“Who can it be, I wonder?” said Charley, who had left the tent, and was now standing beside the guide.
“Difficult to say, monsieur. Perhaps Injins, though I thought there were none here just now. But I’m not surprised that we’ve attracted something to us. Livin’ creeturs always come nat’rally to the light, and there’s plenty fire on the point to-night.”
“Rather more than enough,” replied Charley, abruptly, as a slight motion of wind sent the flames curling round his head and singed off his eyelashes. “Why, Louis, it’s my firm belief that if I ever get to the end of this journey, I’ll not have a hair left on my head.”
Louis smiled.
“O monsieur, you will learn to observe things before you have been long in the wilderness. If you will edge round to leeward of the fire, you can’t expect it to respect you.”
Just at this moment a loud hurrah rang through the copse, and Harry Somerville sprang over the fire into the arms of Charley, who received him with a hug and a look of unutterable amazement.
“Charley, my boy!”
“Harry Somerville, I declare!”
For at least five minutes Charley could not recover his composure sufficiently to declare anything else, but stood with open mouth and eyes, and elevated eyebrows, looking at his young friend, who capered and danced round the fire in a manner that threw the cook’s performances in that line quite into the shade, while he continued all the time to shout fragments of sentences that were quite unintelligible to any one. It was evident that Harry was in a state of immense delight at something unknown save to himself, but which, in the course of a few minutes, was revealed to his wondering friends.
“Charley, I’m going! hurrah!” and he leaped about in a manner that induced Charley to say he would not only be going, but very soon gone, if he did not keep further away from the fire.