Again the combined assault on “Old Black Joe” began.
Then they paused again.
The snoring of young Joe was broken off abruptly, with one particularly loud outburst on his part. There was, also, the creaking of a bed in another room, and a sound as of some one sitting bolt upright.
“Here, you Joe! Quit that! What on earth are you doing?” called out the voice of George Warren, in tones which denoted that he had awakened from slumber, but not to full consciousness of what had waked him, except that it was some weird sound.
Then another voice, more sleepily than the other: “What’s the matter, George? Keep quiet, and let a fellow go to sleep.”
“Why, it’s that young Joe’s infernal nonsense, I suppose,” exclaimed the elder brother. “Now, that will be enough of that, Joe. It isn’t funny, you know.”
“That’s it! always blaming me for something,” came the answer from the youngest boy’s room. “You fellows are dreaming—gracious, no! I hear a voice down-stairs.”
It was the voice of Henry Burns saying solemnly, “Repeat.”
“Old Black Joe,” out of time, out of tune, turned inside out and scarcely recognizable, again arose to the ears of the now fully aroused Warren brothers.
There was the sound of some one leaping out of bed upon the bare chamber floor.