Justin laughed in his sleeve, but in two minutes he, too, had joined the ladies in a brief nap, and only the pony was left to gaze amiably from one sleeper to another, and guard them from intruders.
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE PICNIC AND THE OLD PRISON WELL.
Derrice and Captain White jogged merrily on. "Do you know what makes Justin so sluggish?" asked the latter, after a time.
"Yes, he sat up last night with that poor sick man."
"Sick!—crazy drunk," reflected her companion. "Justin don't tell her everything, and thank Heaven she ain't curious. She don't guess Bob Wallis put in the night trying to brain her husband with the lamp, and run him through with the poker, and play any other pesky tricks on him that came in his mind. Justin had to keep his eyes open to keep alive. Soho, this is a bad world," and he gazed keenly into the depths of the underwood, where he thought he saw a pair of liquid brown eyes.
It was Orono, Miss Gastonguay's pet moose, whose age was seven months, and whose weight was four hundred pounds. He would, however, not come at Derrice's coaxing, and they plunged deeper and deeper into the thicket after him.
"Go on, don't turn your back on a few trials," Captain White encouraged Derrice, and finally they emerged scratched and breathless upon the high river bank, where Derrice ruefully surveyed her torn gown.
Captain White laughed at her, drew from his pocket the key Miss Gastonguay had given him, and unlocked the padlocked gate in the high fence bounding the wood.