Every eye was riveted on it, that can be set down as positive. In fact, just at that minute all of the watchers seemed to be holding their very breath, such was their natural condition of suspense, as well as deep interest.
“Is it a panther, Jack; and have you got your Marlin ready?” Josh whispered in the other’s ear.
The only answer Jack made was to kick Josh on the shins; with that unknown thing creeping forward it seemed no time to be asking foolish questions. Josh evidently understood, for he hushed up immediately.
But then that might have been because all of them saw about this time that it was a man and not an animal, for he had raised his head, in order to take a sharp look toward the spot where the fire glimmered and the two figures were huddled in the piles of blankets.
Possibly the low murmur of Josh’s voice had reached the ears of the intruder, so as to arouse a slight suspicion; but if so, this must have been lulled to sleep again immediately he found that neither of the inanimate figures had changed position.
But when the man thus partly arose it disclosed the fact that he was a heavyset sort of a fellow, wearing a cap and that his face was partly covered with a beard. It did something more than this. When he stretched his neck to see the better a portion of his body was exposed to view.
Now, it was nothing strange that this unknown prowler wore a sweater, or that this was a fine soft gray woolen sweater, of the kind used by automobile tourists in these days, buttoning down the front; but it certainly nearly gave Buster Longfellow heart disease when he discovered on the breast of that same garment the wonderful blue moon that he had so often described as marking his lost present, which he had been suspecting poor innocent Josh of having purloined!