“What do you mean, Buck?” cried Dean.
“What I was going to say,” said Mark.
“Well, gen’lemen, only this; we oughtn’t to have had a surprise like that. It was Peter Dance’s watch, warn’t it?”
“Yes,” cried Mark excitedly, as strange thoughts began to hurry through his brain.
“Well, sir, he as good as said as he was sitting down with his shooter across his knees.”
“Yes, yes,” cried Dean.
“Well, sir, why didn’t he shoot?”
“He was too much startled,” said Dean. “Poor fellow! I should have been quite as scared, with a lion creeping right up to me like that.”
“I suppose so, sir. But I don’t quite believe that tale. I never ’eerd of a lion creeping up to look at a man who was sitting by a fire.”
“No,” said Mark, in a whisper, as if to himself, and he trotted on the newly made trampled trail of the oxen.