“I suppose so but not to-night. I’m too tired and I’m afraid my brain wouldn’t function properly if I tried to work it now. Let’s sleep on it and then we’ll go into a committee of the whole tomorrow,” and Bob began to pull off his clothes.
How long he had been asleep Bob did not know but, suddenly, he found himself wide awake. Something had wakened him he knew but what it was he had no idea. It was pitch dark in the little cabin. On the other side of the tiny bed-room he could hear Jack’s regular breathing and knew that he was sound asleep.
“Now I wonder what—” he thought just as the shrill weird cry of the loon rang through the stillness of the night.
“I guess that was it,” he thought, and then, from far off in the forest came the “whoo, whoo, whoo” of the owl.
He was about to let his head fall back on the pillow again when the cry of the loon was repeated. Instantly he was straining his ears to listen. There was a false note in that last cry. It did not ring true.
“If a loon made that noise, I’m a Dutchman,” he muttered.
And then the hoot of the owl was repeated, this time nearer than at first.
Those are signals sure as guns, he thought. That last might pass for an owl but that loon has got a lot to learn.
While these thoughts were running through his brain he had slipped from the bed and was silently pulling his clothes on over his pajamas. A glance at the luminous face of his wrist watch told him that it was nearly two o’clock.
“No use to wake Jack up,” he thought as he stole silently toward the door. “I’ll just take a look around.”