The stump did not prove to be very weighty, and Dick rolled it deftly so that it covered all but a small fraction of the opening. Then he crept inside, and the two of them had little trouble in closing most of the remainder of the aperture.
“Well, to tell you the honest truth,” admitted Roger, when this undertaking had been completed, though plenty of air could still find ingress, “I do feel a whole lot better, now that we’ve shut the door. It can’t be very pleasant to lie down to sleep in a hollow tree that may be a panther’s lair, and to wake up to find the savage beast coming in on you.”
Dick was as satisfied as his companion, even if less vociferous about it.
“I guess that stump will make a good enough door,” he went on to say, chuckling, “and if we wake up to hear some one knocking, we can ask who it is before we open up. Just as you say, it makes us feel more secure.”
Satisfied with the way things were going Roger soon settled down to make himself as comfortable as the conditions allowed.
“Perhaps this isn’t as sweet and easy a bed as my own at home,” he remarked, after yawning several times; “but then, as my mother always says, ‘beggars mustn’t be choosers.’ And I can remember many a time when I’ve slept in worse places than a hollow tree.”
“Remember before you go to sleep, Roger, it’s understood that the one who happens to hear anything suspicious is to wake the other up. If you feel me touch you on the arm and hear me whisper, keep as still as a church mouse. It may mean that Indians are outside, and looking for us.”
“I’ll recollect, Dick, you can depend on it; and, if the tables should be turned, so that I am the one to get wind of the danger first, I’ll do the same to you. So now, let’s go to sleep.”
Roger found very little trouble in putting his words into practice, and in a few minutes Dick heard him breathing heavily.