“Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray to God my soul to keep:
And if I die before I wake,
I pray to God my soul to take.”
In saying these homely but beautiful lines, our adventurer had no intention of courting slumber. Nevertheless, he was sound asleep in ten minutes. The incidents of the morning, the climb up the hill, the rowing, the brush with the tramp—all these things, combined with the fact that he had stayed up late the night before and had risen that morning at five o’clock, sent him into a slumber the sounder for the quiet and the freshness of the great river.
About the same hour in which Clarence had snuggled low down in the boat and presently fallen into deep slumber, a gentleman came hurrying down to the McGregor boat-landing. He was a rather handsome man in the prime of life, dressed in a manner that showed he belonged to the many-tailored East. He was pulling at his mustache, gazing anxiously all about him, and betraying in many ways nervousness and anxiety.
“Beg pardon,” he began, addressing a group of men and women who were waiting for the ferry-boat that plied between McGregor and Prairie du Chien, “but have any of you chanced to see a boy of fourteen in a white sailor suit about here? He’s my son.”
“Did you say a white sailor suit?” asked a man of middle age.
“Yes.”