“I prefar it,” laconically rejoined the hunter, at the same time stalking over the threshold, and gliding out upon the little lawn that lay between the cabin and the creek.
His old blanket was not the only thing he carried along with him. Beside it, hanging over his arm, could be seen some six or seven yards of a horsehair rope. It was a piece of a cabriesto—usually employed for tethering horses—though it was not for this purpose it was now to be used.
Having carefully scrutinised the grass within a circumference of several feet in diameter—which a shining moon enabled him to do—he laid the rope with like care around the spot examined, shaping it into a sort of irregular ellipse.
Stepping inside this, and wrapping the old blanket around him, he quietly let himself down into a recumbent position. In an instant after he appeared to be asleep.
And he was asleep, as his strong breathing testified: for Zeb Stump, with a hale constitution and a quiet conscience, had only to summon sleep, and it came.
He was not permitted long to indulge his repose without interruption. A pair of wondering eyes had watched his every movement—the eyes of Phelim O’Neal.
“Mother av Mozis!” muttered the Galwegian; “fwhat can be the manin’ av the owld chap’s surroundin’ himself wid the rope?”
The Irishman’s curiosity for a while struggled with his courtesy, but at length overcame it; and just as the slumberer delivered his third snore, he stole towards him, shook him out of his sleep, and propounded a question based upon the one he had already put to himself.
“Durn ye for a Irish donkey!” exclaimed Stump, in evident displeasure at being disturbed; “ye made me think it war mornin’! What do I put the rope roun’ me for? What else wud it be for, but to keep off the varmints!”
“What varmints, Misther Stump? Snakes, div yez mane?”