“Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep;
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take. Amen.”
Like older mortals of feeble faith, he looked for an immediate and practical answer, in the shape, perhaps, of his mother, with his little night-gown and bowl of bread and milk.
“My sakes alive!” he grumbled between his sobs, “they’re the meanest fings I ever saw. How long do they s’pose I’m goin’ to wait for ’em in this dark? When the bears have et me up in teenty snips, then they’ll be saterfied, I guess, and wisht they’d tookened gooder care of me—a little speck of a boy, lefted out in this dark, bear-y place, all by his lone self. O—oo—oo—oh!” and he wound up with a murderous yell, which had never failed before to bring the whole family to his side.
His former prayer seeming to be in vain, he found a soft place, brushed it as clean as possible, and with difficulty bending his little stiff, scratched body into a kneeling position, he prayed his nightly postscript to “Now I lay me”: “God bless papa, ’n’ mamma, ’n’ Bell, ’n’ Jack, ’n’ Madge, ’n’ Polly, ’n’ Phil, ’n’ Geoff, ’n’ Elsie.” Then, realizing that he was in a perilous position, and it behooved him to be as pious as possible, he added: “And please bless Pancho, ’n’ Hop Yet, ’n’ Lubin, ’n’ the goat—not the wild goat up on the hill, but my goat, what got sick to his stummick when I painted him with black letters.”
What a dreadful calamity, to be sure, if the wrong goat had been blessed by mistake! His whole duty performed, he picked the toadstools for his papa’s Sunday dinner, and, leaning his head against the lone stump, cried himself to sleep.
But relief was near, though he little suspected it as he lay in the sound, dreamless sleep which comes only to the truly good. There was a crashing sound in the still darkness, and Bell plunged through the thick underbrush with a cry of delight.
“He is here! Dear, dear Geoff, he is all here! I knew it, I knew it! Hurrah!—no, I mean—thank God!” she said softly as she stooped down to kiss her mischievous little brother.
“But what a looking creature!” exclaimed Geoff, as he stooped over the recovered treasure. “See, Bell, his curls are glistening with pitch, his dress is torn into ribbons, and his hands—ugh, how dirty!”
“Poor little darling, he is thoroughly used up,” whispered Bell, wiping tears of joy from her brown eyes. “Now, I’ll run home like lightning to blow the horn; and you carry Dicky, for he is too sleepy and stiff to walk; and, Geoff”—(here she laid an embarrassed hand on his shoulder)—“I’m afraid he’ll be awfully cross, but you’ll not mind it, will you? He’s so worn-out.”