, Max?" Bandy-legs
asked, after the girls had crawled beneath the rustic shelter, and amid
more or less laughter made themselves fairly comfortable.

Max smiled.

"Yes, but that doesn't necessarily mean any of us will have to stay
awake," he went on to say, which remark caused the other to look
puzzled until he saw Max nod his head over toward the spot where the
ferocious bulldog calmly reposed, with his square head lying between
his two forepaws.

"Oh! I see now what you mean," Bandy-legs announced; "and that's where
your head was level, Max, though for that matter it always is. Sure
he'll be the best sentinel agoing. But then there isn't one chance in
a thousand we'll be bothered with visitors, unless of the hungry dog
kind."

"That's so," agreed Max, "but you never can tell; and while the roads
are all more or less flooded, and even the railroad blocked, tramps are
apt to bob up in places where they've never been known before. We'll
be keeping our fire going all night, you know, and that would be a
signal to any one passing."

The four boys fixed themselves so that they really surrounded the
shelter; constructed of boards and branches, in which the girls were
snugly settled down. Max had told Mazie they meant to do this, for he
felt that the fact would add more or less to the peace of mind of those
whom they were protecting.

"Better get settled, you fellows," Max told the others, "and after that
I'll attend to the fire so it'll keep burning a long time. Shack,
what's that rag around your finger for? I hope now you didn't get
bitten by one of the dogs when we had our row, because that might turn
out to be a bad job."

"Oh! shucks, that ain't nawthin' much," Shack replied, with scorn; "I
on'y knocked me fin against a tree when I was smackin' that setter a
whack. He ducked too quick for me, yuh see, an' I lost him, worse
luck; but second time I gives him a poke that made him howl like fits."

It apparently pleased Shack considerably to have Max notice that he had
his finger bound up in part of a much soiled handkerchief. And by now
even Bandy-legs seemed to have accepted the other as a companion in
arms, whom the fortunes of war had thrown into their society.

Max took a look around before finally lying down. He saw that clouds
still obscured the sky, but at least it was not raining, and there
seemed a fair chance that the anticipated renewal of the storm would
not materialize.

There must have