“Be careful how you use them, then. This place is as dry as tinder. Now then, go to sleep.”
He backed out of the place, and the boys lay listening to the rustle and crackle of his departing steps.
“Think it was—not a snake, Chris?” said Ned, at last.
“Yes. If it had been a rattler father wouldn’t have gone off like that. You didn’t feel it crawl, did you?”
“Yes, right up in my chest, and I bore it till I felt it touch my neck, and then—Oh, it was a horrid sensation!”
“Yes,” said Chris slowly, “a horrid sensation, but it wasn’t a rattler. I say, think you can go to sleep now?”
“I’m going to try. But, I say, I never thought that sleeping out in the wilds—”
“We haven’t got to the wilds yet,” said Chris.
“No, no; but this is bad enough.”
“Pooh! We shall get used to it, and think nothing of sleeping anywhere. I say, I was asleep, and you woke me out of a beautiful dream—such a lovely one.”