"Same here, Slady; go to bed and get some sleep yourself."
It was two or three o'clock in the morning before the sufferer did get to sleep, and he slept correspondingly late. Tom knew that the headache must have stolen off and he felt sure that his companion would awaken refreshed. "I'll be glad because then I won't have to get the doctor," he said to himself. He wished to respect Bernard's smallest whim.
Tom did not sleep much himself, either, and he was up bright and early to anticipate his friend's waking. He tiptoed out of the cabin and quietly made himself a cup of coffee. It was one of those beautiful mornings, which are nowhere more beautiful than at Temple Camp. The soft breeze, wafting the pungent fragrance of pines, bore also up to that lonely hilltop the distant clatter of dishes and the voices of scouts from the camp below. The last patches of vapor were dissolving over the wood embowered lake, and one or two early canoes were already moving aimlessly upon its placid bosom. A shout and a laugh and a sudden splash, sounding faint in the distance, told him that some uninitiated new arrivals were diving from the springboard before breakfast. They would soon be checked in that pastime, Tom knew.
From the cooking shack where Chocolate Drop, the camp's famous cook, held autocratic sway and drove trespassing scouts away with a deadly frying pan, arose a graceful column of smoke which was carried away off over the wooded hills toward Leeds. Pretty soon Chocolate Drop would need two deadly frying pans, for Peewee Harris was coming.
Tom knew that nothing had been heard from the Bridgeboro scouts since Uncle Jeb had told him definitely that they were scheduled to arrive on the first, as usual. He knew that no other letter had come, because all the camp mail had passed through his hands. It had come to be the regular custom for Barnard to rise early and follow the secluded trail down to the state road where the mail wagon passed. He had early claimed it as his own job, and Tom, ever anxious to please him, had let him do this while he himself was gathering wood and preparing breakfast. "Always hike to work out west and can't get out of the habit," Barnard had said. "Like to hobnob with the early birds and first worms, and all that kind of stuff. Give me a lonesome trail and I'm happy—take one every morning before breakfast, and after retiring. How about that, old Doctor Slade?"
Old Doctor Slade had thought it was a good idea.
But this morning his friend was sleeping, and old Doctor Slade would not waken him. He tiptoed to the cabin and looked cautiously within. Barnard was sleeping the sleep of the righteous—to quote one of his own favorite terms. The bandage had slipped down from his forehead, and looked not unlike a scout scarf about his neck. A ray of early sunlight slanted through the crack between the logs and hit him plunk in the head, making his curly red hair shine like a red danger signal. He was sound asleep—dead to the wicked world—as he was himself fond of saying.
Early to bed and early to rise,
And you won't meet any regular guys.
As Tom paused, looking at him, he thought of that oft repeated admonition of his friend. He knew Barnard never meant that seriously. That was just the trouble—he was always saying things like that, and that was why people would never understand him and give him credit.... But Tom understood him, all right; that was what he told himself. "I got to laugh at him, that's sure," he said. Then he bethought him, and out of his simple, generous nature, he thought, "Didn't he say actions speak louder than words? That's what counts."
He tiptoed over to where that ray of sunlight came in, and hung his coat over the place. The shiny brightness of Barnard's hair faded, and the cabin was almost dark. Tom got his cap, and turning in the doorway to make sure his friend's sleep was undisturbed, picked his way carefully over the area of chips and twigs where most of the trimming had been done, and started down through the wooded hillside toward the trail which afforded a short-cut to the state road.