering back to where Dan was sitting, waiting for the summons to gather on the “campus” which had not yet been given.
“Well, did he deny being abroad in the night, Dick?” eagerly asked the other, taking care to speak in a low voice.
“Not a bit,” Dick told him. “I never even had to ask him. We were talking about whether it would pay to keep the fire going at night when Asa of his own accord remarked that it was still blazing feebly when he felt so thirsty that he had to crawl out and go over to where we keep the bucket of spring water with the dipper. And he added that while he was not quite sure, because he had not got fully used to reading the time of night by the stars, he thought it must have been somewhere in the neighborhood of one o’clock.”
Dan looked thoughtful on hearing that.
“Tell you what, Dick,” he said presently. “I’m going to try to forget all about my watch. Let it go at that. So Asa is trying to be a real woodsman, is he? Well, I wish him luck then.”
With that he walked away, and Dick, looking after him, said to himself that Dan Fenwick had a heart in his breast several sizes too big for him.