Rob did not answer, amused at his cousin’s astonishment.
Again, another jovial peal of laughter, followed by a self-satisfied chuckle, came from the wood.
“What is it? What is it?” asked the others.
“You would have heard it before, many a time, if you had been awake at this hour,” answered Rob. “That is the settler’s alarum—the laughing jackass.”
“Laughing jackass!” exclaimed Hector. “I never heard that a jackass laughed, and I don’t see one there,” for in his eagerness he had jumped up, and gone to the window.
The dawn, it should have been said, had just broken.
“Wait until we have more light,” said Rob; “perhaps you will then see our friend. I can just make him out. He is not down on the ground, where you are looking for him—he is up in yonder tree.”
“Up in a tree?” exclaimed his cousins, in chorus.
“Yes; he generally lives up there, but he does not indulge in such uproarious laughter until early in the morning. I suppose he laughs at the folly of people lying in bed, and so tries to wake them up.”
Hector and Edgar were more mystified than ever. At last they caught sight of a large brown bird with a big beak, sitting on a bough and nodding its head, and then laughing away with all its might. They could now no longer have any doubt whence the sound proceeded.