She would not wake him, she thought; he might sleep a little while just as well as not, and they could go on if they liked an hour later. By that time the moon would be up, too. Alice looked up through the branches at the stars; there was an old hemlock almost overhead that was like a roof, but there seemed to be very little dew falling.
The mosquitoes were beginning to be troublesome, now that the fire was down, and she said to herself that she would get some more wood presently if Jack did not wake—and in three minutes more she was as sound asleep as Jack himself.
He waked first; it was late in the night, and the moon was high in the sky. The fire was out, and at first he could not think where he was; but Alice was there, sure enough, and the hemlock-tree, and the rest of the woods. He felt a little stiff and chilly, and he started to his feet to look around, and suddenly he heard two or three roosters crowing, and at that sound he began to laugh.
"Alice! Alice!" said he; and his sister waked quickly, but was even more bewildered at first than he had been.
"I never slept better in my life," she said, sleepily. "There's nothing the matter, is there, Jack? Ought we to go on, do you think? I am as stiff as Rip Van Winkle, and my arm is sound asleep." And she sat up and rubbed her eyes.
"Will you listen to those old roosters?" asked Jack, going into fits of laughter, and Alice laughed too. "There must be a house close by," he told her, "and we thought we were cast away. I suppose if we had walked ten minutes longer, we must have seen it." And they gathered up their possessions and took the road again. I do not think they cared to take another nap on the ground. Jack said that the mosquitoes had had their Christmas dinner in summer that year, and though he did not confess it, his neck was very stiff, and they both began to sneeze with great energy.
There was really a small house about an eighth of a mile away, and our friends walked about it and surveyed it in the moonlight. A sleepy little yellow dog appeared and barked at them, and after Jack had pounded at the door for some minutes, some one opened a window and asked what he wanted.
"Can you take two people in for the night?"
"'Deed I can't," said the woman, snappishly. "We don't keep tavern. Young fellows like you better be to home this time o' night. Trampin', I s'pose, ain't ye? The men-folks is all to home here, so ye needn't try to scare me."