umed the position when she sank into slumber.

"Well, now you are here," said Worrell, as Ned Clinton came back from
where Rosa was reclining, "how do you mean to pass the time?"

"Jo and I, here, are half dead for sleep, and if we can put in a couple
of hours or so, it will make new fellows of us."

"What's to hinder? Why don't you lay down and sleep all you want to?"

"It looks like running great risk for all three of us to commit
ourselves to slumber when the Indians might steal in and nab every one
of us."

Worrell laughed.

"I never seen anybody so backward about asking a favor as you. If I
hadn't pumped that out of you, you two would have sat here winking, and
blinking, and nodding for hours, just 'cause you had a notion in your
heads that there was some danger in going to sleep."

"We may take turns about it," said Jo. "But we could not consent that
all of us should be unconscious at the same time."

Again the fellow laughed, as though it was all a capital joke.

"I put in ten, good, solid hours of slumber here last night, and I can't
do any more of it before midnight, if I was to be paid a thousand pounds
for it."

"And you are willing to stay here a couple of hours while we sleep?"

"Nothing will give me greater pleasure."

"I don't know how we shall ever pay you for your kindness."

"By never saying nothing about it. Come, we're losing too much time;
you'll get no sleep at all if you never stop talking. Lay down at once,
for I ca'c'late you ain't partic'lar about having a straw bed, nor very
soft pillers."

Again expressing their gratitude to the man for his repeated kindness,
Ned and Jo stretched themselves upon the flinty floor, and quickly
glided into the land of dreams. Slumber, indeed, they all needed, for
the most athletic and hardened frame, the toughest and most enduring
system, must have time in which to recuperate the exhausted energies.
Five minutes from the time Ned Clinton spoke the last words to the
settler, the latter was the only one within the cavern who possessed his
senses. In the far corner scarcely visible in the dim light of the
place, reclined the lovely Rosa, and nearer, in full view, were
stretched the forms of her two friends--all handsome and attractive, but
as helpless as so many babes.

For a brief while after the slumber of the whites had come upon them,
Worrell, the straggling farmer, sat near the entrance of the cavern, the
stone which served as a door being pa