“Well, for one thing, by not rushing in and interfering with her little dream. By not letting either one of ’em see how anxious we are over this thing. By remaining as calm, cool and collected as we can.”

“And in the meanwhile?”

“Well, in the meanwhile I, for one, am going to tear off a few winks. I hurt all over and there’s quite a lot of me measured that way—all over.”

“You can go to sleep with that—that dreadful thought hanging over us?”

“I can and I will. Watch me for about another minute and you’ll hear me doing it.” He settled himself on his air mattress and drew the blankets over him.

Undeniably Mr. Hector Gatling could be one of the most aggravating persons on earth when he set out to be. Any husband can.

Speaking with regard to the ripening effect of summer nights upon the spirits of receptive and impressionable youth, Mr. Gatling had listed the cumulative possibilities of three moonlit ones hand-running. Specifically he had not included in his perilous category those languishing soft gloamings and those explosive sunrises and those long lazy mornings when the sun baked resiny perfumes out of the cedars and the unseen heart-broken little bird that the mountaineers call the lonesome bird sang his shy lament in the thickets; nor had he mentioned slow journeys through deep defiles where ferns grew with a tropical luxuriance; nor yet the fordings of tumbling streams when it might seem expedient on the part of a thoughtful young man to steady a young equestrian of the opposite sex while her horse’s hoofs fumbled over the slick, drowned boulders. But vaguely he had lumped all these contingencies in his symposium of contributory dangers.

Three more nights of moon it was with three noble days of pleasant adventuring in between; and on the late afternoon of the third day when camp was being made beside a river which mostly was rapids, Miss Shirley Gatling sought out her father in a secluded spot somewhat apart from the rest. It was in the nature of a rendezvous, she having told him a little earlier that presently she desired to have speech with him. Only, her way of putting it had been different.

“Harken, O most revered Drawing Account,” she said, dropping back on a broad place in the trail to be near him. “If you can spare the time from being saddle-sore I want to give you an earful as soon as this procession, as of even date, breaks up. You pick a quiet retreat away from 

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