, and hurried on after the midnight prowler, having just time
to see him enter the window of the doctor's cottage.

"Can it be the doctor after all?" he muttered.

"That would be funny after all. I wish I had brought my light
with me. That's just like me, though, thinking of things when it
is too late." He stepped under the front window of the cottage,
through which he had seen the figure disappear and listened:

"I don't hear anything," he muttered. "I wonder if it could have
been the doctor? Burglars would have no good excuse for coming to
the camp. Who is it anyhow?"

Listening intently, he fancied he could hear some one moving about in
the cottage, and then the steps approached the window.

He was about to step back, but was a little too late in that, as he
had been in thinking of his pocket light.

In another moment some one dropped out of the window, and he was
upset most unceremoniously.

The person, whoever it was, had landed on his head and shoulders, and
he was thrown down in an instant.

"Hello! who is that?" he exclaimed, as he felt himself lying on the
bare and rather damp ground.

Some one was struggling to his feet with a startled exclamation, and
Billy snatched quickly at him, and caught a leg or an arm, he could
not be certain which.

"I've got you now!" he cried, "and you've got to give an account of
yourself, my man!"

The stranger, whoever he was, certainly did give an account of
himself, but not in the manner which Billy meant.

There was a sudden shooting out of a brawny fist, and Billy was taken
between the eyes, and for a moment saw stars.

"Ouch!" he ejaculated, letting go of the person he had seized,

Then somebody rolled him over with a quick move of the foot, and by
the time the unfortunate joker arose his nocturnal combatant was out
of sight, as well as hearing.

"H'm! that's too bad!" sputtered Billy. "I don't know now whether
it was a burglar, a nightmare, or what it was. I think I'd better
go back to bed. Being out in the air may have done me a lot of good,
but I guess I've had enough of it."

With this conclusion he set out upon his return, but when he reached
the line of tents was not certain whether he was in the right one
or not, and began studying the appearance of things as much as he
could by the very uncertain light.

"I wonder if this is our street after all?" he asked himself. "Let
me see, we are the sixth tent from the top. Or is it the seventh?