"Oh! is that so, Steve?" cried Bandy-legs, with considerable of satire in his voice.
"Sure it is," the other went on to say, unblushingly. "Supposin' now I'd just continued to hit the hay, and snored on like you two seemed to have done, what's the answer?"
Bandy-legs and Toby exchanged puzzled looks.
"W-w-whatever do you m-m-mean, Steve?" asked the latter.
"How about that fine ham? When, you looked around everywhere for it to-morrow morning and couldn't find the same high or low, you'd wish Steve Dowdy might have had a little walking fit on, and saved your bacon for you, eh?"
Max laughed at hearing that.
"I guess Steve's got it on you, boys, this time," he remarked. "It seems that in some cases walking in your sleep may turn out to be the right thing. We do owe him something, because it saved our ham this time. But all the same he's got to stop the habit before it gets him into a peck of trouble."
"I s-s-say we p-p-put a rope on him nights," Toby ventured, with emphasis. "Then if he tries to s-s-slope he'll find himself p-p-pulled up with a round turn."
"Hey, you just try it, that's all!" Steve told him. "What d'ye take me for, a horse, to be staked out nights, or hobbled and all that? I give you fair warning right now that whenever we're in danger of losing some of our belongings, if I take a notion to step out and walk in my sleep in order to save the same, I'm going to do it. Get that, don't you, Bandy-legs?"
In spite of all their exchange of views it seemed that after all they were no nearer a reasonable solution of the puzzle than in the start.